The year is actually 1864 – Fall of the Samurai is set during the Boshin War, which was a result of tensions between factions who had differing thoughts on the increased modernisation going on at the time. Army veteran sent to train the Emperor’s men how to fight using firearms… oh wait, that’s the plot to The Last Samurai. You are Captain Nathan Algren, a washed out former U.S. The year is 1876, the Shogun and the Emperor are at war for the soul of Japan. Like in RotS, we are presented with an entirely new scenario to get involved with, and a larger, more detailed map of Japan to conquer. Pressing 'H' allows you to take direct control of things like ship cannons and Gatling guns. For Shogun 2, they started out with the Rise of the Samurai, and now they are on Fall of the Samurai – an expansion so large that's officially a 'stand-alone' product, and so we come back to the boxed expansions once more. Instead, downloadable expansions and DLC have been the order of the day, and from the early experiments of The Warpath Campaign ( Empire) and The Peninsular Campaign ( Napoleon), Creative Assembly has been going bigger and better.

It's been many a year since we've seen the likes of Kingdoms, the boxed expansion for Medieval II: Total War that had the four mini-campaigns. It's funny how things seem to come full circle.