There are few differences in the types of units and tactics that are available to you regardless which side you chose, though there are some variations in strategic elements. The choice is yours and you get the opportunity to influence history in its making. Aizu, Nagaoka and Jozai support the Shogunate in the battle to keep the other daimyos in line and the country together under the current Shogun. They want to have the Emperor freed from his servitude and once again acquire gain power in Japan. The three start out supporting the Emperor in Kyoto in his rebellion against the Shogun in Edo, today known as Tokyo after the Tokugawa Shogun. To the west is Satsuma, south on the island Kyushu, Tosa, east on the island Shikoku, and Choshu east on the main island Honshu.
However there are primarily two sides, the Emperor's and the Shogunate's, and you have the option to choose one out of six clans to take part in the atrocities that will play out.
With that many clans featured you are tossed into a very intricate diplomatic setting, where loyalties are uncertain and various different agendas are at play. Most of the clans are however new from the last game, dividing old regions into tinier ones and giving status to other supporters, so that no daimyos could gather power enough to go up against the Shogun. Some of the clans that you already know from Shogun 2 may therefore be found in a completely different part of the map than what you remember from that game, and they may even have changed their name. The Tokugawa-Shogunate has divided the more than 60 regions of Japan that are featured in this game between almost as many warlords, most of whom were loyal to the Tokugawa Clan during the last Civil War period, Sengoku Jidai. Both the French, the British and the Americans are there to meet you and trade with you as they all attempt to be on good terms with whoever becomes the next ruler of Japan. This Japanese civil war has all the ingredients to become just as sanguinary as the recently ended American Civil War. During the eighteen-hundreds Boshin War, which is the setting and time-period of this game, European Great Powers, with the already well established United States, bring the art of war from those European conflicts to a Japan emerging from two hundred years of isolation and suppression following from where Shogun 2 ended after the Sengoku-period. Though the prequels Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War, where firearms more can give the battles the feeling of standoffs rather than engagements was very entertaining, I was somewhat relieved at the quicker and more action-packed fights in Shogun 2. No doubt the Gatling gun and naval artillery are popular requests for the series, but for myself I even avoided excessive use of the primitive firearms available in Total War: Shogun 2. I admit to my initial skepticism at the reentrance into more modern warfare. The age of honorable fighting man on man with katanas is at an end it may seem. However you choose, there won't be a lack of powerful inventions for killing masses of people, on offer from western powers.
In FOTS you select sides between the Emperor, in favor of modernizing Japan, or with the Tokugawa-Shogunate in favor of status quo and the traditionalists. Smoke rises from the battlefield as I position myself in front of the computer screen to take on Total War: Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai, the second expansion to Shogun 2: Total War, the first that is a standalone expansion.
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