Should I play Rise of the Samurai first?

[Silver]

Seems chronological order is best to experience Japanese history, right? Also, what is the historic victor clan?

Also what's the recommended difficulty? This is coming from a guy who logged 600 hours into Empire in Very Hard / Very Hard

[The Vagabond Sam]

ROTS is the worst campaign. I would recommend the vanilla first. But do as you wish.

[The Vagabond Sam]

If you have experience play on normal or hard. Harder than that is impossible for first players.

[Nocturnalx36]

I recommend you start on Hard, get a feel for it, then move to VH.

Unlike other total war games VH is actually VH lol.

RoTS is by far the worst campaign, ive only played it for about 10 hours.

[Fast Johnny]

I know I am going to hear it from these guys, but I actually enjoyed ROTS. I liked the traditional looking icons and the differences with the building chains and units, it was a nice change from the ever present, much vaunted FOTS and vanilla Shogun2. Perhaps, it is the least liked of the 3, but it certainly beats out countless other games. It's number three of the top three, in my opinion.

However, with that said, I would play regular Shogun2 first.

[Nocturnalx36]

Originally posted by Fast Johnny:

I know I am going to hear it from these guys, but I actually enjoyed ROTS. I liked the traditional looking icons and the differences with the building chains and units, it was a nice change from the ever present, much vaunted FOTS and vanilla Shogun2. Perhaps, it is the least liked of the 3, but it certainly beats out countless other games. It's number three of the top three, in my opinion.

However, with that said, I would play regular Shogun2 first.

Nah you wont, everyone has their own tastes. My main problem with ROTS is it felt very short to me. Idk if it was the movement range, number of pronvinces, what, but I prefer a really long campaign that I can take my time in.

[TALIBAN ISIS PWO CSGO PRAYER]

The minamoto were the historic victor, they defeated the taira in the naval battle of dan no ura

[bkkm12]

If you like japan history, then start from ROTS and shogun 2 original and then FOTS.
With your skill, you can definitely play hard to start. Just find a solid clan that start with a good position and u are ready to go

[easytarget]

ROTS is a perfectly fine campaign, but I'd suggest starting with shogun 2 as some of the game mechanics in ROTS are tweaks to what was in Shogun 2, better to start where the series started from a game play learning perspective, unless of course you really are hung up on the chronology of the history that's the back drop of this series, in which case play ROTS first.

[Countersnipe]

Hard difficulty will allow you to learn the basics. Don't start on Very Hard because this difficulty assumes that you know how the game works.

The campaigns depend on personal preference.

Shogun 2 is the most well rounded. I have 300 hours in Shogun 2 and I'm pretty sure 200 of them were in this campaign, 30 were in RotS, and 70 were in FotS.

Rise is also nice. I actually liked it because they mixed mechanics on units. Your generals are all mounted, ranged, and melee. So you can choose if you want them to support with arrows, or flank in melee. A lot of units have a melee/range toggle, so there are different ways you can use the same single type of unit.

FotS has elements of Shogun 2 in that you can recruit samurai units, but you're also going to have to use 19th century ships and rifle units as well. I'd say this is closes to Empire, but it shares some units with Shogun 2, although they are not exactly the same thing. The biggest thing with FotS is that your research will modernize your faction, so the more you research and build the more unhappy your population becomes and it adds another layer of strategy to the campaign map that isn't in the other 2 games.

[Björn]

never play ROTS. It sucks and is boring as hell. You only need ROTS to play online and have the meatshields for you´re army.
Nothing beats vanilla shogun. Melee combat and fast action or strategy and kiting.
FOTS is fun but is boring, kiting is boring and the AI in FOTS isn´t really a good player at all...

Play it on hard if you want a small challenge. If you have XP with Total War you can try Very Hard but that is a world of difference with Hard.

[easytarget]

I don't get the hate for ROTs, I rather enjoyed it, but realize it's quite fashionable in the forums to posture the hate. Take Ryuu above, clearly he hated all three S2 works so much he played them for 3000 hours.

Always fun to watch people state opinions like they're facts.

Hey Ryuu, my favorite color is green, try and convince me it's not.

[Loeg]

Play Shogun 2 before. It's better for learn the base for knowing how to play the game. Fots don't give you an avantage for knowing how to play.

[Kuro]

seems great

[mafilux]

I personally didn't really like RotS. The base game is much easier to get into imo.

[Richthofen]

Vanilla Shogun 2 - the IRL winners were the Tokugawa who established a Shogunate in 1601 after both Oda and his protege Toyotomi Hideyoshi fell.
RotS - Minamoto won.
FotS - the pro-emperor faction won, the shogunate was dissolved and power was restored to emperor Meiji.