Wednesday 30 March 2011

Shogun 2 - Total War

Here comes the first post, better introduce myself. I'm 19 years old and currently attending university at Monash University Melbourne, Australia and considering I rarely go to class, this leaves a fair bit of free time. As to not fall victim of chronic boredom my computer comes in and saves the day. What cant it do?!?!

I like to consider myself an avid gamer, probably excessively at times. Over the past few years its pretty much just been MMORPG's. I played World of Warcraft for three years but recently quit as i'd never really tried an MMORPG outside of WoW, no Aion, no Warhammer, no Age of Conan, but when I saw the hype behind RIFT I thought I'd give it a try. After a month of playing I can honestly say it didn't live up to the hype. Sure, its a fresh change from WoW, but it wasn't really anything special. Add to this the fact that it would crash constantly unless I ran it on low rendering (with a Radeon HD 6970) for no apparent reason and pretty soon I was sick of it. This was about a week ago so I got myself Shogun 2 - Total War. I'd played some other Total War a while back and whilst my roommate loves a good turn based strat game, I cant say I was going in with high expectations.


For anyone who's played any of the Total War games, my start was pretty terrible. Somewhere around 6-8 turns I had a legion of unhappy citizens banging on my front door. Apparently you need to keep the hordes of people amongst your city happy. After they wiped the floor with me I ragequit and bailed simultaneously which was pretty sweet. So the next day I got my roommate to go over the basics with me. After some simple explanations I was ready to go.

I began my path of destruction, first one city, then two, make an alliance here, stab a friend in the back there, offer the 6 year old daughter of my bets general as a hostage here, watch me dominate their faction 2 years later there. You get the picture. I was an unstoppable force of fury, no mercy, no fear, just throwing troops at the enemy with no thought to the families they'd leave behind. I'd encourage promiscuity within towns to just pump little baby troops out. No one child policy in any of my provinces, I was practically breeding human meat-shields, It was glorious! Everything was looking great, I was wiping the floor with anyone who stood in my way until....

THE SHOGUN, I hit some magical province number of 15 or something and suddenly I my notoriety was legendary. The shogun of Japan was having a big old sook thinking I was coming for him so he gets the entire of Japan to declare war on me. I was getting attacked from all directions now, from the sea, from every orifice into my provinces and at one stage I swear I saw a legion of paratroopers. But I jsut took all this in my stride. Just kept pushing, this shogun didn't know what he had gotten himself into. I took a few more provinces and suddenly I was 24/25 provinces needed. Now all I needed to do was control the shogun's seat of Kyoto. I pushed my army deep into his territory, took the capital and now all I needed to was hold it for one year or four turns.

First turn 3 different armies came, but i repelled them all, I turned the day into night with as arrows filled the sky, my rivers turn blood red with the spilled blood of the enemy generals, again, no mercy, no fear. So that was one out of four down. Second turn was surprisingly easy. Maybe every one had heard of my awesomeness and had just backed down due to the fear I instilled in them. But then came turn three.

With my army already depleted and baby troops not quite ready for battle, i was feeling vulnerable. And this is when they struck. A 5 star general cam first with 2500 troops, with a reinforcing army of 600. I barely held this off with my all my archers going down leaving only a handful of troops left. Then came what I thought would be the end of me, It wasn't a large force, but it was enough to have me worried with the few troops I had left. They had their army split into 2 parts so I thought i'd just try and force the army without a general present to bail and then try and deal with the general himself. The first part worked but then came part 2. Troops were well inside my city walls now. I had to bring all my wounded tired and demoralized troops around to deal with them. They cute through my first line of Samuria's blood spilling all over my screen, so if it in game and some IRL as I bit down on my lip hard in concentration. I lost one group of troops and then another, I was attempting to focus on the general in the hope all other troops would bail when they saw their leader fall. It wasn't looking good. I had the generals cohort down low and then with my own generals charge, I brought him down. I held my breath in the hope that rest of the army would turn and run.

SUCCESS. I had held off this devastating force. For turn four I had my reinforcing legion arrive and i finally felt safe for the first time in Kyoto. I clicked end turn turn and noone attacked. I WAS SHOGUN. I HAD CONQUERED JAPAN. THEY ALL NOW BOWED TO ME AND ME ONLY. Cutscene ensued, victory screen flashed up and the time and effort felt all worth it. Shogun 2 - Total War, you have been conquered.



26 comments:

  1. Haha I love your writing style. Love the game also.

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  2. id say this is the best in the series so far

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  3. haven't played it. However I like your style.

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  4. bahaha the part i most agree with is i never go to class either!!!

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  5. LOL my local pub is called shogun, found it funny

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  6. Need to try this, 1+ follower.

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  7. wow great post, nice and detailed, following for more of this.

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  8. FUcking love this series. Great games all around. Followed. Post more!

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  9. haha nice, can't wait to try this game!!

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  10. Total War = Great game series!

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  11. haha, sounds very enjoyable. i remember my own epic battles in the original total war. :)

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  12. I heard this was a good game.

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  13. This game looked pretty good...

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  14. I personally liked this one, it's hard to get into sometimes though.

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  15. This one is gonna be awesome

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  16. I never played this. Need to try it.

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  17. looks like an AWESOME game

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