Anticipated title: Shogun 2 total war

I am a big strategy fan and the total war series is my favourite I jumped in when Rome total war came out and have stayed with the series all the way through to Napoleon but now these are a few reasons why shogun 2 will be the single best total war game to date.

Reason 1 upgraded naval battles:

Sea warfare is relatively new to the total war series while you could have sea combat in older games you couldn’t control and affect the outcome of the battle, now in shogun 2 the developers decided to make the sea battles in shogun 2 more like land battles where it isn’t about positioning your ships to fire a broadside at another ship, now it’s more about brute force using arrows to burn the ship or capture it for your own use.

Reason 2 upgraded siege warfare:

Now sieges are a lot faster paced whether as before I would just have lots of cannons and blast the walls to smithereens and then send my gunmen in to mop up the rest now if you take out a wall you might be met with a swarm of cavalry or another layer of walls. As well as that all infantry units can scale the walls of the castle which saves on the really annoying ladder men which more often than not got stuck in the terrain and turned the wrong way ruining your battle plans but now it’s more streamlined and hopefully sieges will benefit from it.

Reason 3 customisation:

With shogun 2 you get to customize your general’s avatar that changes your stats among other RPG like things; you can add new armour weapons and companions to your general. As well as that you can upgrade your troops like say if you had a elite cavalry unit and they gain veterancy you can customise their armour, weapons and paint  their armour to your personal taste’s, this applies to multiplayer to you have a different general avatar which you can customise as you play battles.

Reason 4 multiplayer:

Multiplayer has been overhauled in shogun 2 now there is a persistent clan battle system where you can join a clan and together take over all of japan while other clans are trying to do the same, you might be winning by the end of the day but come back tomorrow and find that another clan has flanked your army and is pillaging your lands.

Reason 5 unit count

Units in shogun 2 are a lot more realistic in a recent interview a creative assembly spokesperson (Kieran) said that “each unit has about 49 bones per skeleton” meaning you will see a lot more flex in the unit so you will see more realistic hand to hand combat. As well as that the unit count has been dropped from 300 to 30 which allows much clearer distinction between what units are very good and which aren’t instead of a 0.1% difference.

And that’s my list of reason why shogun 2 total war is one of my most anticipated title of 2011, coming up soon on my list will be gears of war 3 and many others in the future.