Year: 15 March 2011 year
Genre: Strategy (Real-time / Turn-based) / 3D
Developer: The Creative Assembly
Publisher: SEGA
Publisher in Russia: “1C-SoftClub”
Total War: Shogun 2 (English: Total War: “Shogun 2:”) is a computer game in the genre of turn-based strategy and military tactics, developed by the British company The Creative Assembly and published by the Japanese company SEGA. It is the seventh game in the famous PC-exclusive Total War series. The game Shogun 2: Total War is a remake of the first game in the series – Shogun: Total War. Total War: Shogun 2 is dedicated to the period of feudal fragmentation of Japan in the XNUMXth century.
Total War: Shogun 2 was released on March 15, 2011 exclusively for personal computers. At the same time, the game became available for download through the online digital distribution service Steam.
Review: Playability
In fact, the gameplay of the game has not undergone major changes and is a natural evolution of the gameplay of the entire Total War series. The game combines turn-based strategy and real-time tactics modes. State management (in Total War terminology – “faction”) takes place on a strategic map in a step-by-step mode. The player is engaged in research, intelligence, economics, religion and other important issues of the state. Sea and land battles take place in real time. The game takes place in Japan during the time of shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa. In the role of a daimyo – the leader of one of the warring factions – the player must conduct military operations, engage in economic policy and play a diplomatic game in order to achieve the main goal of the game: the unification of feudal Japan into a single state under the rule of the player’s clan.
The player is presented with a map of Japan, divided into many provinces, and the seas surrounding it. At first, the player can only see their original province, while everything about the other provinces is hidden by the map. As in Empire and Napoleon, most of the buildings are located outside the castle, allowing the enemy to destroy them without attacking the protected fortifications. As the castle is upgraded, the player gains access to additional building slots, although all possible buildings cannot be built in one castle, which requires the player to specialize provinces. For example, in one province you can build up to two dojos (or other similar buildings). If you build an archery dojo and a stable, the player will be able to hire not only archers and cavalry, but also horse archers. Some provinces have additional resources that give an advantage to the owner. For example, the presence of horses in a province allows the player to recruit more effective cavalry in that province, while the presence of a quarry allows the construction of stone castles. Replacing losses uses the Napoleon system, where troops themselves are replenished each turn depending on supply lines.
Diplomacy is carried out without the help of special diplomat characters and is somewhat more developed than in previous parts. For example, to form an alliance with another clan, that clan’s daimyo may require the player’s daimyo’s son as a pledge of loyalty. This can only be done if the son is still a minor. If the player has not broken the alliance in two years (eight moves), then the son returns safe and sound. You can also marry off a daimyo’s daughter to improve relations between clans.
As in Empire and Napoleon, there are places on the map that allow merchant ships to establish trade with other nations not present in the game, including China and Korea. As long as the merchant ships are in this cell, the player will receive profit from trade. In addition to troops, the player can also hire monks, ninjas and metsuke to perform various tasks. Monks engage in propaganda and can negatively influence the enemy army or province. Ninjas engage in sabotage and assassination of characters. Metsuke are spies, but can also kill ninjas by exposing them.
The tactical mode features sea and land battles in real time. The battles vary in scale; in some battles up to 56 thousand people can take part. The game now offers the opportunity to combine sea and land battles, landing troops and taking advantage of all the advantages of the coastline topography.
We invite you to evaluate part of the game walkthrough of Total War: Shogun 2, where you can see for yourself the quality of this product:
A game for true fans of the Total War series, however, it is worth noting that the developers somewhat complicate and confuse the main aspects of the game, and thus sometimes it seems that they are making the game in order to please themselves. But we think true fans of the series will get what they wanted, namely the scale of what is happening!
Review: Graphics
Total War: Shogun 2 uses a modified engine from the Napoleon: Total War and Empire: Total War games called Warscape. Initially, the Warscape engine supported shader model versions 2.0 and 3.0. The developers paid a lot of attention to the use and optimization of the second, currently outdated version of shaders in order for the game to scale widely and be accessible to older PCs. According to Creative Assembly’s lead graphics programmer Richard Gardner, this approach has made the engine compatible with a full range of personal computer configurations since 2005. When using shaders version 3, the graphics engine uses Geometry Instancing technology.
There are nine levels of mip texturing: from 1 × 1 pixel to 256 × 256 pixels per texture. Bilinear and trilinear filtering is supported, as well as anisotropic filtering with levels up to 16x. Anti-aliasing (smoothing) is supported by the engine up to a 16-fold level. The engine uses High Dynamic Range Rendering technology, which is designed to improve the quality of lighting in a three-dimensional scene. Shadows supported by the engine are rendered using the Shadow mapping method. The minimum size of a shadow texture is 512 × 512 pixels, and the maximum is 2048 × 2048 pixels.
The engine uses volumetric effects, which are a set of different techniques designed to seriously improve the lighting and shading in a scene. These techniques include Depth of Field and Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, the latter being quite complex and computationally intensive.
When developing the third game on the engine, Total War: Shogun 2, the developers significantly updated the graphics engine, adding support for DirectX 11; support for DirectX 9 was retained, and support for DirectX 10 was not announced. Thanks to the use of DirectX 11, simulated depth of field effects calculated using DirectCompute 11, realistic soft shadows and hardware tessellation were implemented. In addition, support for Eyefinity and CrossFireX technologies has been added. “Total War: Shogun 2” was promoted by AMD as part of a marketing campaign for HD 6xxx series video cards as a game that actively uses the capabilities of DirectX 11.
However, a few days before the game’s release, it became known that it would not contain a DX11 mode. The developers stated that they did not have time to finalize this mode, and it will be released later as a patch. Here’s what a representative from The Creative Assembly commented in an interview with Eurogamer: “We need a little more time to tune the performance for different video cards. The DX11 patch will be released 2-4 weeks after the game’s release.”
Review: Resource-intensive game
All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality using MSI Afterburner. The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. Below is the configuration of our test systems.
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Hardware configuration |
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Processors |
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T BE 3.33@4 GHz product provided by the company AMD AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE [email protected] GHz product provided by the company AMD AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6 GHz product provided by the company AMD Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550@ 4.25 GHz Intel® Core™ [email protected] GHz Intel Core i5-760 [email protected] GHz |
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motherboards |
Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H product provided by the company AMD Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H product provided by the company AMD Maximus II Formula socket LGA775 product provided by the company Asus MSI X58 Eclipse Plus socket LGA1366 product provided by the company MSI MSI P55-GD55 socket LGA1156 product provided by the company MSI |
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Memory |
GOODRAM PLAY 1600MHz (8-8-8-24) product provided by the company GOODRAM GOODRAM Pro 2000MHz (8-8-8-29) product provided by the company GOODRAM |
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Video Cards |
GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB |
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Multimedia equipment |
3D monitor LG W2363D Monitor LG E2750 3D Vision Kit product provided by the company Nvidia |
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Power Supplies |
4xSeaSonic S12D 850 Silver 850W product provided by the company Syntex |
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System software and drivers |
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Operating system |
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 |
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DirectX |
DirectX 11 |
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Platform Driver |
Intel INF Chipset Update Utility 9.1.0.1012 |
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Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 267.31 AMD Catalyst 11.1 |
Less productive video cards up to the level of GeForce GTS 250 and Radeon HD 4830 are tested on the basis of Core 2 Quad Q9550 and Phenom II X4 940 BE processors, and more productive ones on the basis of more powerful solutions. Overclocked versions of video cards presented by sponsors were equal to conventional analogues by reducing their clock speeds.
Our video cards were tested in separate screen sizes 1280×1024 and 1920×1080 at maximum quality settings and using AMD Eyefinity technology, also at maximum quality settings. NVIDIA 3D Vision technology was not included in the tests, as the 3D driver is currently rated “Not Recommended”. The game was tested in mode DirectX 9, since the corresponding patch with modes DirectX 11 will be released a little later. Anti-aliasing in the game is also not available yet…
Testing at maximum quality settings 1280×1024 DX 9
At a resolution of 1280×1024 at maximum quality settings, with all effects enabled, the required level of performance will be provided by video cards of the Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 465 level. Video cards of the Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560Ti level will provide comfortable performance.
Testing at maximum quality settings 1920×1080 DX 9
With FuLL HD resolution 1920×1080 at maximum quality settings, the performance bar will rise to video cards of the Radeon HD 5850 or GeForce GTX 470 level. Video accelerators of the Radeon HD 6970 or GeForce GTX 580 level should be considered the most optimal for this game. If we assume that video cards are purchased specifically for this game, then the Radeon HD 6970 or GeForce GTX 580 are currently the most preferable. In terms of price/performance ratio, AMD cards look slightly more preferable than NVIDIA video cards, which is not surprising, given that the game was developed in collaboration with AMD under under the auspices of Gaming Evolved.
AMD Eyefinity Technology Testing
All our video cards were tested at maximum quality settings on two Full HD monitors combined thanks to Eyefinity technology in a resolution of 3840×1080. Thanks to Eyefinity technology, for the first time, playing the Total War series, we were able to take in at one glance most of the battlefield and all of our subordinate units!
Testing at maximum quality settings using AMD Eyefinity technology on two monitors at a resolution of 3840×1080 DX9
With the use of Eyefinity technology, card performance is reduced by 45-55% of the standard mode, depending on the video cards model. The minimum that is needed for comfortable gaming at a resolution of 3840×1080 without activating full-screen anti-aliasing is a video card of the Radeon HD 6970 level, and even then it’s a stretch. A likely candidate for acceptable performance is the Radeon HD 6990, but we haven’t had the opportunity to test it yet.
CPU dependency testing
We tested processor dependence on 9 models of basic configurations, which are the most relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of video cards for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 800×600 with low quality settings.
Testing processor dependence at low quality settings 800×600
To be honest, the game Total War: Shogun 2 behaves extremely inappropriately, in some cases using two processor cores, in others – four. But in most cases, the game uses only two cores, and Hyper-threading technology is ignored and can lead to a slight loss of performance.
It was very difficult to fix the minimum FPS under the same conditions for different configurations, so its average value was taken as a basis, but we can state that in some places it dropped below the acceptable 25 frames, even on the most powerful processors…
Conclusion on system requirements
Total War: Shogun 2, like all games in the Total War series, dealt a stunning blow to all components of the system unit, plus there was noticeable discomfort in terms of optimizing the high threading rate of the central processor. In the near future we will have another meeting with this game in the modes DirectX 10 and DirectX 11, so stay tuned!
We express our gratitude to all the manufacturing companies that were able to provide test equipment for our GPU tests and we hope that in the future their number will increase significantly!
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Rating 90%
Game rating
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Rating 73%