Shogun: Total War My goodness, what a game! I've bought a lot of war simulations hoping for a fun game that mixes detailed accuracy with a not too heavy learning curve. Most every game is either too weighty or too light. "Shogun" does an excellent job in presenting an historic, full featured war sim' while allowing the playability to be very manageable. In "Shogun," you are a Daimyo in feudal Japan battling for the Shogunate. You have to manage the development of farmland, castles, dojos, ports, trading, and numerous other aspects of each of the provinces you start with and acquire. As you build an item in a province, it opens you up to new items that are based off the previous. For example, once you build a castle you can build a spear dojo which allows you to train samurai spearmen. You can build an armory which will give those spearmen an armor bonus. Then after a larger castle is built and a general gains enough honor, you can train legendary spearmen, etc. So on the one hand you manage your territory and dealings with other Daimyo in an overhead land map. In many ways it reminds me of "Civilization." But the is where the game really shines! On a beautifully rendered and detailed landscape with trees and hills and fog or rain or snow, you have 360-degree control of your army in real-time. Each soldier is a rendered "sprite" and there can be as many as 10,000 on the field at any one time. You control formations, grouping, and other general behaviors of your army. Their morale and fighting furvor is affected by the honor of your generals. The more battles he's won, the greater his honor and the better your army fights. Or the quicker it flees if your general hasn't much honor. Along with diplomats you can send to other provinces, is a handful of other shadier individuals. General spies, ninja, or geisha--who are amazingly affective master assassins. The animated clips in the game are also a small joy. When you attempt an assassination, you're treated to a little movie depicting the success or failure of your agent. One of the little "coolies" that makes the game fun for me, is when you are visited by an emissary or a gaijin (barbarian) trader, you get an animated sequence of their visit where then you decide to accept or deny what they offer. I play it with the spoken language being Japanese (no, I don't speak Japanese but it just sounds so dang cool,) with English subtitles. The zealot Portuguese traders speak in very broken Japanese and with some disrespect, while the Dutch trader's Japanese is quite better and more polite. For a pretty in depth game where you can spend days trying different strategies and troop movements, it's learning curve is pretty low. I barely skimmed the game manual, but the tutorial was the most helpful. It's somewhat long, but necessary. The nice thing is that even after you master the basics, there are many subtleties you can play with. For example, what type of samurai is good at keeping back frontal assaults and which you should use to hide in the forests for quick attacks. I'm a big fan of James Clavell's epic melodramatic novel, Shogun, and have always been impressed with how well it fictionalized history while keeping true to the spirit of the people and land and culture. "Shogun: Total War" won't give you college credits in Japanese history, but it does a great job in immersing you in a spirit and feeling that the novel was able to produce. And if that's all you know about feudal Japan, you should be as pleased as I am to see a lot of similarity in names and places and behaviors of the archetypes. Just read some manga to add the love interest into your game-playing. *grin*

Category: Computer Game Genre: Strategy Date Reviewed: 2001-01-01 Pros: Cons: Rating: 7