Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai is one of the best PC strategy games period and has the smoothest most polished gameplay of any Total War game and was released all functional and good. Rome 2 made everyone hyperbolic shitposting idiots yet admittedly was botched on release. But Rome 2's patches shows CA listens to the internet and will prob approach Attila with more accountability. I'll judge the game when its out not rant about a company's ethics over a buggy overhyped rushed release a couple years ago that they've ended up fixing and I now regularly enjoy.
The problem is that it's one step forward and two steps back. Empire launched as a bug ridden beta, then they squeaked Napoleon by with minimal success. They learned from the mistakes of the Empire release for Shogun 2, but then promptly forgot just about everything for Rome 2, and now they are squeaking by Attila in a very similar way as Napoleon, all the features that should have been in Rome 2, with (maybe) less of the bugs. I just cannot understand how a company that doesn't retain a lesson past the next mildly successful release can maintain such a patient fan base.
Shogun 2 is a decent game if you enjoy extremely fast paced rock paper scissors type arcade strategy, and Fall of the Samurai is a great expansion on that concept, but a company must be judged on it's
entire body of work, not just the one time they managed release something in a mostly finished state. On the whole CA has been on the decline in quality since they released Empire, and one mildly enjoyable game doesn't change that.
I put 3500 hours into Rome and Medieval 2, mostly because of mods (same reason I've put nearly 4000 in Warband by now), yet these new Total War titles can't even hold my attention long enough for me to finish a short campaign. The only redeeming factor that Rome 2 has going for it is the mod community, which CA only put in tools for because they knew they weren't going to be able to finish the game in time for release, and even after a year of patches would not be able to fully flesh out all the features and mechanics that should have been there from the beginning.
The only thing SEGA (and to a lesser extent CA) understands long term is sales; until Total War sales go down we're going to keep getting pretty lackluster (if not unplayable) games with a few gems sprinkled (accidentally) in the mix.
Uh... I'm not sure if you've noticed but every game publisher/developer is doing this; not just SEGA and CA. It really sucks but if I refused to support any shady practices stemming from this business, I'd have like no games to play.
They really have you by the balls don't they? Tell me what is it like being a bitch?
I kid of course, but there are actually plenty of game studios that release finished products on launch day. Paradox, Firaxis, Bethesda (mostly). And then you have companies that own up to their unfinished products and stay in early access or the like. I'm fine with a lot of the interesting ways games are getting funded these days, but releasing a broken and unplayable beta as a AAA studio with a momentous amount of pre-orders and little to zero accountability is not a practice we should support.
