Medieval II: Total War (PC)

When looking at other reviews of this game, I was somewhat surprised to see how everyone seems to think it's so fantastic. Don't get me wrong - Medieval 2 is good, but considering how good it could potentially be...

But firstly, some basics. If you don't already know about the Total War series, you've really missed out on some great games. What they (at least aim to) do is combine the realism and depth of games like Civilisation with the fast-paced action of RTS games like Command & Conquer - it's a sound principle, giving you control over what happens in your battles and of the greater picture for your nation/empire etc. The way it works is that you switch between "Campaign Mode", where you can move your armies around on a big map of Europe as well as managing your cities and empire, and "Battle Mode" where you zoom in onto a battlefield where you can see your individual soldiers and command them on the battlefield. The potential for depth is enormous, and this is in fact (I believe) the best game concept ever invented, which is why I'm surprised that the Total War games are so unique. Some however might find its complexity overwhelming - it's certainly not a game for younger players or people with short attention spans: if you want a game to be able to zone out while playing, try a shooter or something.

(short abbreviation guide:
M2TW: Medieval 2: Total War
RTW: Rome: Total War, the 3rd Total War game and most like M2TW in graphics and gameplay.
MTW: Medieval Total War, the 2nd Total War game and set in the same time period as M2TW

Graphically, M2TW in incredible, at least in the Battle Mode - the Campaign mode will look very familiar indeed to players of Rome: Total War (the previous installment in the Total War series) as it is basically the same. There were no serious graphical problems with it however, so that's no cause for complaint. The Battle Mode is absolutely spectacular: the landscapes are far more detailed than they were in RTW (you now feel like your troops occupy a fully detailed world, not just a tabletop-game style blank space with unrealistic backgrounds). As another graphical-related topic, M2TW finally sees the reappearence of videos for Assassins, which have been missing since Shogun Total War, the very first TW game. The detail is staggering, which brings us to the first gripe with this game: to run it properly, you really do need a top-of-the range computer. a decent graphics card is absolutely essential as well as as much RAM as possible. Do not even consider buying this game unless you are absolutely sure your computer will manage to play it, otherwise you will really wasting your money and missing out.

So, gameplay-wise, what has changed since RTW and MTW? Obviously, the timeframe: M2TW stretches from 1080-1530, significantly later than MTW allowing for more diverse choices later on in the game (Musketeers and Pikemen being more than just a novelty now), and the expansion of the campaign map to include Central America. Periodic "events" such as the discovery of gunpowder and others such as the Mongol Invasion will be familiar to MTW players. But other than these MTW elements, surprisingly little has changed in gameplay from RTW. Settlements are now divided into "cities" or "castles", able to perform different functions than before (cities being mainly economic centres and only able to produce a limited number of militia-type troops, Castles allowing training of more specialised and sophisticated troops, and being easier to defend from enemy attack, but without access to the high-quality economic structures that cities do). The differences you would expect from the change in setting from the aincient world to the medieval one are all there: missile fire is generally more effective, javelins are much rarer and less effective, siege weapons are more common and better (especially gunpowder ones). On the campaign map, the Papacy is far more interesting than it was in MTW or than the Senate was in RTW (you may actually find yourself doing what the pope says, or even - gasp - wanting to please him!)

But despite all this, which is of course good, any veteran Rome player will start to notice small niggling annoyances which detract from the game experience. Lots of text is the same (you will still be told "Ony a Military Genius/Fool could Win/Lose this battle"), and some descriptions of character traits/retinue members are the same. These would have taken so little time to change that there is really no excuse for them. Similarly, hovering over provinces on the map will now merely say "London Province" instead of "Wessex" or "Caernarfon Province" instead of "Wales" - seing as in RTW provinces had proper names (like Germania Superior and so on) different from the names of the settlements inside them, I can only attribute this to laziness on the part of the designers. Coupled with the fact that some game features could use serious refinement (Princesses are virtually completely pointless, not the useful diplomatic tools they were envisioned as) and the fact that this game is riddled with Bugs, one's overall impression is that this game was rushed out before being properly finished. You know there's something wrong when patches are released within a week or two of the game hitting the shelves! Yes, there are bugs. Many of them. Just like in all TW games. Now, I don't expect every game to be released perfect, but this happened with RTW as well - there are AI issues regarding standing still on the battlefield in M2TW unpatched which make it quite unplayable, just as with RTW. This would be bad enough, but as the designers have had years to try and get this right it is incredibly frustrating seeing them make the same mistakes all over again.

Bugs aside, there are aspects of the game that are annoying. It's OK to sacrifice a certain ammount of realism for the sake of gameplay, of course, but there are some things which are just silly - your characters lifespans are double what they should be, and certain factions are very limited in their choice of units, certainly making them unique but also making them very unbelievable (I find it hard to believe that the Scots had no access to muskets whatsoever).

So, to summarise, I'll be waiting for a few decent mods to come out before playing this game again. Once they do, or at least some better patches are released, I'll recommend it - for now, I'm going back to Rome Total War.