Within one day of launch, Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition had received an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating on Steam, where 83% of user reviews were negative. Total War fans criticized the release over bugs and accusations of generative AI-enhanced visuals. Players complain that existing bugs remain, new ones have appeared, and the original has been replaced by a pricier release with inferior-looking revised artwork. Generative AI is one suspected cause of the visual problems, though its involvement has not been confirmed.
The description from Sega and Creative Assembly promised an “updated, enhanced, and complete version of the grand strategy classic.” The companies and co-developer Mataboo also promoted “improved visuals” and “1440p and 4K UI scaling.” Players’ complaints contrast those assurances with their accounts of the release: instead of a reliable upgrade, they describe technical faults and plainly flawed images.
A top-rated review on Steam comes from a player with 3,507 hours recorded in the original Total War: Shogun 2. The reviewer listed both old, unaddressed bugs and new bugs, with poor “ninja balancing” among the complaints. “Awful, [Creative Assembly], just awful,” they wrote, adding, “So many bugs have not even been addressed, and on top of that you introduce new ones.”
For another reviewer, the edition fails to deliver what motivated requests for a 64-bit release. “Literally the greed they talk about in the Bible,” the review states. “The whole point of the community wanting these ‘old’ games ported to 64-bit is better stability and performance, which this game fails miserably at. Instead, they gutted the game of Steam Workshop support and it runs noticeably worse than other modern titles (3K and WH3). They delisted the original game and repackaged it as a new ‘Complete Edition’ at a higher price. […] Absolutely shameful.” These assertions about performance relative to other games and the loss of Workshop support come from the reviewer.
Steam has, in fact, delisted the original, so the disagreement isn’t simply about a visual update players can choose to ignore. The new edition takes the place of a game with an established reputation. Released in 2011, Total War: Shogun 2 received a 90 on Metacritic, a score classified as “universal acclaim,” while its Steam listing has more than 22,000 “Mostly Positive” user reviews.
Combining real-time combat with turn-based strategy, the game places players in charge of a clan leader in feudal Japan during the 16th century. Its description outlines a combination of “military engagements, economics and diplomacy to achieve the ultimate goal: reunite Japan under his supreme command and become the new Shogun.” Fans are measuring the Complete Edition against that existing game.
Disputes over the artwork extend beyond the bugs. On the Total War subreddit, players have shared images they say demonstrate careless upscaling of graphics that are now 15 years old. The warped details have prompted allegations that generative AI transformed the artwork into odd hallucinations. While the examples provide grounds to criticize the resulting images, they cannot establish on their own what technology was responsible.
The changes have allegedly drawn criticism from Roland MacDonald, who created the original game’s unit portraits. A subreddit exchange attributes the description “very lazy” to him in reference to the revised visuals. A fan also posted an email allegedly written by MacDonald: “Obviously, no human has looked at or cared about the editing of these images. These look terrible,” it says, before adding, “They shouldn’t be charging for this rubbish.” This attribution comes from the exchange the fan shared, rather than an independently verified statement.
When Polygon published its report, no generative AI disclosure on the Complete Edition’s Steam page specified whether Creative Assembly or Mataboo had used that technology to upscale the original artwork. Without such a disclosure, the question remains open; its absence does not demonstrate AI use.
At the time of Polygon’s reporting, neither Sega nor Creative Assembly had issued an official response to the criticism. Polygon reported that it had approached both the publisher and developer for comment and would revise its story if a response arrived.
