Stronghold Crusader vs Total War: Shogun 2
Stronghold Crusader
Stronghold Crusader lets you venture to the distant Arabian lands and dive into the historical, religiously-charged war between the Crusaders and the Saladin's forces through its four massive campaigns documenting the the First, Second and Third Crusades, as well as conflicts within each of the individual Crusader states. Aside from playing as Richard the Lionheart or Saladin, the Sultan of Syria, there are also 100 unique skirmish missions, a wide variety of units to recruit to your side of the fight, as well as an in-depth empire-govrning system that will see you building self-sustaining fortresses in the desert.Stronghold Crusader is an excellent real-time strategy game that infuses the mechanics that had made the Stronghold franchise such a success with the accurate historical elements of a real and bitter war that had happened way in the past. This is a game that may interest real-time strategy players, that's for sure!
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.