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

Shokuho is hardly the first mod to adapt TaleWorlds' Mount & Blade series to a new era of history. Mount & Blade: Warband's startling array of total conversions practically let you command armies anywhere and, indeed, anywhen in the world. Yet not only is Shokuho a total conversion for the slightly less well-served 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 joining 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.

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 available to download over on ModDB. As for Bannerlord itself, TaleWorlds' War Sails expansion was originally scheduled to launch next week, but it has since been delayed to autumn as the developers get it ship-shape.