You get to choose between 6 ‘families’ – two for each of the three main warring clans – the Minamoto, the Taira, and the Fujiwara. RotS may require the base game to play, but it’s completely self-contained, using its own version of the main campaign map, its own factions, and its own units. Rise of the Samurai is Shogun 2’s first (and so far only) mini-campaign, and is set during 12th Century Japan during the ‘Gempai War’ – a conflict that dealt with the rise of the samurai as a ruling class and which resulted in the very first Shogunate.
