{"title":"Samurai","description":"\u003cp\u003eSamurai games take their subject from the warrior class of feudal Japan: the retainers who served a daimyo, fought his wars, carried the katana as a badge of rank and lived under a code that put loyalty and honor ahead of survival. Steam files the tag under theme and mood rather than genre, and that is the right way to read it. It says nothing about how a game plays. A samurai game can be a campaign map where you move ashigaru and mounted retainers across the provinces, a duel decided by the timing of a single parry, a stealth crawl through a castle keep, or a hack and slash that clears a battlefield by the hundred. What the titles here share is the world: the Sengoku era's warring clans, the ronin without a master, the Edo peace and its restless swordsmen, the arquebus arriving alongside the bow, and the weight of bushido pressing on every decision. This shelf gathers the games where that world is the point, for the player who wants feudal Japan and its warriors at the center of the screen rather than as a costume for something else.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe distinction matters because several neighboring collections overlap with this one without meaning the same thing. Ninja is the closest: the shinobi are a separate Steam theme, the spy and infiltrator to the samurai's soldier, and while the two share a period they seldom share a tag unless a game gives real weight to both. Swordplay names a mechanic, blade combat in any setting, so a samurai duel qualifies but so does a Renaissance rapier or a fantasy longsword. Martial Arts is broader still and leans toward the unarmed. Hack and Slash is a genre of melee action, and although plenty of samurai games belong to it, plenty of others are turn-based strategy or slow, deliberate stealth. Historical says a game is grounded in a real past without saying which one; Medieval is Steam's tag for the European Middle Ages and gets applied loosely, but it is not where feudal Japan lives. War and Military describe scale and organized conflict, and Anime describes an art style that some samurai games wear and most do not. Those tags name a mechanic, a style, a genre or a broader setting. Samurai names the subject, and a shopper filtering for it wants to know that the setting and the warriors in it are the substance of the game.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTwo strands run through the tag, and it helps to know which one a game belongs to. The first looks at the samurai from above: the clan, the province, the campaign, the daimyo weighing an alliance against a siege. The second looks along the blade: one warrior, one path, one fight at a time, whether that is a grounded story in the manner of Ghost of Tsushima or something like Nioh, where the Sengoku era is a launching point for the supernatural. Total War: SHOGUN 2 is the collection's first member and the clearest case of the first strand. Creative Assembly's 2011 strategy game, published by SEGA and brought to Mac and Linux by Feral Interactive, puts you in the seat of a clan's daimyo in 16th-century Japan, with a turn-based map for economics and diplomacy and real-time land and sea battles when talk runs out; the goal is to reunite the country and take the title of shogun, and Steam players gave it this tag. If the fighting is what draws you, Swordplay and Hack and Slash are the next shelves over, Ninja covers the shinobi side of the same era, and Historical widens the frame to every real past a game has been built around.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"total-war-shogun-2-pc-download","title":"Total War: SHOGUN 2","description":"\u003cp class=\"lead\"\u003eTotal War: SHOGUN 2 returns the series to the setting that started it all: Japan in the middle of the 16th century, the Sengoku period, when a broken shogunate left the country carved up between rival warlords. You take the seat of a Daimyo and set out to do what none of them managed peacefully, reuniting the islands under your banner and claiming the title of Shogun. Creative Assembly pairs a turn-based campaign map with full 3D real-time battles on land and at sea, and the tighter focus on a single nation makes this the most cohesive Total War in the catalog.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eTen Clans, One Throne\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe campaign opens in 1545 with Japan split between dozens of factions, ten of them playable. Each clan starts from a different corner of the map with its own traits, so a new campaign never plays the same way twice. The Shimazu of Kyushu field superior katana samurai, the Chosokabe of Shikoku raise cheaper and better archers, the Date charge harder than anyone, the Oda recruit ashigaru peasants by the thousand, and the Hattori bring the ninja arts to the battlefield and the shadows alike. The Takeda, Uesugi, Hojo, Mori and Tokugawa round out the roster, each with a distinct road to Kyoto.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the campaign map you manage provinces season by season: farms, castles, markets, ports and the sacred sites that shape your clan's religion. Taxes and trade fund your armies, roads move them, and the family tree decides who leads them. Generals and agents gain experience and unlock RPG-style skill trees, so a veteran commander who has fought through a dozen battles becomes a real asset worth protecting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eBattles Worthy of the Samurai\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen two armies meet, the game drops into a real-time battle where thousands of individually animated soldiers clash across seasonal terrain. Yari ashigaru hold the line, bow samurai loose volleys from the high ground, cavalry hunt down routing troops, and later in the campaign matchlock ashigaru bring gunpowder to the field. Morale, fatigue, weather and elevation all matter, and the battle map is drawn from the exact spot on the campaign map where the armies met.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMulti-stage sieges make Japanese castles a genuine challenge. Hilltop fortresses rise in tiered layers of walls and gates, so scaling the first wall is only the beginning of the assault, and defenders can fall back through each ring while archers and rifles pick at the attackers below.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHero units such as elite samurai bodyguards and warrior monks inspire nearby troops and can turn a wavering flank, giving you a decisive tool to commit at exactly the right moment in a battle.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNaval battles put fleets of bune warships on open water, with boarding actions, fire arrows and ramming maneuvers. Control of the sea lanes protects your trade and lets you land armies where the enemy least expects them.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Art of War\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCreative Assembly built the campaign AI around the principles of Sun Tzu's Art of War, and the result is an opponent that maneuvers, feints and exploits weakness rather than simply piling units at your borders. It also gives you the same toolkit. Fire and siege tactics wear down a stronger foe; diplomacy, marriages and hostages buy time; and a network of agents does the quiet work between battles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdl\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eNinja\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eYour saboteurs and assassins. A skilled ninja can sabotage a castle's defenses before a siege, disrupt an enemy army's movement, or remove a troublesome general altogether, with a cutscene that shows whether the attempt succeeds.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eMetsuke\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eThe clan's police and spymasters. Metsuke root out enemy agents, keep provinces loyal, oversee towns to boost income and can bribe enemy garrisons or generals when steel would cost too much.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eMonks and Missionaries\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eReligious agents spread Buddhism or Christianity, incite unrest in enemy lands and calm it in your own. Converting to the new faith unlocks European trade and gunpowder units, but risks rebellion among the devout.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eGeisha\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eThe most refined assassins in the game, available only through the highest tier of buildings. A geisha is expensive to train and almost impossible to stop once she reaches her target.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003c\/dl\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvery path leads to Realm Divide. Once your clan grows strong enough to threaten Kyoto, the remaining factions set aside their quarrels and turn on you together, and the final push to the capital becomes the hardest fight of the campaign.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003eCampaigns and Battles Online\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe whole grand campaign can be played cooperatively with a friend, sharing the map and fighting each other's battles in two-player mode. Beyond that, online and LAN battles support up to eight players, and the special online campaigns let you build a persistent avatar general and army that grows with every match you fight on a contested map of Japan. Steam Achievements, Steam Trading Cards and Steam Cloud saves round out the package.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhether you crave the slow satisfaction of a well-run domain or the thunder of a full cavalry charge, SHOGUN 2 rewards both. Raise your banner, choose your clan and find out who really deserves to rule Japan.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SEGA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":1778565513228,"sku":"PC_173446234124_DL_GL","price":11.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0875\/3268\/files\/card-total-war-shogun-2-pc-mac-linux-steam.jpg?v=1789668917"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.pjsgames.com\/collections\/samurai.oembed","provider":"PJ's Games","version":"1.0","type":"link"}