Makes several great improvements, unfortunately marred by its bland content. Understandable, but still sad.
For one, Shogun 2 really shows how far the series has come, in terms of gameplay enhancement as well as technologically. Like its recent predecessors, namely Empire and Napoleon, Shogun 2 is a beautiful game, both in design and visuals. The interface offers many solutions to problems seen in previous games, making the management of an empire much easier now than it ever was. It's hard to see how we played games like Rome or even Medieval 2 without them. Gameplay features like replenishment, army areas-of-control and others are definitely a step forward, not to mention naval combat which until Empire was never really explored. As a result, Shogun 2 can be seen as the culmination of 10 years of paying close attention to the deficits of the older games, giving a streamlined and enjoyable playing environment.
On the other hand, Shogun 2 is also much closer to the first game in the Total War series in a less complimenting fashion: it's bland. One thing that's hard to admit is that the setting, medieval Japan, offers very little interest in terms of force composition, tactics and construction. Where games like Rome, Medieval and even Empire featured many cultures with widely different units and combat capabilities, the difference between Japan's various factions is largely limited to their starting position on the map, with everything else being more or less the same across all factions. Granted, each faction has specific units that are *slightly* better than the standard ones, these can hardly be used to give one army a decisive advantage in more than a handful of situations, and overall it doesn't really matter which faction you're playing. As a result, both campaign and skirmish/multiplayer battles quickly become repetitive. There is very little reason to play this game again and again, much less than even Napoleon (which, despite its small scope, managed to keep each faction interesting in its own right). This really isn't the fault of Creative Assembly, it's a result of the setting itself: warfare in Medieval Japan was codified, standardized in a sense, with few surprises or exceptions.
Overall, what Shogun 2 does best is keep my hopes up for the next game in the series, whichever it will be (Rome 2, anyone?). It shows how this series is just going to keep getting better and more enjoyable over time. It just needs to apply all of its improvements to a more interesting setting.