"While Shogun: Total War was ahead of its time when it released in June 2000, almost 25 years later, there is no reason to play beyond curiosity or nostalgia. "
Singleplayer.
Co-op Multiplayer.
PvP Multiplayer.
In 2018, The Creative Assembly rebranded all of their older titles to use the naming convention they first adopted in 2016 with the release of Total War: Warhammer, which saw Shogun : Total War rebranded as Total War: Medieval.
However, for this review, we will call Shogun: Total War by its original name, despite it no longer being sold under that title except for second-hand physical copies from nearly twenty-five years ago.
As a huge fan of the Total War Franchise and a history buff, I must admit that games like Shogun: Total War do not offer much in the way of engaging entertainment in 2025.
While Shogun: Total War offers glimpses of greater things to come and introduced the core mechanics of the franchise that we know and love today, after playing other titles in the series from the early 2000s such as Rome: Total War and Medival II: Total War, it’s difficult to go back to a time when many of the quality-of-life improvements we have grown accustomed to did not exist, especially when we have grown accustomed to them for over 20 years.
As someone who loves Total War games, with very few exceptions (*cough* Total War: Rome Remastered *cough*), I am sorry that when it comes to Shogun: Total War, nothing stands out to me as having aged well.
While I can appreciate how far ahead of its time in 2000, compared to modern Total War games, everything from the campaign map to battles felt small and ultimately insignificant, which would have been the case in 2000.
Almost everything about Shogun: Total War has aged poorly, from its user interface down.
While I understand Shogun: Total War was designed with different resolutions in mind, when playing in 1080p, I struggled to read many of the smaller interface elements, which was unfortunate due to the low-quality sprites used to designate different unit types.
While I eventually grasped each unit’s role, I must admit that I recruited the wrong units more than once due to the similarity of the low-pixel-count sprites used to represent them on the recruitment menu.
Recruitment issues aside, navigating the campaign map and battles feels unintuitive because Shogun: Total War seems to have been designed around players using arrow keys instead of a mouse; despite offering full mouse support, the locomotion system and camera controls feel like those from a much earlier title, despite Shogun: Total War impressive visuals for the time it was originally released.
Many of the quality-of-life improvements that have been added to newer Total War games are the result of user feedback and occasionally trial and error.
Unfortunately, as the first title in the series, Shogun: Total War does not benefit from these improvements, which is why its combat camera and the troop replenishment mechanic are so abysmal.
While Shogun: Total War performs much better than its sequel (Medieval Total War), fps hovers around 60 during battles, which is abysmal considering how low quality the visuals are, and that the same build I tested Shogun: Total War on can run most modern Total War games at 120fps on ultra/1080p, with some titles capping out at my refresh rate of 144fps.
Shogun: Total War is a 4x strategy video game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Electronic Arts, it was released on 13 June 2000 and retails for $9.99.
Shogun: Total War is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Shogun: Total War is rated PEGI 12+ and contains:
While Shogun: Total War was ahead of its time in 2000, it has not aged as well as some other titles from the same era.
For that reason, I cannot recommend it, despite appreciating that it was the start of a series that means so much to many people today.
Ultimately, Shogun: Total War is better suited for nostalgic gamers and game historians than modern gamers, who would find its simplistic gameplay, dated visuals, and clunky control scheme deeply off-putting.
We found Shogun: Total War to be a mediocre game, meaning that while it has some redeeming qualities, it's held back by noticeable flaws that prevent it from being truly enjoyable.
