So how much is in this game, anyone got it?

Sadly the price tag just seems too hefty for a casual Total War player like myself to just give it a spin.
But the meging of sweet ship combat and gunpowder units from the previous games seems like they are trying to combine the best of both worlds.

@Tennmuerti said:

Sadly the price tag just seems too hefty for a casual Shogun player like myself to just give it a spin.

I hear you.

Apparently there is a lot to this expansion (from reviews I've seen). Personally I'm not interested though, I don't associate with those corrupt western traders and their Christianity anyways. Also, keep guns away from my Total War.

I've played over 200 hours of Shogun 2. I didn't by Rise of the Samurai and I'm not going to buy Fall of the Samurai. I just think there is enough in the core game to scratch the itch until an entirely new Total War comes out.

That said, Fall of the Samurai is getting good reviews. Maybe I'll feel different about it once prices are down, but for now, no thanks.

@Funkydupe said:

I've played over 200 hours of Shogun 2. I didn't by Rise of the Samurai and I'm not going to buy Fall of the Samurai. I just think there is enough in the core game to scratch the itch until an entirely new Total War comes out.

That said, Fall of the Samurai is getting good reviews. Maybe I'll feel different about it once prices are down, but for now, no thanks.

Pretty much how I felt, but I just noticed it's a standalone, so now I'm undecided.

It's fantastic. Rise Of The Samurai is also great value. For the asking price, you are getting more content than most games. When you take into account the multiplayer, hundreds of hours worth of content.

When you take into account the scale of what this is doing with Japan, from the origins to decline of the Samurai, it's really ambitious and has scope to it, basically no game can touch.

Be aware though, this isn't like Empire. If you expect lines of people standing shooting each other, it doesn't quite work like that. It straddles a juxtaposition between the non-gunpowder Total War games (Rome/Shogun2/Med) and the gunpowder titles (Empire/Nap). You can choose to play either way. But playing "traditional" units is harder. Depending on the ideology you choose, you get perks. You can either keep to old values or modernize. It's interesting, at the moment on my first play-through I am trying to mostly use "tradtional" units. With bow, you have longer distance than gun. With superior Katana units if you can flank them, you can wipe out entire bands of gun units fairly easily. The direct input works well, I thought it would be gimmicky and something I don't touch but it's really alot of fun, I love it.

If you like strategy games, action games or in general, pc games. I don't see why you wouldn't want to pick this up. I'll take this over some shitty console port any day of the week.

@whyareyoucrouchingspock: Good post, why. I never doubted the value for money in this specific expansion. I'm just not convinced the game is any better as a result. I quite like the traditional versus traditional combat that the original provides. Creative Assembly is making some really entertaining stuff. I hope it continues.

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

It's fantastic. Rise Of The Samurai is also great value. For the asking price, you are getting more content than most games. When you take into account the multiplayer, hundreds of hours worth of content.

When you take into account the scale of what this is doing with Japan, from the origins to decline of the Samurai, it's really ambitious and has scope to it, basically no game can touch.

Be aware though, this isn't like Empire. If you expect lines of people standing shooting each other, it doesn't quite work like that. It straddles a juxtaposition between the non-gunpowder Total War games (Rome/Shogun2/Med) and the gunpowder titles (Empire/Nap). You can choose to play either way. But playing "traditional" units is harder. Depending on the ideology you choose, you get perks. You can either keep to old values or modernize. It's interesting, at the moment on my first play-through I am trying to mostly use "tradtional" units. With bow, you have longer distance than gun. With superior Katana units if you can flank them, you can wipe out entire bands of gun units fairly easily. The direct input works well, I thought it would be gimmicky and something I don't touch but it's really alot of fun, I love it.

If you like strategy games, action games or in general, pc games. I don't see why you wouldn't want to pick this up. I'll take this over some shitty console port any day of the week.

Pretty much this. The direct control is akin to direct fire in Men of War.

there's no amount of money I wouldnt pay for more TW

@whyareyoucrouchingspock: Alright, you've sold me on this.

I do enjoy what some of the game has done for what i didn't like in just the regular shogun 2, and rots, the Realm Divide that happens lets you either side with the Imperial or Shogunate influence so you don't end up having long term allies turning on you for no good reason, but there is the option of going it alone and forming your own Governmental influence and fighting everyone if you really want to. Also ships and what they did with the naval stuff is great, in shogun 2 i never used navy's, with he naval bombardments you can do on city's and as support in your infantry battle on land is a really great way to make me use navy's, and altho they can be a little bit OP(and properly due for a bit of a nerf) and something i never used to use in shogun 2 but do now is artillery, its more accessible to set up and start using to mix in with your army's to be effective.

They added a some more castle types and maps to make it a little more interesting as well, and how they handle the happyness management with the buildings ive kind of grown into a little more than i did with shogun 2.

Something thats awsome, as you start to modernize and phase out tradtional traits the music changes in tone and your cities start too look more industrial.

I never understood the mechanics of rise of samurai, I rather play that and the core game first, before even touching fall of the samurai.
Unless my social sircle says otherwise.
They also just out out a Huge patch.

Blood effects is just pure Japanese love.

I think alot of you probably over-look it. But the multiplayer is awsome. You have a mash up of ROTS units, Shogun 2 and now FOTS.

Some areas are abit unbalanced but managing to take out a gunpowder army with Shogun 2 tradtional units is immensely gratifying. The RPG like ;progression system of unlocking skill tree's and vet units is a great carrot dangler. The battles themselfs are obviously much better because it's humans rather than AI. Although like most games you get the jerk now and again throwing baby hissy fits.

Turns out Shogun 2 doesn't work on Windows 8 after the FotS patch, so I guess I'll hold out...

I have both Shogun 2 and Fall of the Samurai. I didn't get into Shogun 2 at all, because it was just too focused on melee. I fully understand that this is what a lot of people love about the Total War games, and that's fine, if you're into that, then awesome :) I could never get into it. Then I bought Empire Total War on a steam sale and LOVED it. I know total war purists hate that game, that's fine as well, but if you're one of the guys who enjoyed Empire, you'll likely find a lot to like about Fall of the Samurai. I'm about 25 hours in at the moment, and I'm absolutely hooked. I really like line battles and that kind of strategy, and this game is all about that. It's even more modern than Empire TW was, and that's great. Well worth the 30 bucks I paid as well. It's a completely different game than Shogun 2, and if this came before shogun 2 it would easily sell for $50.

So what I'm saying, if you like Empire more than the other games (or Napoleon which they say is pretty close to how Empire works, never tried it) then it's easy to recommend Fall of the Samurai. Only thing I miss from Empire is a "story-mode" kind of thing. Had a lot of fun with the story, or rather historical narrative, of Empire. Learned a lot of stuff about that war. Nothing like that in this game, sadly. Still, core gameplay is super solid and very fun.

I bought all games, dlc, and expansions in the totalwar universe but can't play fall of the samurai because it is said not able to run on windows 8!developer build but before this expansion the base game and rise of the samurai worked. I look forward to playing it. When windows 8 is supported and until then I have a few distraction to keep me occupied and a few more in the near future.

I think it is fantastic, especially for $30

This is a great game, and on hard difficulty it presents a consistent challenge all the way through. As with the basic Shogun 2 package, however, the differences between factions are too minor to make it as replayable as RTW or M2TW. People are exaggerating the choice between modern and traditional armies - there's absolutely nothing to stop you from making a huge line of modern infantry and backing them up with samurai except for the unit limit, and personally I favor this approach. This is because traditional units have no tech requirements. Still, I can see sinking a hundred hours into it on the outside.

From the responses I'm really looking forward to picking it up.
Sometime in the future, when there is a Steam sale.

Imagine WW1 in a similar engine - drool -. BAYONETS CHARGE!

@Veektarius said:

This is a great game, and on hard difficulty it presents a consistent challenge all the way through. As with the basic Shogun 2 package, however, the differences between factions are too minor to make it as replayable as RTW or M2TW.

The main diffrences come from multiplayer. When you take into account you have Shogun 2 + ROTS + FOTS together, It has pretty huge variation. Guns VS tradtional in multiplayer is far more interesting than SP. The problem with the single player, AI will never, ever match up to a human player. The game makes up for this by giving AI units bonuses in harder difficulty with more aggresive turn based gameplay. In real time though, the AI remains the same. Tactics are very simple for SP with the diffrences in units meaning alot less (this is the case for every TW). This simple tactic of shoving some gun units with melee behind them wont work in MP as it does with the AI.

Tradtional units do have tech requirements in the early stages of the tech tree and in progession of Dojo. It still very limited compared to Shogun 2 though. Also if you progress more in the tech tree with modernization, your tradtional units become weaker. And the ability to contruct higher level tradtional buildings disappears. For low/med/high this is moot. It wont make much diffrence. With player drop on or "legend" difficulty, it does become more important.

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

@Veektarius said:

This is a great game, and on hard difficulty it presents a consistent challenge all the way through. As with the basic Shogun 2 package, however, the differences between factions are too minor to make it as replayable as RTW or M2TW.

The main diffrences come from multiplayer. When you take into account you have Shogun 2 + ROTS + FOTS together, It has pretty huge variation. Guns VS tradtional in multiplayer is far more interesting than SP. The problem with the single player, AI will never, ever match up to a human player. The game makes up for this by giving AI units bonuses in harder difficulty with more aggresive turn based gameplay. In real time though, the AI remains the same. Tactics are very simple for SP with the diffrences in units meaning alot less (this is the case for every TW). This simple tactic of shoving some gun units with melee behind them wont work in MP as it does with the AI.

Tradtional units do have tech requirements in the early stages of the tech tree and in progession of Dojo. It still very limited compared to Shogun 2 though. Also if you progress more in the tech tree with modernization, your tradtional units become weaker. And the ability to contruct higher level tradtional buildings disappears. For low/med/high this is moot. It wont make much diffrence. With player drop on or "legend" difficulty, it does become more important.

Multiplayer just isn't what I come to the Total War franchise for. I tried it and it was somewhat fun, but I just have no interest in playing competitively. And that wasn't an issue in prior installments (before Shogun 2), because even if the SP wasn't particularly hard (I always played on VH VH), I could play around with different tactics for different army compositions.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong about not being able to construct top-level traditional buildings on top modernization. I specifically remember getting a samurai hero at endgame of a full modernity playthrough. They might get weaker - I didn't watch their stats.

@Veektarius said:

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

@Veektarius said:

This is a great game, and on hard difficulty it presents a consistent challenge all the way through. As with the basic Shogun 2 package, however, the differences between factions are too minor to make it as replayable as RTW or M2TW.

The main diffrences come from multiplayer. When you take into account you have Shogun 2 + ROTS + FOTS together, It has pretty huge variation. Guns VS tradtional in multiplayer is far more interesting than SP. The problem with the single player, AI will never, ever match up to a human player. The game makes up for this by giving AI units bonuses in harder difficulty with more aggresive turn based gameplay. In real time though, the AI remains the same. Tactics are very simple for SP with the diffrences in units meaning alot less (this is the case for every TW). This simple tactic of shoving some gun units with melee behind them wont work in MP as it does with the AI.

Tradtional units do have tech requirements in the early stages of the tech tree and in progession of Dojo. It still very limited compared to Shogun 2 though. Also if you progress more in the tech tree with modernization, your tradtional units become weaker. And the ability to contruct higher level tradtional buildings disappears. For low/med/high this is moot. It wont make much diffrence. With player drop on or "legend" difficulty, it does become more important.

Multiplayer just isn't what I come to the Total War franchise for. I tried it and it was somewhat fun, but I just have no interest in playing competitively. And that wasn't an issue in prior installments (before Shogun 2), because even if the SP wasn't particularly hard (I always played on VH VH), I could play around with different tactics for different army compositions.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong about not being able to construct top-level traditional buildings on top modernization. I specifically remember getting a samurai hero at endgame of a full modernity playthrough. They might get weaker - I didn't watch their stats.

I'm pretty sure If you pre-built a building, you can still use it. However once you go more modern, you can no longer build anymore of the heigher tier dojo's.

I would heighly recommend Shogun 2's MP. While games prior it's kind of been tacked on, here, it's practically a whole diffrent game in-itself.

@Sackmanjones said:

@whyareyoucrouchingspock@Veektarius Just curious, is there anything you get if you have shogun 2? Or does it really not connect at all?

I'm not sure what you mean. In single player Shogun 2/ROTS/FOTS are totally diffrent games. The only thing that carries over is the blood pack DLC.

Multiplayer, you can play with all game versions together in the same match. FOTS has a seperate avatar. Your Shogun 2 avatar uses both Shogun 2 + Shogun 2 unit DLC + ROTS units

Generally, Shogun 2 units have superior melee and armour with FOTS units having (unsurpringly) superior missle. It's more difficult but Shogun 2 units can defeat FOTS units.

@Sackmanjones said:

@whyareyoucrouchingspock No I'm mainly asking if it matters if you have shogun 2. I know it's stand alone but is there any "bonus" you get to have shogun along with this.

No, FOTS is basically a full stand alone game. You can play with Shogun 2 and FOTS people in multiplayer (at the same time).

The only direct content connection is if you prevously bought the blood pack DLC which can be used across all games. Which is basically an asthetic effect.

@Sackmanjones: No.

I have to say i normally don't bother with the historical battles but FotS has a really enjoyable set of battles. Special maps were created and they look beautiful. I recommend you give them a go.

@JCHenderson said:

I have to say i normally don't bother with the historical battles but FotS has a really enjoyable set of battles. Special maps were created and they look beautiful. I recommend you give them a go.

I think Napoleon still has the best historical battles. Although I liked the missing with the Ikko pack involving escaping a burning castle. It starts automatically killing troops as it spreads.

The thing I like about Napoleon is that Napoleon himself gives commentry real time rather than the advisor. The final battle of the games "waterloo", you can win or loose and still get a ending movie. You can also play as the British or the French side.