Recommended reading

This massive mod for Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord not only converts it to Sengoku-era Japan, it adds fully simulated naval battles months ahead of the base game

News
By published

Shokuho is available to now.

A samurai archer draws his bow on horseback, trees visible in the background.
(Image credit: TaleWorlds Entertainment, Dockside Studios)

Shokuho is hardly the first mod to adapt TaleWorlds' Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, but it is also one of the most comprehensive, transposing TaleWorlds' historical RPG to feudal Japan in impressive depth and detail.

Shokuho's samurai action begins in 1568, the year Oda Nobunaga marched on Kyoto and sparked two centuries of civil war and political intrigue. As in vanilla Bannerlord, the mod lets you carve a path through the period in all manner of ways, such as building up your own army, or ing the forces of a local lord to rise up the ranks.

Yet while Shokuho is built upon Bannerlord's foundations, this is no simple reskin. Shokuho boasts a completely new map that, according to the creators, is "five times as big as vanilla [Bannerlord], with 56 towns and 181 castles," all of which are based on settlements, clans, and kingdoms from the era.

Mount & Blade II Bannerlord: Shokuho Release Date Announcement - YouTube Mount & Blade II Bannerlord: Shokuho Release Date Announcement - YouTube
Watch On

Moreover, as well as bundling in the popular Diplomacy Mod, which adds systems like alliances and war exhaustion, it also features several mod-specific mechanics. These include tiered castle sieges where you must fight through multiple checkpoints, and fully simulated naval battles that let you control your own ships, destroy enemy vessels with archers and gunfire, or board them with your own troops. Amusingly, Shokuho has pipped Bannerlord to the post here. TaleWorlds is working on its own naval expansion to the base game, but it won't arrive for some time yet.

Also, considering Mount & Blade has never been a visual powerhouse, Shokuho has a remarkable sense of style. The release-date trailer published a couple of weeks back shows battles taking place across windswept grassy plains and misty forests, snow-dusted sieges of mountain fortresses, and a samurai duel beneath the golden canopy of an autumnal Japanese maple. Developer Dockside Interactive has clearly taken a leaf out of Ghost of Tsushima's artbook, and it's paid off.

Shokuho is since been delayed to autumn as the developers get it ship-shape.

2025 gamesBest PC gamesFree PC gamesBest FPS gamesBest RPGsBest co-op games

Best co-op games: Better together

Rick Lane
Contributor

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular ion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please and then again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.