Shogun 2 - Day 1

I think that I'm going to take a long break from MC, I've been playing it exclusively since November but with the guys no longer playing online, I needed something new. Not that I'm totally done with MC, my son still begs to play it so I won't be totally done with it. Plus it will be good to let more development take place on it so that I can come back to it all fresh and new.

So what am I going to do, go learn to play my guitar? Heck no (while that's what I should be doing) no I'm going to find myself a new game to play with. My choices really get narrowed down to 3 categories, RPG, online MMO, or Strategy game. Not wanting to dive into an MMO, TOR is still on the maybe list, but if I do play it the last thing I want to do is burn my MMO self out at this point, who knows might get in the beta too. RPG? Wasn't really feeling it, I mean Dragon Age 2 is out, heck I never beat DA 1 so that was an option too. But beating DA 1 would feel odd at this point since it's been a year since I last played it, and why play DA 2 if I never beat the first one. I could have gone with my brother's suggestion and picked up Mass Effect, but I guess I just wasn't up for a drawn out story. No I think that the fact I'm going through an audit that requires a lot of number crunching I was in need of playing with numbers, hence Shogun 2. There might be a side factor from the disaster in Japan that brought this to my attention as well considering that every ones thoughts and prayers are with them right now.

First impression... Uh what do I do? Sure there are tutorials, but screw that I had about 2 hours to play and I know how long tutorials take in a Total War game, so I just figured that I'd learn it on the fly, a little overwhelming to say the least, but I think I figured out the basics. First thing, build the economy and then recruit an army to expand fast, seems to work in most games and they basically told me to attack the province next to me, so BAM off I went. That first province was pretty much a cupcake where my 900 troops ran over their 200 in pretty easy fashion, but it was good in that it gave me an idea of how to move units around and stuff.

I've already learned one very important rule in the game, take out the generals in a rivals territory because they don't disappear once the clan that your fighting is gone, they stick around as resistance. And I had to deal with a massive counter attack that cut down half of my troops. Lesson learned.

The game doesn't really blow me away at this point, but I can see how it could get very deep the longer I play it, so that is a good sign. It kind of reminds me of Romance of the Three Kingdoms because of it's use of generals and heirs, but I guess that's like all Total War games so that's not really saying much. I'll be curious to see how it plays out, right now I'm eager to do some more warring on it, but alas work...