GOTY 2011 Strategy Winner – Total War: Shogun 2

Strategy games rarely get the love they should these days, mainly because of their confinement to the PC ghetto when the big blockbusters always also have a presence on the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo Wii.

But Total War: Shogun 2, developed by The Creative Assembly and published by SEGA, is one of those strategy games that embodies the best that the genre has to offer and also branches out into other gaming spaces in meaningful ways.

The structure of the game is the same since the beginning of the series and combines two very different layers to create a pretty complete picture of how strategy and tactics combine in the art of warfare.

The strategy layer is turn based and allows the player to develop cities, move armies around, execute espionage missions and engage in diplomacy, while the tactical one is real time and features clashes between armies, made up of very Japanese medieval units like the samurai, ashigaru, limited cavalry and some rather powerful heroes.

Total War: Shogun 2 also offers more options to develop the generals, with both a skill tree and retainers influencing their role in the clan and there are more ways to cripple the enemy and bolster your own forces via use of agents.

The mechanics also work very well and the player is only bored when his own clan becomes too powerful and most battles became one sided victories and even the Artificial Intelligence, traditionally a soft spot for the Total War series, has been serviceable, especially after a few patches were out.

Total War: Shogun 2 also has a great presentation, which manages to remain minimalist while at the same time oozing Japanese themes from all pores.

And if this is not enough The Creative Assembly managed to also include a solid multiplayer mode, with perks for well performing players and a clan based territory domination game mode.

There’s no way to take an experience like this to home consoles so play Total War: Shogun 2 to see what a very good strategy game looks like on the good old PC.