Total War: Shogun 2 – Fall of the Samurai

Overall, Fall of the Samurai is an exceptional stand-alone expansion that adds some welcome improvements while retaining everything that made the original game great. In fact, the only major drawback to Fall of the Samurai over Shogun 2 is that the load times are quite long. Fans of the series who want to play with ironclads, railroads, and Gatling guns shouldn't hesitate to pick it up. If, however, you haven't enjoyed the modern thrust of the series from Empire onward, then you should pass on this one.

If you're a graduate of the School of Shogun 2, Fall of the Samurai will be a toybox containing countless new ways to play, along with an intriguing overarching plot. If you're a newcomer to Total War, Fall of the Samurai's status as an expansion doesn't keep it from being a great place to start. No matter who you are, if you like turn-based and real-time strategy, Fall of the Samurai ought to be at the top of your must-buy games list.

Yes, Fall of the Samurai is an expansion, but like any good expansion – even standalone expansion – it doesn't just add things to the original, it changes them. You'll get an experience much more like a Civil War-era wargame with Fall of the Samurai, as opposed to a medieval wargame with the original Shogun 2, and that, in itself, is worth the cost of admission, let alone all the new units, locations, abilities, factions, and bells/whistles.

Fall of the Samurai, like the original Shogun 2, is good enough that I heartily recommend it to everyone who owns a PC regardless of their experience with or opinion of the grand strategy genre. If you’re coming into the series for the first time there is a lot to learn, but you’ll be amply rewarded with hundreds of hours of top-notch entertainment should you make the investment.?

This is a great expansion. Shogun 2 was about taking a clan and carving out a niche in history in a time of tumultuous change. Fall of the Samurai is about being part of a larger conflict. It takes the strong narrative drive of Total War DLC such as Empire's Warpath and Napoleon's Peninsular Campaign and applies them on a much bigger stage while simultaneously taking Shogun 2's warfare to a new age with a series of smart, satisfying technological advances.

The same problems that plagued Shogun 2 are present here, too, with insufferable load times, wonky pathfinding and an ever so slightly idiotic AI on the campaign map. This is all a roundabout way of saying that if you were happy to put up with those issues in Shogun 2, there's no reason that they should annoy you here. Shogun 2 was a massive, beautiful game, and Fall of the Samurai is that same massive, beautiful game, except now it's got guns and trains, and a much stronger theme that plays into the mechanics.