Empire Earth 3 vs Total War: Shogun 2
Empire Earth 3
Empire Earth 3 is unfortunately the final stopper to what had been a pretty solid real-time strategy game. What happened? Well, the game seemed to have went on a completely wrong route and ended up stripping itself of all the best parts in an attempt to borrow from other game franchises. Not to mention, their implementation, be it borrowed ideas or pretty good ideas of their own, is simply horrendous. However, all of these might not be apparent to players who have not played any of the Empire Earth games before so if you've seen good reviews of the game... well, this is probably the reason behind it.Empire Earth 3 has hammered in the final nail in the franchise's coffin and it's truly a pity. The series itself has plenty of potential and could have been as great as some of the classic real-time strategy games that are still very well-known today, but due to whatever reason, things happened, a poor game was rolled out, and everything just fell apart. Empire Earth 3 may not be worth buying for fans of the previous two Empire Earth games, but if you're a collector or if you're new to the series, you might still want to give it a try.
Total War: Shogun 2
Total War: Shogun 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the groundbreaking original game, Shogun: Total War. Set in the darkest age of Feudal Japan right after the collapse of a unified government (in 16th century to be exact), many warring clans have risen through the chaos and out of them, 10 legendary warlords, or Daimyos, have their eyes set on the coveted position of shogun, but only one of them will be able to reunite a warring island.The gameplay is pretty similar to the original game. The campaign map features a turn-based, Risk-style gameplay while the actual battles themselves (rendered in glorious 3D) are played out in real-time. However, this time around, the game is filled with a ton of new units, including massive warships, as well as a more in-depth strategic gameplay based on the ancient texts in Sun Tzu's Art of War. There are multi-stage sieges, unique hero units who can be improved through standard RPG methods, and that the campaign map is now in 3D as well and can be rotated whichever way you like.
The campaign in Total War: Shogun 2 can also be played cooperatively (2 players), but if you truly want to test your skills, you can engage in epic online battles with up to 8 other players.
This game does the very first Total War game justice and is the sort of game that fans of the series would greatly enjoy. Also, considering that the game came out more than 5 years ago, the graphics in the game is still pretty relevant today... so I guess, that's another bonus.