That was about 3 years ago. The CA exec team published a heartfelt apology letter as a direct response to the community backlash over several major missteps (iirc, it was about the very underwhelming DLC for Total War: Warhammer III, and the equally disappointing launch of TW Pharaoh). They essentially acknowledged their many mistakes and promised to do better in the future.

Do you guys remember this?

Asking for no particular reason.

We’re aware that Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards. We’ve seen your feedback, comments, and reviews. We agree that the current experience is not where it needs to be.

As a result we are working with platform holders to remove the game from sale and to reinstate the original game while we investigate the issues. Existing owners will still be able to access and play the game.

We are working closely with our development partner to identify the causes of these problems, deliver improvements, and ensure Shogun 2 – Complete Edition meets the quality standards players expect from Total War.

SEGA & Creative Assembly

Oh for God's sake CA!

These things are hella busted for their price, add 2-4 to every stack and they will let your crapstack handle things way above their paygrade. Adding a frontline of 4-6 in your elite stacks is essential. These might be the best handgun unit in the game, when used on Nagash. Also, I think even if crapstacking mass zombies or something, running Vampire Coast lords instead of alternatives might be a good idea just to buff these units further. Killed a Skarbrand stack with my cheap Zombie crapstack with 4 of these target firing all the unkillable stuff while my Lord/zombie crapstack melted down the rest. They killed Skarbrand absurdly fast, saw one volley do like half his health bar.

Obviously all handguns have the same issue with line of sight which is their limitation as well. But their DPS for cost is absurd. You can generally set up your formation to allow them to fire. Some maps suck if theres too many slopes but generally there's a place where they can shoot.

More specifics pulled from comment from u/TheTerribleness : "
For those wondering exactly how strong handgunners are:

Ushabti Great Bows (another heavily over-stat'd range unit), at a base, fire 12 projectiles in a volley doing upwards of 122 damage (104 AP, 18 base) each, for a total max of 1464 damage (1248 AP) every 11 seconds (133 DPS) at unbuffed values.

Zombie Handgunners, at a base, fire 120 projectiles in a volley doing upwards of 36 damage (26 AP and 10 base) each, for a total max of 4320 damage (3210 AP) every 13 seconds (332 dps) at unbuffed* values (* note all vampirate units come with a self buff that increasestheir damage by 30% when they have 80% or more ammo reserve left).

Damage and fire rate buffs for both units are similar in the pyramid. Handgunners get dig in which gives them 204 range (ushabti have 255). Great Bows also get inherent magic posion and flaming attacks, though zombies also get magic and flaming attacks easily (a Balefire corpse cart works on them).

Handgunners are the central and most important unit of the Vampirates. They are extremely over-stat'd for their role as a tanky gunline unit, mostly because the direct support for Vampirates is relatively weak. They have no Necromancers or other forms of healing outside of the lore of Vampires (and now Undeath). And unlike VC or Nagash, they also didn't have great sources of winds discounts or winds reserve. That has basically kept Handgunners in check. The actual unit's power and price were great but the support package for it was expensive and inefficient. You had to lean on their firepower because the zombie side of them wasn't strong enough to work without it.

Nagash has none of these issues, however as you can get necromancers, wight kings, etc. All the stuff that are great for buffing normal zombie also (generally) works for Vampirate zombies (the difference in melee stats between handgunners and normal zombies is minimal, normal zombies has a bit more hp and a bit less MA and MD).

Zombie Deckhand and Zombie Gunnery mob are extremely efficient for Nagash in general. These were zombies never designed to have good support so they got a lot of extra stats to make them work on their own. And now you can get thwm and that zombie support."

Was chatting with some friends still working at CA a couple of days before this circus started. Now I'm feeling like a broken printer, so why not. Spoke to a couple of other friends still there as well. Proof https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/189486q/i_figured_out_a_way_to_publicly_confirm_i_worked/

I've been giving this a lot of thought and the only explanation I can think of as to how this didn't get QA tested before release is this:

The original pitch was so damn convincing that both SEGA and CA felt that allocating time and resources towards conducting QA testing would not only have been a total waste, but also frankly an *insult* to the fine folks over at Mataboo.

What I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall during that meeting.. They must have sent in the best of the best - I'm talking *TOP. GUN. PITCHER.* - to give the presentation for how good this remaster would be.

I imagine it started out a little cautiously. Cutting-edge, outside-the-box thinking like the addition of placebo-effect gamma sliders would have been a tough idea to sell even for someone of Don Draper's presentational skills.

By the time they got to suggesting adding an additional finger to *each* unit of the Tercos I assume the suits just handed over a blank check and waived any concerns they may have had regarding the need for any oversight during the project.

I mean, think of all the various advantages a sixth finger would afford a unit that can both fire guns and go melee. The mind truly boggles. Any one of us could have been duped in that situation.

​Did MATABOO do a horrible job? Definitely.

So are they the ones we should blame? Absolutely not.

​Voices are getting louder that MATABOO should take all the blame while CA gets off scot-free. That’s complete bullshit.

​It is CA’s responsibility to hire capable people who can actually do the job and to enforce proper quality control on their OWN beloved game.

It wasn't a secret that MATABOO does questionable work.

​CA just showed us once again that we should be extremely skeptical about every future project they release.

Give it another 15 years.

Genuinely who at CA thought ai cutscene and upscaling for shogun 2 CE was a good idea this is a Genuine disgrace especially for 40 fucking dollars this isnt even worth the 10 dollars I could pay for this if I wanted this they should take it down until its fixed or forever because this is the most shamefur dispray

Edit:HOLY SHIT THEY DID IT!

It's this circle of excitement before release, then living through shitstorm/subpar experience on release day, burning out your will to play a game because of release quality, then following up every patch notes for X months checking how much has been fixed, verifying playerbase experience and then trying game when it's finally fixed but you just got a feeling that you kinda played early access on release day.

Since release of TW:W3 I just could not get hypeed for any new TW release because I know there is like 50% chance that the release will be fucked up. Even incoming TW 40k does not hype me because I am bit sceptical whether CA can pull it of... but then Shogun 2 remastered was announced, I remember playing Shogun 1 and when Shogun 2 released my PC was too weak to play it, so when they announced remastered I thought that would be a great opportunity to play it at last, they can't fuck up a remaster, right? And here we go again... another fucked up release, another apology note.

It's just sad that ever few years I got reminded why I should never be excited for next TW release untill player reviews are out.

By the way, both SoC and pharaoh blogs have since been deleted from their website. They reeeealy want us to forget the past