Total War: Shogun 2 review

When two enemy forces come together on the campaign map, a real-time battle kicks in. As already noted, numerous factors are carried over from the campaign map, so attempt an assault across a river valley in the autumn, and your forces could find that driving rain slows their progress even before they encounter a heavily-guarded crossing.

The onus is on the attacker to push the defender from the field of battle, so there are no stalemates here. In our first battle, the enemy AI sensibly took the high ground amidst trees, and made our forces do the hard work by fighting uphill. Our heavy cavalry attempted to flank the enemy but where cut apart by their lighter horsemen hiding behind the treeline. The AI was generally conservative, and it takes some clever use of faster units to tease it from its compact formations.

The units divide largely into spearmen, heavy infantry, cavalry and archers – though there’s plenty of variation within these categories, including mounted archers, samurai bowmen and warrior monks. Each type has its strengths and vulnerabilities – for example spearmen are strong against cavalry charges but vulnerable to heavy infantry and archers. The trick is to combine your available units to cover their weaknesses. It’s incredibly satisfying to beat a numerically superior opponent with careful planning and bold manoeuvres.

You don’t have to fight every battle, as there’s an AutoResolve button. This is useful for skipping conflicts where you have massive numerical superiority, or vice-versa. Generally it works well, though it does have a tendency to kill your general if his bodyguard is already depleted, even if you have a superior force that could easily protect him.

Shogun 2 has plenty more too. There are naval battles to fight – as the sea is an ideal way of flanking your opponents on the campaign map – which make a nice change and will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s seen John Woo’s Red Cliff. To take castles you must lay siege to them, destroying or scaling the walls under hails of arrow fire.

It’s a brilliant, multi-faceted experience, one that everyone who’s ever enjoyed a strategy game should enjoy. Watching your grand schemes come to fruition on the battlefield, or saving your neck with the heroic defence of a castle is all stirring stuff. A great game and a great return to form for Total War.