A surprisingly unenjoyable strategy game
And I suppose that's where I should start with my review: the load times. They are not insignificant. And while I freely admit that I have become somewhat spoiled by various console games (Uncharted, for example, which has almost no loading), the load times are simply too long. I've got a decent enough rig to play the game on ultra but it still takes 2-3 minutes to load EVERY BATTLE. You also have to load out of battles, though this is shorter. The end result is that I would opt for auto battle almost always, simply because I didn't want to sit there and stare at a loading screen 20-25% of my playing time. I simply hold my time too dearly and can't countenance so much time spent staring at a rather boring load screen. I'd rather write this review, which is exactly what I did.
This annoyance with battle load times is further compounded by the fact that all the battles play out very very similarly. While archers, infantry, and cavalry fill different roles, the infantry types all feel really similar, the archer types all feel similar, and the cavalry aren't as powerful as I'd expect. I even had a group of archers defeat (in hand to hand) a group of light cavalry which made me go... what? And is there really that much difference between yari samurai and katana samurai? Not much more than a few stat bars slightly shifted. The strategic aspects really seem dumbed down. Ended up where every fight would be something like so: archers pepper each other, infantry rush each other, calvary flanks and kills the enemy once they break. Hit 4x speed and read a book.
What it really comes down to is that there has been almost no innovation in the Total War series since some of the earliest incarnations. I haven't played since Total War Rome, which came out some years ago, and this felt exactly the same! The movement/UI of armies in battle still felt really sluggish. Especially navy battles: the maneuvering is really quite poor. The development of provinces is, in fact, rather linear. The generals/wives/traits are all a nice touch, but they're ultimately just shallow ornamentation, minor tweaks like +5% movement speed and +1 morale. They're not enough to where using general A as opposed to general B is going to turn the tide of the battle.
In the end, it all just becomes rote and routine. Take yet another province and another province and another province - and I'm afraid that brand of gameplay just isn't my cup of tea anymore.
Don't get me wrong - this game has fine production values. It's pretty, it's got a great sense of style, and it seems to have all the elements necessary for a good strategy game. It's just that no risks were taken in its creation, and, as a result, it feels quite tame. In other words, the same ol', same ol'.
So while I might well recommend this to a gamer who hasn't had a chance to try out Total War or to die-hard strategy fans, I would advise more experienced gamers to steer clear. It grows old. Quickly.