Shogun 2 remaster hits “overwhelmingly negative” reviews on Steam over AI and performance

Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition is being heavily criticized by players on Steam, with reviews calling the remaster “disappointing”.

Back in September, Creative Assembly and Sega announced that Total War: Shogun 2 would be getting a remaster. The original is one of the most highly praised Total War games of all time, so fans of the samurai strategy epic were excited to delve back into the new and improved version.

While the Complete Edition includes all DLC, new playable minor factions, adds Japanese/Chinese audio, and introduces a bunch of QoF features, fans have called out the devs over what they are calling a “poor” quality version of the original.

As of writing, Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition has an ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ Steam rating with 1,938 reviews. For comparison’s sake, the original sat at ‘Very Positive’ with over 22,000 reviews before it was subsequently removed from Steam in favor of the new remaster.

While fans who previously owned the original can still play it, those who have purchased the Complete Edition have slammed the devs over the “poor” state of the new version.

“The textures are ripped straight from 3k, and the gameplay is exactly the same as before. Why even bother? Nothing was fixed, there are so many bugs, and they didn’t even bother updating the AI for a game that’s decades old. Refund and move on,” wrote one commenter.

Others have also accused the devs of using “undisclosed AI,” pointing towards visual oddities in units and new card art. “CA used AI to make the new unit cards. They look awful, and characters have missing fingers,” responded another player.

“Horrific graphical bug makes the vegetation in battle map terrible to look at. There’s no way to disable the vegetation. The campaign map is super oversaturated and hard to look at as well. New pathfinding bugs. This game sucks. Don’t buy it. If you don’t have Shogun 2, just don’t get it.”