Total War: Shogun 2 Hands-On

The year is 1545, and you are the leader of one of Japan's clans, ready to begin a fight to unify the feudal island under your banner. The Creative Assembly is returning to the land of the rising sun for the first time since the franchise launched there 10 years ago, and how things have changed.

In our brief hands-on, it was immediately apparent in both single- and multiplayer how the team behind the game has moved on from recent innovations introduced in Napoleon: Total War and weaved them into the fabric of a smaller, tighter, and more immersive game. From the multiplayer options we saw that give you a persistent avatar in the form of your online general, to the upgrade paths available for veteran units and the new online clan campaign dynamics, it seems that as much thought has gone into the metagames that pull you into Shogun 2's world as the gameplay itself.

Thankfully, as we saw in our brief hands-on with some of the single-player campaign, this hasn't been to the detriment of the gameplay. Quite the opposite, in fact. Defending our castle in some siege gameplay showed off some of the game's new features quite clearly. For example, you can easily see the state of your defensive units based on the state of their virtual banners, because they get progressively more tattered as your units get depleted. Mouse over the banner, and you immediately get information over to the side of the screen on the state of that unit, complete with morale, losses, and how it's progressing in its current skirmish. See the units nearly destroyed and eventually flashing white, and you know that almost all hope is loss and your troops are in the process of turning tail and fleeing.

However, it's in the multiplayer that the changes to the game seem to have received their most radical overhaul. Shogun 2 will feature full cooperative play throughout the campaign, and unit-sharing will let you give particular units to your co-op partner to micromanage, which is something of a key innovation. However, it's the changes to competitive multiplayer that were the focus of our recent briefing from CA, and it's those changes that are most likely to intrigue and concern veteran Total War players.

Key buildings are probably the single most controversial feature to be introduced. These are key points placed on a map with the idea being that they will have the potential to negate terrain-related advantages that can turn online games into rather one-sided affairs once players know the maps in question. The idea behind them is that a player camped on a hill would have his advantage negated by a player who managed to capture such a building, as the buildings would confer advantages on the holder's troops, such as increased armor, damage, and the like, making an assault on a heavily fortified position significantly easier. While we didn't get to see these key buildings in action, the theory behind them seems sound; stalemates are all too common in much of Total War's multiplayer, but we'll have to wait and see how these pan out.

Some less controversial changes are the attempts to replicate Total War's single-player success into the multiplayer arena. This includes taking some elements of the single-player experience and introducing them to multiplayer and tying single-player success into the online game. In Shogun 2, the hub of online multiplayer will be a map very similar to that seen in single-player; every area of Japan where battles can be fought online and on the seas will be shown on the map, and winning in each zone will enhance your abilities on the battlefield.

Taking control of some zones will reward you with unit upgrades, while others will reward you with retainers, which act to modify your army's abilities. There will be 70 of these in total, with a maximum of five being in play at any one time once you reach the top experience level. These will range from simple things such as reducing fatigue for your troops, to subtler effects such as the ability to see what your opponent is doing in the setup stage before battles begin. You will be able to obtain some of these in single-player too, as many of the game's Steam achievements will reward retainers, so it should be relatively easy to pick up the ones you particularly want to suit your style of play.

In a similar vein is the upgrade path for your general. Winning battles will reward you with experience points that you can use to then move down a skill tree for your glorious leader--this will further allow you to strengthen your army to suit your playing style. This may involve making your general more inspiring to strengthen the resolve of your entire army or beefing up your personal bodyguard to allow you to tear through carelessly positioned enemy units yourself.

Customising your armies to suit your style of play isn't possible just through retainers and your general. Fight with certain units for long enough, and they'll be upgraded to veteran status, which will unlock an upgrade path for them. Once they're in this state, you will be able to soup up their abilities as well as customise the way they look. The top-level upgrades for veteran units will require clan tokens, another new feature CA is introducing to spice up online multiplayer.

Clans will be easy-to-join groupings for multiplayer, based around Steam groups. Any Steam group can be a clan in-game and will be pitted in each two-week season against nine other clans in a mini-league. Each victory in multiplayer for a member of your clan will count towards your clan's control of the map region in which your battle was fought, with the clan that holds the most territory at the end of the season winning and moving up to a higher league. At the lower levels, most of this inter-clan competition will be through sheer force of numbers; you won't lose points if you lose battles, and there are no concrete plans for limiting the number of members. The idea, CA says, is to make getting into a clan as easy as possible so that anyone who wants to take part in this level of multiplayer can do so.

Finally, there will be built-in rankings for individuals for all the competitive multiplayer match types--one versus one, two versus two, three versus three, and four versus four--as well as an overall ranking that will be open only to those players who have won on every single multiplayer map and gained control of Japan. The leader of the Shogun ladder will earn the right to use the in-game title Shogun for his avatar and dress said avatar in unique gold armor. This title will operate on a global basis--there will never be more than one Shogun at a time, so this should provide something for the most dedicated of fans to strive for.

Overall, the changes to Shogun 2 look very interesting, and we're going to watch them with interest over the months leading up to launch to see how the theory plays out in practice.