First Impressions?

[frogbeastegg]

My opinion on FotS is pretty mixed. There's some bits I like, some I don't, and a lot I'm withholding judgement on until I'm less of a newbie. Some of this feedback applies to Shogun 2 as well, as yesterday's patch back-ported a lot of the UI and AI changes.

The good.

• Lots of UI tweaks, most of which are beneficial. I particularly like having tooltips on the building browser, saves me a lot of time when planning my development.
• The UI artwork is nicely done, very atmospheric.
• More music, and every bit as excellent as the music from S2 and RotS. It fits in very well.
• Unit movement is slower, about the same sort of speed I modded them to in S2. Happy days.
• I've been playing the historical battles a bit, and they're pretty enjoyable. Normally I don't care for them much. The first in the series is a real eye-opener on the power of artillery in FotS.
• AI turns cycle much faster, I'd say around twice as fast.
• Fleshed out diplomacy info is nice.
• Economy on hard is very tight. Not much money to go around in the early days.
• No more trade nodes!
• The encyclopaedia seems more responsive. No 3 second pause between page changes, and pages scroll faster.
• Opening movie sets the scene nicely for the campaign.
• Strong newbie support: there's a comprehensive series of video tutorials. I watched a couple out of curiosity and they're great for people new to the series. I recommend newbies take the time to watch them.

The bad.

• I loathe, detest, and despise the new battle announcer's voice with the fire of a thousand burning suns. No, that's not an exaggeration.
• Naval battles. I've done a few. I guess they're a bit better. I still don't care for them. Slow, limited, boring, unless you really like cannons going bang.
• Much more resource intensive on my PC. I had to spend a few hours tweaking settings before I could get it running smoothly. The large quantities of smoke are a particular frame rate killer.
• I've seen a few bizarre AI moves, including a naval battle where it sat there and never moved.
• Glitches. I've seen a bunch of graphical glitches, from diplomatic avatars with an ... unfortunate crotch, to armies sitting down on invisible seats. I had a pair of units get stuck in the ground and refuse to move during a battle. One of my trade treaties vanished into thin air; I was not notified that it had been broken, and could not locate any gameplay reason for it breaking. Steam's taken away an achievement I did earn (requiem for the dead) and replaced it with one I never will (a MP avatar one).
• Now I can understand what my units are saying, I wish they'd be quiet. Endless choruses of "The enemy is in sight!" and "Hold steady!", unit after unit saying the same limited phrases every 30 seconds or so. I much preferred it when they spoke Japanese, and spoke less often.
• New character growth trees. Gain 1 point per level, and all abilities cost 1 point to max out. That means you are always gaining something new, rather than pumping up an existing ability.
• Load times are improved according to the patch notes. It doesn't feel like it. Rather the opposite.

Withholding judgement:

• The tech tree. It's segmented according to your development, which makes it harder to use a deep/focused style of research. They may or may not be too restrictive, will have to play on and see.
• Difficulty. Either hard mode lives up to its name (hurrah!), or it will get easier when I have some clue as to what I'm doing. Time will tell. Despite a few questionable moves by the AI, the game does have challenge and appears smart, same as S2.
• Gun battles. Guns are not my cup of military tea, and I haven't had chance to explore many tactical options yet. So far it's not exactly edifying.
• Artillery. I am scoring scary kill-counts with entry-level cannon. I hate to think how devastating the later guns will be, and fear that such strong artillery will make battles less exciting in the long run.
• Zones of control for armies and navies. Now that the map is bigger, the zones of control around each army/navy feel a bit on the small side. It's too easy for the enemy to bypass you.
• Happiness. Lots of happiness penalties as you modernise, not so many ways to counter. Not sure what the eventual balance will be. Could be good, could be tiresome to deal with.

So, in summary, mainly a case of liking the refinements, hating the voice-overs, having some tech problems, and needing to play the game a lot more before I can fairly judge the gameplay.

I started with Satsuma on hard. By the time I'd got it running smoothly, I realised I didn't like their clan bonuses much. I quit, and started to mess around with historical and custom battles instead in order to doublecheck performance. Next time, I'll begin a new campaign with a different clan.

Why did a certain recent patch (trololol) enable you to queue up arts in Shogun 2, yet the same does not work for Fall of the Samurai?

Queuing techs works for me, provided I stay within the unlocked tech tiers.