Sound

Want to Speak Japanese?

Shogun has an extremely rich and fleshed out sound environment. It even offers an option to hear all in-game speech aside from tutorials in Japanese to further immerse you in the game. Little touches like this are what really add to Shogun's atmosphere.

Stubborn Geezer

My kill ratio sucks

If you are on a battlefield, observing the initial skirmishes from your vantage point above the map, you will be just about overwhelmed by the detail of the sounds. As you click your archers into position you'll hear an acknowledgement, then the near-simultaneous firing of 60, 120 or even more bows at the same time. It's like stepping on a cracker. Those arrows will fly silently through the air, gracefully arcing as they descend on the formation of enemy yari samurai. Deep thunking sounds will be accompanied by screams of the dying as the volley of arrows hit their mark. Again the staccato of arrowfire, and again they land amidst the enemy formations. The enemy Taisho orders his samurai into loose formation to avoid bowfire, only to hear the battlecry of a wedge of your no-dachi swordsmen as they run down from the forest beside the hill into the spearmen's flank.

Bust out with the spears!

They fall quickly, my liege

Content, you might sit back and watch the battle unfold from a distant viewpoint, but then you hear a distant, disturbing rumble. The rumble grows louder and louder - you turn the camera - and from the hill on which you were observing erupt several companies of yari cavalry ready to tear your bowmen apart. The horse's hooves thunder across the ground while your men shout all sorts of acknowledgements as you shift positions and formations to blunt the charge as best you can.

The honorless dogs flee!

Line up for the celebration

Battle Hymns

All this, while you're accompanied by some of the oddest and yet interesting musical scores I've heard since playing FreeSpace 2. The tunes are clearly Japanese-derived, of course. There are several scores, ranging from slow and measured to fairly high-tempo battle music. However, it doesn't seem as though there are enough tracks in the game. Too many times we found ourselves thinking "oh, this track again?" Still, it's better to have a small selection of quality songs than a large variety of crap.