Total War: SHOGUN 2 Complete Edition: the best Total War comes back with fifty extra factions

Ask ten Total War enthusiasts which one is the best. You will get Rome 1 from the veterans, Attila from the masochists, Warhammer from the people who like dragons.

And you will get Shogun 2 from roughly everybody else.

Creative Assembly is bringing it back today, and the list of changes is more serious than the words "complete edition" might lead you to fear.

Unlock scheduled for late afternoon. No score, since the game is not in players' hands yet.

Why Shogun 2 and not another

Because it is the most coherent in the series, and that is a technical compliment more than an aesthetic one.

Sengoku-period Japan is an ideal terrain for this genre: a closed territory, a single military culture, units that make sense against each other, and a crystal-clear victory condition, become shogun. No empire straddling three continents, no exotic factions to balance against one another.

The result: it is the Total War where battles are most legible, and where the campaign tells you something clear.

Today's edition contains the base game and all its expansions, including the two campaigns Rise of the Samurai and Fall of the Samurai.

A word on the second, because it is often forgotten: Fall of the Samurai moves the action to the Boshin War, in the late nineteenth century, when repeating rifles and naval artillery arrive against traditional armour. A lot of people consider it the best thing Creative Assembly has ever produced, and I am not far from agreeing.

What actually changes

I expected a facelift. There is more than that.

Over fifty minor factions become playable. That is the most substantial change, by a distance. Shogun 2 offered a handful of clans, which was coherent but capped replayability once you had done them all. Fifty new starting points are fifty different geographical and diplomatic situations.

The 64-bit upgrade. That sounds dry. It is fundamental. A 32-bit executable caps usable memory, which limited mods, battle size and stability on modern machines. That single point does more for the game's future than any texture.

Built-in mod support via Mod.io. So one-click installation, with no hunting for archives on forums. For a 2011 game whose modding community is one of the series' most active, that is the addition extending its life by a decade.

And full Japanese and Chinese voice acting, with text localisation.

That one deserves a comment. Shogun 2 originally shipped with partial Japanese voice work, and a lot of players felt hearing it in its own language was half the atmosphere. Doing it fully, fifteen years later, is an expensive gesture that earns nothing but respect.

On the comfort side: revised visuals, lighting, shadows and textures, 1440p and 4K UI scaling, and modernised controls.

The multiplayer everybody forgot

The store page reminds you what Shogun 2 offered and few people tried.

Avatar Conquest mode lets you create a persistent general you develop: you win online battles, accumulate experience, unlock better armour, new unit types and permanent upgrades for your troops.

There are also co-op or competitive campaigns, to conquer Japan together or fight over it. And lobbies for up to eight players for custom skirmishes.

A persistent general you promote between online battles is an idea the series never really revisited afterwards, and I have never understood why.

The remaining questions

The price was not displayed as I write. That is question number one for anyone who already owns the game and its expansions, and the upgrade policy will decide the reception. A complete edition sold at full price to people who already bought everything never goes down well.

Campaign AI is not listed among the changes. That is the series' historical complaint, and redoing the textures without touching the diplomacy will change nothing for those it annoyed in 2011.

And the compatibility of existing mods is the unknown. Going 64-bit and plugging in Mod.io is excellent for the future, but fifteen years of community work does not always survive that kind of surgery.

That said, I am not going to spoil my own fun.

There is something fairly rare in this operation: rather than remaking an old game and betraying it, a publisher opened the bonnet of its series' best entry, brought it up to current standards, plugged in the community's tools, and added fifty ways to start again.

That is the right way to treat a classic. We will come back with a score once players have verified that it runs.

Your favourite clan in Shogun 2? The debate is open and it is going to be violent on the InsertCoins Discord.