Total War Battles: Shogun Review

Total War Battles: Shogun is the first release by  intended for the mobile gaming market. The game is also available on Steam, but is specifically designed so that you can carry round your epic historic-style battles with you wherever you go. Almost working as a simplified version of the original Total War series, this game is perfect for beginners and an easy new way of playing which can be quickly grasped by fans of the series. This is a solid attempt at making the strategy game which has brought you some of the largest and most tactical battle sagas ever made into something that you can do wherever you are quickly and easily, and these are some of the reasons why. In order to play Total War Battles you must re-learn everything you know about total war; you cannot expect to jump in to something as big and messy as you are used to because of the purpose this game has been designed for. The armies are smaller, the battles are simpler, but the premise is much the same. You must use, to the best of your ability, your armies to defeat the opposing forces. The game takes a bit of an Age of Empires style twist in that you must build particular structures in order to train new troops to send into action on the battlefield. These troops however are still created in units as in the traditional games, but they are now much smaller and with more specific skills. One troop style now has a more specialised purpose on the field of play, be it opposing mounted combatants, attacking at a distance or simply tanking the opponent to push them back. All of the classes can attack any other classes, but the difference made by using different specialised troop types is much clearer now. The battlefields in game are also clearly smaller than the traditional ones because this is a mobile-based game, and the battles work on a board game style plane. This is to say that you move your units one space at a time towards your enemy until you are in range to attack them, rather than the more analogue approach of the older Total War games which allowed for technical manoeuvres such as flanking. All in all however for a game built for the mobile platform, the way in which it is played has been changed quite a lot but is still in a style which is comfortable, entertaining and challenging to the player, and does not majorly disappoint. The graphics of the game are nothing spectacular due to the platforms it has been designed for, but as a mobile game it looks very good indeed with details not having been sacrificed for simplicity in any major way. Equally the sound effects in the game are sharp enough as you would expect for a mobile game, and subtitles are used in order to aid any text or storyline that needs to be conveyed to the player. A good standard has been kept up here by the developers, in that they have managed to make the game look and sound good despite it being a completely different idea to what the Total War series has been used to. The storyline has also been upheld rather well, sticking to the general dynasty focus of the Shogun side of the series with opposing “families” battling for control over a vaster empire. There is also a simple tutorial which takes you straight into the story of the game while teaching you how to operate the game in its new form. Players will not be too disappointed with the way the adaptation has gone in this way, even if the new play style is not what they would have hoped for or one that they are comfortable playing. As a whole, Total War Battles: Shogun keeps a good balance between forming a new style of play for the series in order for it to enter the growing mobile market of gaming and maintaining elements of what fans of the more traditional Total War series are used to and will have wanted to see come of it. While not all fans of the series will be impressed by the new way of playing the game given its change in the direction of simplicity, most will likely be happy to be able to continue playing wherever they go and have a new challenge in front of them. With a storyline being maintained where it could have been sacrificed for playability there is a lot of opportunity for interesting gameplay too aside from simple battles to the death, which will be popular among those who play the games for their in depth mechanisms to make you feel as if you are part of the conquest that is placed before you. A mobile game which will no doubt quickly become popular among fans and new players with an interest in the strategy game market, Total War Battles: Shogun is a good effort from the developers of making an old and popular game into a new and interesting idea.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.