While Fall of the Samurai does add plenty of new content, it retains the distinctive traits of the Total War series.
If you wanted to see the Total War series cover more recent conflicts, then Fall of the Samurai is a major step in the right direction.
That setting also adds some new dimensions to the series with naval bombardments, railroads, and the ability to take direct control over artillery units. The result is a unique setting: a maelstrom of sword-wielding samurai, Gatling guns, railroads, and ancient Buddhist temples. Clans opposed to these policies fought to overthrow the shogunate and return power to the emperor, and over the course of the war, both sides were compelled to embrace armaments like Armstrong guns and ironclads.
Fall of the Samurai, the first stand-alone expansion for Total War: Shogun 2, is set during Japan's Boshin War of the 1860s, a civil war that began as an ideological struggle over the shogunate's pro-Western policies.
