Update: "Shogun 2 - Complete Edition Has Fallen Short of Both Your Expectations and Our Own Standards"

Update [Thu 15th Oct 2026, 3:17pm]:

The vibes surrounding Creative Assembly's 'enhanced' re-release of Total War: Shogun 2 were bad long before the game hit stores, with almost zero praise given by any of the fan channels or sites they sent early copies to. Things only got worse when people examined the upscaled art more closely (as reported by Kotaku) and found it full of smeary AI artifacts. With the game sitting at a miserable 16% positive reviews (out of over 3,000 total), SEGA and Creative Assembly are pulling the plug today (at least for now), removing the Complete Edition from sale, restoring the original game to storefronts and promising improvements to come, according to this public statement made on The Site Formerly Known as Twitter.

Those who did pay the $10 to upgrade to the new version (or $40 to get the whole package fresh) will still have access to the game, so nobody is losing access to anything, but it feels like it'll take more than a bit of AI art cleanup to right this ship. Even pre-release, fans were noticing that ancient 15-year-old bugs had remained unfixed, and whole new bugs were being observed. Once the full weight of the Total War fanbase descended on it, even more issues were observed.

It's unclear how much of the blame for this lies at the feet of Creative Assembly, partner studio MATABOO, or publisher SEGA, but my gut feeling says that this is out of character for CA. While they might have struggled at times, the work they're doing on Total War: Warhammer 3 is exemplary, providing massive overhauls and new factions entirely for free, on top of the regular stream of premium DLC characters. Here's hoping this isn't a sign of things to come. Especially the AI-generated images (I refuse to call it art), which have taken some of the most evocative 2D art in the Total War series and mangled them horribly.

Right now, the original version of Shogun 2 is still unavailable on Steam, but should be there again soon, although even the original version is being hit by some angry reviews, catching strays from the poor remaster.

Original Story: It's usually nice to see old PC classics getting a lick of fresh paint. Usually. But very few of the people given early access to Creative Assembly's re-release of 2011's Total War: Shogun 2 - Complete Edition seem happy about it. In a puzzling decision, Creative Assembly has delisted the original classic from Steam (along with its two expansions) and rolled out the Complete Edition in its place, returning the game to its full price tag with a one-month window for existing owners to upgrade at a discount before the game goes back up to £35/$40 for the foreseeable future.

As a long-term series fan (it's in his username, even), milkandcookiesTW says on YouTube, "there are bugs and obvious balance problems that have lingered since 2011". Initial reports are that the upgrades to the game are largely superficial, and that underlying issues that have been identified in the decade-and-a-half since release have been left as-is. Another Total War-heavy channel, The Great Book Of Grudges, observed enemy AI bugging out in new and never-before-seen ways, including generals suicidally breaking formation to charge entire armies solo. A lot of people were given early preview access to this new version, and almost nobody seems happy with the results.

There are some positive points to the re-release. 64-bit support, integrated Mod.io support for easier content sharing, and some slight improvements to the visuals, UI, and features support for modern resolutions and aspect ratios. But the fundamentals (frequently the subject of unofficial patching and rebalancing efforts) have been left untouched, and I'd not be surprised if there really are new bugs introduced. Nothing that can't be patched out, but surely the time for that would be sometime between 2011 and now.

As a business decision, it stands in stark contrast with the recent Witcher 3 remastered re-release, which might have had some issues at launch, but it was also a free upgrade that included the previously commercial expansions for anyone who already owned them. I appreciate that real time and effort went into the Shogun 2 re-release, and that the company has every right to make money from their efforts, but the timing and optics of this move are just bad, especially so soon after Total Warhammer 3 received a massive upgrade and endgame overhaul, free.

That said, it's also a well-known fact that Creative Assembly have enjoyed a...strained relationship with their player base for many years now. Their entire catalogue of games saw intense, organized review-bombing over a piece of slightly overpriced DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3, and I've seen several influential people in the community state adamantly that they need to wield that threat over the studio's head to keep them in line.

While I understand the frustration of not being heard, this seems like a deeply toxic way to view a games studio and your relationship with it. This isn't to say that this is a good re-release or should be excused, merely that the last thing we need is more things to stress out the workers in an industry already under continual threat. I'm not judging anyone, just saying that the vibes are already bad enough.

Total War: SHOGUN 2 - Complete Edition is out now for £35/$40, with a 75% discount for existing Shogun 2 owners available until November 12th. As much as I liked the original, I don't think I'll be bothering with this one until CA has hammered out some of the kinks. That, and I'm already busy with TW: Warhammer 3.