10 Best Samurai & Ninja Video Games Of All Time

Thanks to KOEI-Tecmo, a lot of samurai games wind up being strategy games - due to the Nobunaga’s Ambition series.

Unfortunately, NA hasn’t been quite been living up to its storied history. Creative Assembly’s Total War series, however, is doing quite well. The very first Total War game was likely a lot of gamers’ introduction to sengoku history - way back in the year 2000.

Now officially renamed Total War: Shogun, to match the rest of the franchise’s naming theme, the 2011 sequel is still one of the best samurai-related strategy games out there.

It’s still not quite as good as their Three Kingdoms or Warhammer spin-offs, but with the improvements those games have made, it’s certainly only a matter of time before a Shogun 3 comes out with those same improvements.

Until then, Total War: Shogun 2 is still a solid strategy game. While you play as a samurai daimyo, you can send ninja out to do your bidding - so this kind of qualifies as both. Rated Best Strategy Game of 2011 by four different publications, it’s still worth the time to play even twelve years later.