User Reviews (1 - 11 of 115)

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Windows ME

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 31, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Just wanted to point out that even though the description for this game says it works with Win95, 98 and ME, it does not work with ME. At all. It doesnt crash lots or run slow under Millenium, it just does not work at all.

READ THIS BEFORE BUYING

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: January 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Shogun is an EXCELLENT game, BUT IS UNPLAYABLE ON MOST OF THE BRAND NEW SYSTEMS OUT TODAY. Due to terrible EA techinical support, and horrible compatibility issues, Shogun doesn't work on my BRAND NEW 900mhz computer. I know for a fact that most people with an Nvidia graphics card CANNOT play Shogun. Electronic Arts (manufacterer of shogun) neglects the problem and refuses to patch their game to work with Nvidia drivers. The game also does not work on Windows Millenium computers. PLEASE keep this in mind before buying ANY game from Electronic Arts. The company obviously neglects to give their customers honest tech support and neglects to make sure their games even work!

Shame of a game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 37
Date: May 05, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Shogun looks stunning. But it has a user interface from hell. As you are struggling with camera viewpoints and group commands and battle formations the AI is charging you. Obviously the AI has not to struggle as much as you do. The battle tactics of the AI are very good, so you are slashed and diced into sushi before you know it. The soldiers are blurry and all have the same color. The devolpers should have looked at the classic Total Annihilation before they made Total War. One star for the AI and battle ground graphics.

Beautiful game. Unfortunately it doesn't work.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: March 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you luck out and have a system that runs Shogun without any problems, it is one of the most beautiful wargames ever made. The graphics are amazing, showing you armies of thousands of soldiers moving over super-realistic terrain, with real weather that actually effects the game play. You can see lightning in the distance, or watch flights of arrows swerve to one side in a strong gust of wind. The AI seems to be great as well.

Unfortunately, chances are very good that the game won't run for you. It takes up a lot - A WHOLE LOT - of memory, and has major compatibility problems with most graphics cards. And while it can run with software acceleration as well, it isn't anywhere near as nice in this mode. I've worked over every configurable parameter my system has to try and get this work of art to run, and worked together with the game's technical forum to try and solve this issue. No good. In fact, those forums are full of people with the same problems. nVidia cards in particular do not seem to work with this game, even after two patches.

Buyer Beware! STW won't work with Ge Force Drivers!! Read--

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 19, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Nice game, but I've just upgraded my PC to a Ge Force video card, and STW will not run if you have Ge Force drivers! Check ea.com and under technical support this is all thoroughly documented. There doesn't seem to be any patch or fix forthcoming according to what I'm reading there. And that's a shame because it's a fine game. Check Ea.com's website for an official announcement about this problem being fixed before buying.

Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: January 05, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Happily, I didn't buy this game, but had a look when my brother brought it to my house. The highlight that most people talk about (brilliant 3D terrain) just did not happen. I have a pretty new computer (PIII 550Mhz, Windows 98), and even after updating my monitor drivers, the battle sequences just display a pile of rubbish! When you use the 'software' drivers the terrain appears, but the response is SLOW - completely unusable. From a game my brother raved about, I got only disappointment

I returned mine

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 26 / 38
Date: December 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I'm quite surprised to see the high regard with which people hold this game... especially, I'm surprised to read through these reviews and find how many people detail the game's significant shortcomings and then proceed to give it 4 or 5 stars.

Unlike many of the proponents of this game, 1) I haven't been fascinated by feudal Japan since I was 4 years old 2) I never read Shogun (the book) 3) I'm indifferent about the mini-series 4) I do not own a reproduction of an authentic Samuri sword 5) I study no marial arts 6) I belong to no Japanese animation interest group. In other words, I only purchased the game because it looked like it might actually be fun to play.

Evenso, I wanted this game to be a great game. The idea is terrific... strategy as in Risk and combat tactics like Myth combined into one game! But wanting this game to be great doesn't make it so. It was a nice attempt, but it just doesn't deliver.

My primary complaints about the game are in four important areas; 1)steep learning curve, 2)lack of control of the units during combat, 3)poor user interface, and 4)very poor manual.

Steep learning curve - there is a very significant ramp-up needed to get to a skill level high enough to actually succeed in anything. Plan on spending many, many hours of total frustration before you start to get the hang of what works and what doesn't. It would be impossible to overstate this. When you start a new campaign, your goal is to take over all of Japan. The game doesn't care that you are a novice, it will treat you with all the disdain of a conquering army. It will take advantage of the slightest mistake in strategy, it will decimate your armies on the field almost without exception. I'm not saying that you can't stick with it and figure out the nuances, but I drew tired of the game long before I reached that point.

Lack of control during combat - You give the orders to your troops, you start them out in the formations you want, but once the battle begins in earnest, the responsiveness of your troops drops off sharply, to the point where there is little to do but watch. Many of the people that want this game to be good, no matter what, will argue that this represents realism and is a PLUS of the game... but the reality is that this is a very frustrating element to the combat tactics of the game. In fact, the 'combat' segment of the game could rightfully be called the 'pre-combat troop alignment' segment, because once the fighting starts, your involvement is much more that of a spectator.

Poor user interface - other than the lack of control mentioned above, the UI for the combat segment is cumbersome, but OK. However, the UI for the strategy portion is excrutiatingly awkward. Nothing is 'discoverable' which is one of the basic tenants of user interfaces... which leads to the final problem...

Very poor manual - Shogun attempts to be a deep and rich game covering both strategy and tactics... it is in fact, two games in one. Why, oh somebody please tell me why... the game would come with a BOOKLET the size of the one that came with my keyboard? The effect of the poor manual coupled with the poor and undiscoverable user interface is that you will many times sit stupified in front of your monitor wondering out loud, phrases like, "OK... Uh... I have an ambassador now... So... Now what do I do?"

The bottom line here is that if you really want this game to be good and are willing to accept bamboo shoots under your fingernails for a long while, I'm sure this game will eventually pay off for you and you will come back here and give it high marks for its nice look and its richness... Otherwise wait for Shogun II which I hope will be oh so much better.

tech problems

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 13
Date: June 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I have a pentium 2 400mhz with a riva tnt2 vidio card. I cant get the game to work. Neither can my friends who have twice the computer I have. The demo was great, but this game is a heartbreaking letdown.

WARNING: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: March 03, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is not such a bad game, it has some good intentions but the bugs and incompatibility problems make it unplayable for some people, plus there are quite a few good games to buy out there today so dont waste your money on this one. To add some credibility to my statement I'll say that I'm 23 years old and I've played games all my life from board games, pc nes, super nes, nes 64 and playstation and even dominoes. This is not a good one, I returned it the next day and got AOEII, and this one is good (microsoft should stop making os's and office and take game making seriously). I don't value a pc game for its graphics and sound, and specially today, where all new games have great graphics (I would give shogun 4 stars in graphics and 5 in sound), if you dont agree, try playing again final fantasy (1) or quest for glory or pool of radiance or even your old version of tie fighter (one of the best ever made). Well, enough talking for now and lets go to the game review:

1) incompatibility: it will not work for half of the people who bought it, although it did "work" in my computer, a 500 pentium with 8mb accelerator that is very decent machine for a third world country like mine.

2) heavyness: as I said the game loaded in my computer, but unless you have 500mb memory and 100mb accelerator the game will SLOW if you control an army over 400 men (about battle number 10 in "easy" mode), or if you have more than two other programs installed in your computer (this is mostly a windows problem)

3) interface and gameplay: now who said civilization call to power had a clumsy interface? this one is 10 times worse, it is only good if you command 1-3 units (or armies, whatever). I got the "mouse move bug" which means that when you ordered your men to move to a spot they'll actually move 2 or 3 times further, this made all VERY complicated and frustrating. Selecting armies was a little complicated, you only need to click once but then you'll realize that the army you selected is a totally different one, of course, you can always check which banner is "moving", this will take you aprox one minute, and your men will probably be slaughtered when you discover it, since the computer reacts very well. Some people say that the AI is tough, this is only true to defending AI, when you are defending all you have to do is place an army in a hill and the enemy will rush to you and get killed in an arrow rain... If you are attacking a bridge, you'll need an army 10 times bigger to win, unless you dont handle the attack yourself, its just better to let the computer handle it, there's probably a trick to this, but it'll take you a few months to learn, and since the game isn't fun, you'll probably just wont do it. The turn to turn part of the game is pointless, there's very little economy and politics to handle, all you have to do is move your armies from the place they are created to the front you are attacking, the stealth units suck, and as a matter of fact, the whole turn to turn system sucks too. I would like to keep on going but I think I may have convinced you already.

4) graphics and sound and historical setting: very good, the only thing that saves this game from a zero star.

5)replayability: I dont know since I did not finish the game, actually I didn't get to the middle of the game (or quarter).

Well. That is "most" of the bad things I have to say about this one, and the designers need to take their time before launching another fiasco sequel. I advise you not to buy or rent this game, you'll lose money either way, get aoe II if you want a RTS game or just play cac again for that matter (i wouldnt get tiberian sun either). Or if you have them both or have played enough of them just buy a good scotch whiskey bottle and invite a girl home :).

Computer Cheats, with Bad User Interface

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: September 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The good thing abut this game is its impressive graphical controls and scrolling in combat mode.

But this good is overwhelmed by the directly human to computer observed combat decisions on a high level, specifically when the human and computer moves combat groups into contact with each other to initiate attacks. The game attempts (tries) to go beyond a turn based alternate action (which is a plus) so that both parties attack simultaneously, but the result is that the computer waits for the human move, and then ambushes the human attack for its own optimum win. The human does not know anything about the enemy's armies in adjacent provinces, except by building special watchtowers or spies, but the computer knows exactly what the human has (no fog of war) and makes attacks against small garrisons of human defenders with armies of 140% or 150% size to make quick wins. When the human makes a full scale attack from one province to another with a large army. leaving a small garrison behind, the computer jumps past, over, or through the large human army to conquer the denuded provence, something that normally cannot happen without helicopters. And all this is in normal node, I could accept this in impossible mode.

About computer strategic cheating behind their own lines where humans cannot detect it, I have no firm evidence, but when I finally win or finish off my half of the board and meet the last opponent, I am surprised and shocked to see an army of 10 to 20 times my size facing me. Not percentage, Times!! No way. I really think the various computer players are really not fighting each other, but are ganging up on the human, which violates the spirit of the game.

The user interface is cumbersome and difficult to work with. It is hard to keep track of your wealth when you make improvements, or to remember that a province finishing building is idle, without checking, rechecking, and endlessly looking again. When a human attacks an enemy general with a ninja in normal mode (not easy mode) nothing happens (not failure - not success), while the computer sends many ninja attacks.

There are a fair number of new product bugs, but we can ignore them until hopefully the next bug release comes out.

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