Game 14 - Total War Battles: Shogun - Week 6 - Feb 20

otal War Battles: Shogun would be a very enjoyable game to play on iOS. But like almost any other iOS port excluding the rare exception like Framed, most just don't make the cut, where any potential depth is gutted by the limited hardware.

The mobile game has a variety of interesting historical units with the caveat that they can only move forward, the strategy comes from preplanning lanes. The rest has as much combat depth as Civ6, line up ranged behind melee and play rock-paper-scissors. Like everything else the art is good for iOS, I commend Creative Assembly for making an excelent mobile game. The ability to buy XP used to unlock buildings and abilities with real money however, is just trash. Another example symptom of microtransactions that festered in the satured free-to-play race to the bottom (aka mobile market) and eventually spread to PC and console games. The ever present black bars are obnoxious and the hub world for the campaign reeks mobile. This is without a doubt a lazy port. 60 minutes in and I'm content to move on, write this post and forget about the game.