Shogun: Total War - Warlord Edition

The Good
Mostly everything. This is my first game of this type: Real-Time Collosal Battle Art of War!

The battle scene is amazing! The first time I looked at it, it was breath taking, games like this could definitely go a long way. You could say it is the modern and much better version of strategies since BroderBund's Art of War.

The historical set of this game is during Oda Nobunaga's reign (if your familiar with Koei games). Each clan has their own advantages, each fief (province) has its own strengths, I could say this is the best political map game ever.

Did I say about the political map? Its terrific, you could actually picture yourself as a general, moving troops around Japan. The troops are something else too, you've got numerous types of troops with their advantages and disadvantages, plus you can discover different types of armor and weapon quality, to make the ultimate supreme soldier! And they have experience too, the more battles they win, the more daring they are in combat (their generals are even crazier!).

There's a lot of new approaches in this game, which I haven't really found in other games. This is definitely a pioneer in its field. The rest, you'd have too find it by yourself. Enjoy!

The Bad
There is something missing in this game: Political strategies, plots and the like, such as you can find in Koei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms III & IV. Mostly this game is about fighting battles and assassinating people, bully yourself around Japan. Not enough "intellectual" approaches. Then again, their probably weren't any in those days...

Oh, the tutorial stunk big-time. Not very user friendly - the buttons and menu's during the battle were kinda rigid. Needs a lotta work.

The historical text of this game is superb, although I just figured out that the PDF document explaining in detail about Japan in those ages could not be accessed from the game. Not much of a hassle, but its kinda nice if you could find out the technical stuff of the game "while" playing the game...

The Bottom Line
This is the future of historical - colossal battles, and strategic warfare.