<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n1545: This is Sengoku Jidai, the Age of the Country at War. For 200 years, the Ashikaga Shoguns have ruled from Kyoto. Great power and splendor were theirs. But now, the over-mighty clans no longer obey. The time has come for a new warlord to become… Shogun!<\/i><\/p>\n
When I look back at my growth as a gaming fan, I would be remiss to ignore the impact that strategy games have had on me. Before I played shooters, and before I played RPGs, there was Command and Conquer. I’d been introduced to the genre during a visit to my cousins’ many years ago, and my brother and I were both instantly hooked. When I lived in Western New York some eight or nine years ago, we convinced some of our neighborhood friends to get Red Alert 2, and we would play online multiplayer matches against each other all the time. Now that I think about it, that was probably the game that got me into online gaming.<\/p>\n
But as much as I loved the old C&C games, and despite the countless hours of “one more turns” in Civilization, there’s one game series in particular that \u00e2\u20ac" ever since I discovered it several years ago \u00e2\u20ac" has stood above the others purely by virtue of its uniqueness. The Total War series demonstrates a meticulous attention to detail, and an enduring dedication to historical accuracy in presentation. They may not get everything right, and the series has always had to make some concessions from its accuracy in order to preserve gameplay, but the sheer volume of what Creative Assembly does<\/i> manage to get right is astounding at times, especially considering the current climate of tightly focused, “cinematic” games that has weeded its way into the market. And its in that capacity that I am quite comfortable with calling the Total War games “simulations.” I mean, really, where else can you find such detailed reproductions of line-based warfare and tactics on a AAA budget?<\/p>\n
According to Steam, I’ve sunk 222.2 hours (no really, that’s what it says at the time of this writing) into the latest release in the series, Total War: Shogun 2 (or Shogun 2: Total War if you have the series’ old naming scheme burnt into you mind as I do). And after throwing so many hours into it, I’ve worked up quite the urge to write about it \u00e2\u20ac" which brings us to this Let’s Play. Now this is a little new to me; I’ve read a lot of Let’s Plays, and I’ve edited a video Let’s Play<\/a> non-stop for a year and a half, but I’ve never actually attempted to write my own. <\/p>\n Now, I’m not going to attempt to conjure up some sort of original fiction for this series \u00e2\u20ac" Shamus and Rutskarn are both much better at that sort of thing than I am \u00e2\u20ac" but I have something else I’d like to focus on. All of the Total War games are rife with historical context, owing to their creators’ attention to detail and accuracy. And while I wouldn’t quite characterize myself as a “history geek,” I love reading about it, especially when its on a topic I got very little exposure to at school (e.g., anything that’s not American History (argh) or beginning-of-civilization-era world history).<\/p>\n Without further ado then, let’s talk about the historical context surrounding Total War: Shogun 2, shall we? What is the Sengoku Jidai? Why are all of these people fighting? What does it all mean? And more importantly, what’s up with those crazy hairdos?<\/p>\n The Sengoku Jidai (roughly meaning “Warring States Period”) was a time of great historical and cultural significance to Japan, stretching from its beginnings in the Onin war of 1467 \u00e2\u20ac" 1477 to the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603. While Japan had long been a feudal society with many great clans vying for power, the Sengoku Jidai was predicated by the significant weakening in the central authority of the Ashikaga Shogunate, to a degree that had never been seen before. Disputes between clans regularly erupted into violent, open conflict, and for 150 years, the nation existed in a state of barely-contained anarchy. Countless small wars were waged between clans over all manner of disputes, and peasant uprisings were common.<\/p>\n It is on to this chaotic canvas that Shogun 2 is painted. The game’s campaign starts in the year 1545, some 70 years after the end of the Onin war and the start of the Sengoku Jidai. This date is fitting for several reasons: two years prior, in 1543, a Portuguese merchant ship was wrecked on a small, southern Japanese island called Tanegashima; the first Europeans ever to make contact with Japan. With them they brought firearms \u00e2\u20ac" arquebuses \u00e2\u20ac" a weapon that would revolutionize Japanese warfare for the remainder of the period. In that same year, Matsudaira Takechiyo, the man who would eventually become Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder and first Shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, was born.<\/p>\n (Just a side note here, sources seem to conflict on whether the Portuguese landed on Tanegashima in 1542 or 43; Nobody seems to be sure of the exact date, so take it with a grain of salt.)<\/p>\n While it is tempting to play a campaign as the Tokugawa clan, since they ultimately ended up on top, that would almost certainly never have happened had members of the clan not allied themselves with another historically significant clan \u00e2\u20ac" the Oda. It was only after Oda Nobunaga – and his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi – had nearly united the entirety of Japan that Ieyasu was able to step onto the center stage and forge the Tokugawa Shogunate. But in 1545, the Oda and Tokugawa clans were far from that pinnacle of power.<\/p>\n
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