Shogun: Total War vs Sid Meier's Civilization V
Shogun: Total War
Shogun: Total War is the first original title in a legendary, 15-year (and counting), award-winning, real-time strategy game series that currently spanned across multiple themes and settings. However, this game is set in ancient Japan - 1542 to be exact - when the last shogunate collapsed and the entire nation is thrown into conflict as multiple daimyo (faction leaders) vie for the most powerful seat. To make things worst, Europeans have also ventured to island at this point, bringing guns, religion and disease - factors that you'll eventually have to deal with if you are to attain the people's support and conquer the whole of Japan.The gameplay in Shogun: Total War is akin to Rise of Nations in the sense that each battle is carried out in real-time, but moving your troops on the world map is pretty much turn-based (Risk-style). However, unlike the latter, the battle itself is purely consisted of the actual fighting rather than having you build a base and amassing resources and an army. Instead, Shogun lets you view the entire battlefield from any view you like and send commands to your troops as the battle unfolds. This is basically something that's unheard of until this game came along.
Shogun: Total War may be an old game by modern standards, and due to this, many players might simply opt for its sequel in order to have a taste of that this game has to offer. However, if you truly want to experience the very first of the Total War series, this is the game to play.
Sid Meier's Civilization V
Sid Meier's Civilization V may just be every Civilization games before it, but it does it so well that many fans have touted this game as possibly the best Civilization game ever. The gameplay has been greatly improved mainly because the game has a lot more new game modes, a better variety of leaders, fun scenarios and a wide range of units that are balanced surprisingly well. The AI in this game is still as badly-predictable as before though, but its multiplayer aspect is as epic as ever, especially if you can find a group of players who knows how to play the game well enough to play with you. Aside from the breathtaking graphics and musical scores, there are plenty of mods you can use or you can easily make some of your own too.Sid Meier's Civilization V provides you with all the best features from its previous games while adding in some fun improvements of its own. It may not be perfect, but it's possibly the best Civ game so far.