Total War: Shogun 2 - Complete Edition launched today, offering a modern remaster of one of the best Total War games ever made. So why is it drowning in overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews? Well, its art has suffered what appears to be questionable AI upscaling, it runs worse than the original, and the devs are charging $10 extra to jump in. As if adding insult to injury, the devs have even gone and delisted the original version altogether.
"Literally the greed they talk about in the Bible," as Steam reviewer Xukaku puts it. In lieu of a whip of cords, players are taking to Valve's review system in an effort to drive the remaster away. As I write this, the game sits at an overwhelmingly negative rating on Steam, with just 19% of the 677 reviews being positive.
Fans are collecting an extensive list of issues with the new version, including both long-standing bugs that were present in the original and all-new glitches. There are also wide reports of performance issues, suggesting that the game runs worse not just than the original, but even recent, modern Total War games.
AI used to upscale S2CE unit cards is awful. These need to be redone by hand, as the originals werefrom r/totalwar
And then there are the allegations of AI art. This example is probably the most egregious: in the original game, it's an image of a mustached warrior on horseback. In the remaster, his nose and mustache have somehow been transformed into what looks like a Stormtrooper helmet. Other comparisons are similarly unflattering to the upscaled art, and even all-new art pieces are afflicted by gen-AI tells like six-fingered hands.
It might be a lot easier to ignore these issues if you could just go play the original, non-remastered version, but apparently even that's off the table. The original Total War: Shogun 2 has been delisted from the Steam store.
Players who already owned the original can, of course, still download and play it, but now anyone who wants to dive in for the first time is going to be forced to jump into a seriously compromised remaster. Here's hoping that the devs fix the Complete Edition's issues and put the OG version back on the menu for players who want it.
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