Medieval II: Total War (PC) > Reviews (29)

Total War Games
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For those of you that don't know I'll do a little explaining about the Total War games.
Total War is a hugely successful series of war games by the Creative Assembly. Their first game was released in 1999/2000 (depending on where in the world you live), it was called:
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Shogun:Total War
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Shogun: Total War and was set in the turmoil that was 16th Century Japan and it pretty much revolutionised war games as we knew them over night with it's fantastic mix of real-time battles, diplomacy, conquest and economy building. The follow up to Shogun was the Mongul Invasion, which was an expansion pack for Shogun and was exactly what it said on the box, a Mongol invasion of Japan. For those of you that know your history, you'll know that the Mongolian Khan's had long had their eye on an invasion of Japan and when they did finally get around to invading it what happens? Their fleet is sunk by a huge Typhoon, thousands of men drowned and the Mongolian's quite wisely took this as a sign from their gods that they should leave Japan well alone! The game however is set in a world where the gods have favoured the Mongols with light winds and their ships safely grounded on Japanese soil - and battle commenced.

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Medieval: Total War (The Original)
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Medieval: Total War is set between the beginnings of the 12th Century up to 1492. The action in this game is moved to Medieval Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Gameplay in this game is much the same as it was in the Shogun game, with a few tweaks. The graphics were improved somewhat, there were many more units to be had (in Shogun each faction had the same troop types available to it), including unique units for certain countries, for example only the English could recruit Billmen and Longbowmen as historically these troops were not available/weren't recruited by, say, the Spanish. As a whole Medieval Total War took what was great about Shogun and made it better.
The expansion for Medieval was The Viking Invasion, which again was exactly what it said on the box. The year is 792 and the Vikings are coming to the Saxon shores of England (or rather what was to become England because it was just a bunch of Saxon kingdoms back then). You can play as either the Vikings, Northumbrians, Mercians, Wessex, Picts, Scots, Irish or Welsh (Britons).

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Rome: Total War
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Rome was a huge upgrade from Medieval Total War, the whole system of gameplay was changed, a new map introduced, more city options and amazing graphics. Also for those who did not have top of the range computers options were introduced to allow you to lower graphic options, so you could still get the full gameplay, but without the great graphics (I don't know what it looked like with poor graphics as my computer is/was top of the line so the graphics were great). Rome: Total War was set during the rise of the Roman Empire. It was slated somewhat for being historically inaccurate but I don't think that took anything away from the great gameplay.

The expansion pack for this one was The Barbarian Invasion and this focussed on the fall of Rome. You could play as the Roman Emperor trying to keep his crumbling empire in one piece, or as one of the many barbarian people's pressing on Roman borders.

and finally!

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*****Medieval 2: Total War*****
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Factions:
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Medieval 2: Total War is set up in the same way as previous releases, in that you must choose a 'faction' to command. Factions are pretty much countries. There are 21 factions in total, of which 17 are fully playable.
England, France, Breton, Scotland, Venice, Italian City States, Turks, Egyptians, Almohads (Moors of Northern Africa), Scicily, Poland, Aragon, Castille, Russia, Hungary, Byzantine Empire & Portugal are the playable faction.
Each faction have their own unique units to recruit and their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, playing as England will mean almost constant warfare with France over the possesion of Brittany, Normandy and Aquitaine (Gascony). Not to mention having to maintain garrisons in Northumbria to counter raids, and full scale invasions from the Scottish King, who is mostly allied with the French!

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Campaign Map
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The Campaign map is where you develope your cities, move armies, recruit troops, initiate diplomacy and so on. The campaign map is divided into regions, for example: England is divided into Wessex with London as it's capital, Mercia with Nottingham as capital and Northumbria with York as capital. In the capitals you can build new buildings which then allow you access to new units or give you financial or population growth bonuses, ie: building stables will give you access to some cavalry units. But having stables and an armoury will give you access to Armoured cavalry units.

Later in the game you will have the oportunity to go to the New World and exploit it's wealth and people (is that a good thing? I think it seemed like a good idea at the time...). You'll have to do battle with the Aztecs for complete control of the New World (not to mention the other European nations who all want a piece of the action)

Also during the game you will get missions from your council of nobles, well not so much missions as suggestions on what they feel you should achieve. Playing as the French your nobles always want you to push the English out of your lands, while if you play as the Spanish Castillians, your nobles will always be telling you to send your armies south and drive the moors back into africa, away from your lands and to convert your citizens back to catholisism (as a lot of them have been conquered and converted to Islam)

Building churches keeps your population happy so there is less chance of rebellion and so on.
If you have played Rome:Total War then you may be thinking there is nothing new here, but there is. Building chrches and cathedrals for example buys you favour with the pope who will not meddle in your affairs to much if you appease him! That brings me on to the next topic:

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Religion
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During the middle ages religion was very important and it is so in Total War.

You can spread the word of the Catholic Church or Islam by sending out Priests (or mullas) to your rivals lands, this will buy you favour with the pope.
During the course of the game, if you play as a christian faction you will be given tasks by the Pope. He may ask you to crusade against the Moors and capture Jerusalem for the glory of Christ. Crusades are expensive undertakings and shouldn't be taken lightly, however, refusing the Pope in medieval europe was not a good thing to do!
You will get browny points for conquering Pagan countries (such as Lithuania) and imposing christianity on them, as well as conquering Moorish lands and converting people to Christianity.
If you play as an Islamic faction you will gain respect from fellow Islamic factions and the more lands you impose your religion on the better for you!
Priests and Mullas also act as spies, so as well as spreading your religion you can gain vital information on your rivals.

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Battles
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Battles in Medieval 2: Total War are nothing short of spectacular. Graphics are amazing and when it works correctly the AI is fantastic! (I will talk about the AI a little later).

A battle can feature up to 10,000 individually animated warriors per army, each one with unique features and wearing different livery. If you zoom in on one of your units you will see the men all have different beards, hair, scars and clothing/weapons. This is previously unheard of in any game I have to say and they must have put one hell of a lot of work into this!

Battles are fought in real time, ie you don't issue a bunch of orders and watch them carried out, you give orders as the battle rolls on.

It truly is like watching a film. The battles in Medieval Total War will easily rival scenes you may have seen in films like Braveheart and Gladiator. The sound is fantastic, especially if you have surround sound speakers! You'll be ducking and diving for cover! (well maybe not...but you get the general idea right?).

Sieges are also truly impressive, you set up your siege engines (which during later years includes cannons) and bombard your enemies walls, once you've pounded them to dust send your infantry and cavalry swarming into the city to butcher, burn and loot as much as you see fit, as long as you manage to defeat the defending army of course!

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AI (Artificial Inteligence)
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The AI on this game is really good most of the time, but very bad if you play on the lower levels of difficulty. For example my first game I played as England and had the difficulty set to easy. Within 30 years I had conquered Scotland, Ireland, and most of France, had fought a dozen battles and not lost once. The computer never once fielded an army with decent units, didn't upgrade his settlements, never invaded my land and his armies just seemed to march backwards and forwards to nowhere.

When I fought battles set on Easy (and Medium) most of the time the computers army just stood there while I pounded his forces with longbowmen, resulting in most of the computer's army lying dead in the same ranks they had stood in at the start of the fight...

I was initially very dissapointed with this.

However, after a while I upped the difficulty to the harder levels and on these levels the computer is truly cunning. It feels like you're playing against another human player most of the time. The computer will upgrade settlements, take the initiative and field good armies - great.

So if you want a good game set the difficulty above medium, unless of course you like slaughtering your enemies where they stand during battles with no/hardly any fight back! :-)

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Multiplayer
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Multi Player games are available online, you can choose a scenario, pick an army and do battle with another person somewhere else in the world. Be warned however that if your computer is not up to the recommended standard then don't even attempt a mutli player battle as it will lag a LOT, making the game unplayable. You need a Broadband connection to play online.

Only battles are available to play online, you can't play a campaign game. I thought maybe they would include an online campaign game but they haven't, I suppose it is not realy feasible to do as campaigns can take up to 6 months to complete (and more!) I have as yet not finished a campaign, having had the game for a little over 3 weeks, I am talking from my experience of previous Total War games.

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System Specs/Addition Information/Tips
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You will need a top of the range computer to take full advantage of this great game here are the minimum specifications:

English version of Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP
Celeron 1.8GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or equivalent AMD® processor.
512MB RAM
8x Speed DVD-ROM drive (1200KB/sec sustained transfer rate) and latest drivers
11.0 Gigs of uncompressed free hard disk space
100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers
100% Windows® 2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers
DirectX® 9.0c
128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 1 support and the latest drivers. Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible.
Monitor must be able to display 1024x768 resolution or above.
Multiplayer:
Internet (TCP / IP) play supported, internet play requires broadband connection and latest drivers, LaN play requires Network card.

Important Note: Some cards may not be compatible with the 3D acceleration features
utilised by Medieval II: Total War. Please refer to your hardware
manufacturer for 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatibility.
This information is based on specifications supplied by manufacturers and should be used for guidance only.

I have to say that these are the bare minimum specifications and to enjoy this game fully you will need a Pentium Processor with a clock speed of atleast 2.5GHZ. Also I would not recommend this game to anyone whos computer has less that 1024 MB RAM.

You can check the Total War website for more info: www.totalwar.com

The cheapest place to buy is on www.play.com

For technical support you can email support@activision.com (you will need to have your product registered online to take advantage of this however). Alternatively you can call them on 0870 241 2148 or log on to www.

activision.com/support were you will find FAQ and more.

The best graphics card to use with the game is Nvidia 256MB (or higher).

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In Conclusion
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This is a fantastic fourth outing for the Total War series, it builds on everything CA have done over the last 7 years or so and delivers a great looking, very much playable game (As long as you have a top notch computer!)
You need plenty of patients to play this game however, due to the epic nature of the game! That's not a bad thing in my books but may be enough to put some people off!
I hope you liked the review, be sure to check out the screenshots I have provided below to see the stunning graphics and get a bit more of a flavour for the game.

-Nick