Shogun 2 Complete Edition removed: what to buy instead

Sega has pulled Total War: Shogun 2 — Complete Edition from sale roughly two days after it launched. The remaster went live on 13 October 2026; by 15 October the publisher had posted a statement on X saying it was working with platform holders to "temporarily remove the game from sale". With Shogun 2 Complete Edition removed, the question for anyone who was about to buy it is no longer which edition to get. It is what, if anything, is still worth buying.

The short answer is the 2011 original, which Sega has put back on sale — and our price record says it is the steadier purchase anyway. Reading Total War: SHOGUN 2 on 19 October 2026, we have 95 daily readings of the cheapest offer anywhere between 19 June and 10 October 2026. Across all of them the price never rose above $5.26, the median was $4.67, and the lowest figure in our full tracked record is $2.99. This is a game that does not spike, does not need a sale, and has an all-time low about forty per cent under its own typical price.

The 2011 original, back on sale after Sega reversed the decision to retire it. (Official Steam art)

Shogun 2 Complete Edition removed: what Sega actually said

Sega's own wording, quoted by Video Games Chronicle on 15 October, was that it is "aware that Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards". The statement commits to investigating the causes with its development partner and confirms that people who already bought it keep access to it. It does not give a date for the game's return.

What the statement does not mention is the specific complaint driving the backlash. Players pointed at the remastered assets — unit cards among them — and argued they had been run through AI upscaling, producing details that fall apart under inspection. Sega has not confirmed that, and it is worth being precise: the allegation is a player and press reading of the artwork, not an admission. Separately, reviewers reported that bugs carried over from the 2011 release were still present, and that performance was worse than the game it was remastering.

The Steam response was severe. Before the game was pulled, its rating had reached Overwhelmingly Negative, with roughly 19% of more than 2,000 reviews recommending it.

The announce trailer from September, on the official Total War channel. It was live-action, with no gameplay shown — which, in hindsight, several people have pointed out.

What you can actually buy today

Three things changed at once, and it is easy to get them tangled.

• The Complete Edition is off sale on the platforms Sega works with. You cannot buy it new.
• The 2011 original is back. Sega had quietly stopped selling Total War: SHOGUN 2 on its own in late September, ahead of the remaster; that decision has been reversed while the problems are investigated.
• If you already own the Complete Edition, nothing is taken away. Sega has said access and play are unaffected. Delisting removes a store listing, not a licence.

One consequence worth flagging: the 75% upgrade discount Sega offered original owners, which we wrote about in our earlier piece on the Total War Shogun 2 Complete Edition price, cannot be used on a product that is not for sale. If you were planning to take it in the final week of its window, that plan is on hold until the game returns, and Sega has not said whether the window will be extended.

The original plus its DLC is the cheaper route anyway

The Complete Edition's pitch was convenience: base game, both expansions, every clan pack, one purchase. That pitch is weaker than it looks when you read what the components actually cost at their floors. These are tracked all-time lows from our own record, read on 19 October 2026:

• Rise of the Samurai — $1.75
• Fall of the Samurai Collection — $1.92
• Dragon War Battle Pack — $1.17
• The Ikko Ikki, Hattori and Otomo clan packs — $0.93, $0.74 and $0.80
• Sengoku Jidai and Saints and Heroes unit packs — $0.54 and $0.57

Assembled at those floors, the whole of Shogun 2 has been available for less than a single mid-price game. The Total War: SHOGUN 2 Collection bundles most of it in one listing if you would rather not shop piece by piece. None of this requires a sale event to be worth doing — see our note on what a historical low price actually tells you before you treat any single figure as a target.

Rise of the Samurai, the Genpei War campaign, has a tracked floor under two dollars. (Official Steam art)

Does the original still hold up?

On the numbers, yes, and by a margin that explains the anger at the remaster. Shogun 2 sits at 92% positive from 68,047 Steam reviews, with recent reviews flat at the same figure, and a Metacritic score of 90. It is the entry in the series that stripped the campaign layer back to one island chain and one culture, and it is still the one people recommend to anyone who finds the later games sprawling.

The caveat is the one that always applies to a 2011 strategy game: the interface is of its time, the campaign AI is beatable once you learn its habits, and multiplayer is quiet. None of those are what the remaster was criticised for.

The 2011 launch trailer, also from the official Total War channel — the version you can actually buy right now.

If you would rather not wait for the remaster

Three alternatives are worth a look, and all three have deeper tracked discounts than Shogun 2 ever needs.

Total War: MEDIEVAL II Definitive Edition is the other entry with a reputation this durable, and its tracked low of $0.99 makes it close to a free experiment. Total War: ROME REMASTERED is the comparison the Shogun 2 remaster invites, having done the same job without this reception. And Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is the modern game with the most of Shogun 2's character — a single setting, a tight map, and a diplomacy layer built around named characters rather than abstractions.

Medieval II is nineteen years old and still the cheapest way into the series. (Official Steam screenshot)

Rome Remastered did the same job as the Shogun 2 remaster, and did not have to be withdrawn. (Official Steam screenshot)

If you want the series at its largest instead of its tightest, Total War: WARHAMMER III is the opposite choice in every respect, and our ranking of the best Total War games covers how the rest of the line-up compares. For a wider sweep of the genre, the strategy games currently worth buying is the broader list.

Three Kingdoms is the closest modern relative to what Shogun 2 was trying to be. (Official Steam screenshot)

A note on where you buy it

The cheapest listing for Shogun 2 in our record is usually a key reseller rather than Steam, and the gap is not small. That is a legitimate way to buy, but it is not the same transaction: resold keys come with weaker recourse, occasional region restrictions, and no guarantee the seller is the one you think it is. Our guide to whether keyshops are safe sets out what to check first. For a game whose official price floor is already this low, the saving may not be worth the extra steps.

The bottom line

Do not wait for the Complete Edition to come back. Buy the 2011 original now, add Rise of the Samurai and Fall of the Samurai when they next dip, and you will have the whole game for less than the remaster was asking — on a version with 68,000 reviews behind it rather than two thousand angry ones. If the remaster returns genuinely fixed, it will still be there, and by then it will have a review score you can actually read. Owners of the original lose nothing by waiting, because the upgrade path is the thing Sega has to repair before it can sell anything again.