Total War SHOGUN 2

Introduction

Total War: SHOGUN 2 is Creative Assembly's turn-based empire-building and real-time battle strategy game, published by SEGA and released on 14 March 2011 at NZ$49.99. Set in feudal Japan during the Sengoku period, it's widely considered the best-received entry in the entire Total War series, holding a Metacritic score of 90. It sits at 92% positive ("Very Positive") across 35,343 English-language Steam reviews. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 2,653 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews.

A single event dominates the negative sample

Unlike most games this outlet has reviewed, where negative reviews spread across years, this review's sample is overwhelmingly concentrated: 65 of the 100 negative reviews read date to 2023, following a specific May 2023 update. "While the issue with the mod manager is now fixed because of the lazy way they fixed it they broke other things in the process and now it is impossible to play custom maps in custom battles," reads one review, 260 hours in. Another is more pointed: "CA really outdid themselves. Truly. Their ability to completely bust their older titles is simply unmatched. Firstly, the move to remove all chat abilities from the game was a masterstroke of genius." A third, more concise: "new update got rid of multiplayer chat it got rid of multiplayer campaign it got rid of the mod manager, nothing works, and all saves are invalid." This review found the same specific list of losses — chat, multiplayer campaigns, the Mod Manager, save compatibility — independently described across 36 of the 100 negative reviews read.

A controversy that, unlike others, stayed unresolved

This review checked whether the situation has since improved and found no evidence that it has. A June 2024 review reports a new, related problem: "They decided to 'update' the game with new DRM and a new 'launcher (forced ads)' in 2023. Since then for some people (me included) the game no longer starts due to the finnicky new DRM... There are no known fixes despite this issue being a year old." An April 2025 review confirms the original complaint persists: "After 12 years, this game gets an update — and it removes features. They decided to remove the in-game chat and somehow broke most mods in the process." An August 2025 review adds that "players were not recompensated." Most recently, a May 2026 review raises a separate, newer concern: "they have recently update the eula to say no ownership and they can remove [access] when they want" — a claim this review reports as stated rather than independently verified. Taken together, this is a meaningfully different shape from several similar publisher-caused controversies this outlet has found genuinely resolved elsewhere: here, the underlying complaint appears to still be live three years on.

Verdict

Total War: SHOGUN 2 remains, by wide consensus including this review's own negative sample, the best-designed entry in its series — reviewers furious about what Creative Assembly did to the game in 2023 still stop to praise the campaign and battles underneath. What sets this review apart from several similar cases elsewhere in this outlet's library is that the underlying trust breach hasn't been resolved: a poorly communicated May 2023 update stripped multiplayer chat, broke modding and invalidated saves, and this review found reports of the same core problems, plus new DRM-related launch failures, continuing through 2025 and into 2026. Worth playing for the single-player campaign, which remains excellent — go in treating multiplayer and mod support as unreliable rather than core features until there's evidence otherwise.