Great Conqueror 2: Shogun

Has a lot of strategy, teaches you some history, and lots of depth. I like the Tenkabito mode. The campaign is challenging at some parts but fun. However, I don’t like the fact there’s Three Kingdoms generals in a game about Sengoku Japan (wrong location and time period). I also don’t like how most generals you have to obtain through luck-based mechanics instead of my preferred system of using in-game currency to strategically pick them. Those are my only real complaints, and it’s still a great game despite a few glaring issues.

I like how they implemented some nice diplomacy mechanics, and also made the generals feel more powerful and can change the tide in a war though i feel like its very easy to get most of the generals and there really isnt much of a grind just waiting for daily rewards and tenkabito

Since the main features and gameplay has been covered by other reviewers, I’ll focus on a few specific aspects that are appreciated , and some rather annoying problems. Good: the conquest modes and campaigns are extensive, mostly historically accurate, and have been added to since launch to over 2x the content at relaxes, and may balance adjustments. So it’s updated with some regularity. The only issue is that most of all of the new units and faction specific content (specifically the 3 kingdoms and Korean Peninsula units, all added after launch) can only be used if purchased via in game currency, and is otherwise gated to use in the campaigns for those factions. So if you don’t pay real money for the currency , it would take dozens of hours of grinding to unlock even half of the new content. Not cool. Now to the most annoying issue I have with the game in its current state. When doing the tenkabito mode, after playing and taking over almost all cities of the mainland of Japan, random cities would be “invaded” by enemy factions and it forces a battle to regain control. But due to an apparent assumption by the game that I somehow have all maxed out unit levels, 6 star generals with max stats and unique gear sets also maxed (in reality I have maybe 40% of that) these battles are very close to impossible due to the enemy being insanely OP, able to one shot any normal unit and often even kill my best generals in one hit, while tanking dozens of attacks from my entire roster of my highest level units with generals attached. It does this by having generic AI generals with stats that are unattainable by players even if maxed out all parameters. This may be beneficial if a player did max out everything and wasn’t frelimg challenged , but in practice it means I am losing cities permanently. And if playing other game modes, the time spent in game leads to even more cities being “captured” by the enemy invasion in the tenkabito mode, which is aggravating and game breaking since it means I can’t level up my generals or units to eventually beat the OP enemy that keeps spreading across my map. It’s a feedback loop and unless it is fixed or adjusted, I will have to quit playing entirely. If only doing conquest/campaign the game works and is decently balanced, it’s just the tenkabito mode that is broken due to this horrible invasion system which only appeared years after launch. Still fun game.