Recent reviews by Jiang Ziya

It's like Assassin's Creed but with better storyline and unique nemesis system (actually the main selling feature for this game). Overall, great game!

I have Total War: ROME II & Total War: ATTILA. Those games I mention have excellent graphics but shallow gameplay, dumbed down and streamlined features. I tried to love those 2 games, even my hours playing is on 100 hours for each.
I have played Total War since the original Medieval back in 2002 (14 years ago) and those 2 above are really boring and I regret purchased them.

Then..

I bought Total War: SHOGUN 2. Just 6 hours and can say that this is the best Total War title Warscape engine-based to date. Much much better then even Total War: ATTILA. Very deep, challenging and have family tree as well.

Simply, this game stand in the same elegance as ROME: Total War & Medieval & Medieval 2: Total War.

Bought it on Steam Summer Sale 2016, played for 13 minutes. It is really very mediocre game, very budget game yet maybe one of the most effort-made to date by City Interactive. The graphics maybe good (although in my case, it is ugly because of my old rig), the gameplay is like old Medal of Honor pre-modern era. The sound is also mediocre. I bought this game solely because it was 90% off (the highest discount for this game yet) and want to check whether this game is really that bad or not. If you have good rig and have a love for WWII stuff, it might be a decent title but ONLY purchase this game on sale and not full price.

Why I recommend it, because it is good for a developer nowadays makes a WWII game again after the market being flooded by futuristic theme one.

An average game, it's clearly designed for console player which are casual. That's very apparent from the difficulty, streamlined skill tree, and very repetitive level design. The core of the game just require you to move from place A to B which in order to do so you have to kill all the enemies in each place.

Pros :
- Detailed and decent graphics (but poor texture and Aliasing is apparent)
- Initially addictive hack and slash
- Serviceable story
- Loot and cool items
- The presentation is faithful to Tolkien world

Cons :
- Very repetitive
- Will become boring as the chapter goes
- Abandoned by developer
- Stuttering so badly
- Clearly aimed for casuals that requires no thinking at all

Buy this only if you are LOTR and Middle Earth hardcore fans or doesn't have capable rig to play Middle Earth : Shadow of Mordor and if it is on SALE.

The greatest wasting time simulator the world has ever seen.

Brilliant and full of content. The graphics might be dated but they are still serviceable, the storyline is what makes you keep playing this game. Worthy of the Fallout franchise and one of the best game by Obsidian Entertainment. It's cheap especially at sale, only at 2.49 caps.

Much more complex, historically accurate and cheaper than Total War, yet have more polish than any other Total War titles out there.

This game is a much better grand strategy game than Total War but with no battle simulation.

For all of you Total War fans that thinking whether to buy this or not, let me tell you one thing : the absence of real-time battle is a temporary loss, the depth, management and gameplay itself will compensate for it. Once you play this, you'll never coming back to arcadey Total War.

Update : Their recent price hike and their greedy policy is really disgusting, as good as the game is, I can't recommend their DLC at full price, only worth it at deep sale.

I know the first question you have in mind while reading this review is what's the main difference and distinct feature between this game and Total War?
This game is much more a simulation than Total War series ever be. It has a lot of details to the battlefield that even one slight mistake can invite defeat for your side. Hardcore, very hard are 2 words that most suitable to represent this game.

It is however ridden with low performance issues and the support for this game is no longer active. I will still recommend this game but only if you can live with it's issues.

Along with the false representation of what Soviet Red Army did in Eastern Front, I will sum up the majority of this game :

Pros :
+ "bears" Company of Heroes name

Cons :
- the graphics are poor for 2013 standard yet..
- the performance is abysmal
- the publisher chooses to make this software as a cash cow rather than quality game
- it is a typo perhaps, this game should be named as Company of DLC 2
- the campaign story is a joke
- the voice actor is like cheap 90's war movie
- Dumbed down version and arcadey compared with the first COH
- No performance patch whatsoever even at 2016, 3 years after the game released !

Conclusion : Don't buy this game, instead play or if you haven't have COH1, buy it ! COH1 is a true masterpiece and one of the greatest RTS in history. But, COH 2 ? utter garbage.

Every games that SEGA publishes is always an unoptimised, dumbed down games plagued with DLCs like Aliens: CM; Total War series; and now this. I really not recommend all of you to purchase this at full price, this applies for every SEGA published games. You'll thank me later for this advice.

Are you fu***** kidding me SEGA ?
This is just ROME II with Family Tree, the rest are just different skins and models.
Eh I forgot,

WITH THE VERY SAME DLC BOMBARDMENT !!!

The performance is even worse than ROME II, hell why don't you just support and fix ROME II instead making a basically same game but with Family Tree as the only addition ?
Unit Collision only improved slightly, the kill animation is now less than ROME II but still the battle pitched one on one animation between soldiers, that alone ruins the dynamism of the battle.

MONEY

You want to cash out more money from us that want Family Tree !

It's a shame the practical business you do SEGA.

Just, just don't buy this game, If you have ROME II, you will get similar experience but with worse performance.

Update : Even at this late, there is no more patch or fix. The performance is very atrocious, way more so than ROME II. CA really abandons this game. Lesson learned painfully, I will never again give my money to all of CA / SEGA product. The truly great Total War titles are from 2000 until 2007, after that it goes downhill and just a cash cow of the franchise.

Mark my word : They simply don't care if their games are optimised or not as long as they get your money and this policy will continue to their future product as well.