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Medieval II: Total War (PC DVD)In a nutshell:After the glories of Rome the Total War series is returning to the most turbulent era in Western history as you take control of the country of your choice in the golden age of chivalry and really big battles.
The lowdown:Some games think they're doing well if they have more than a dozen enemies on screen at one time. Medieval II: Total War has 10,000 at once. This is a remake of the best selling Medieval game using an enhanced version of the Rome: Total War graphics engine, which allows for twice the level of detail where every face is different and armour, shields and clothing vary from man to man. All the new features and advancements of Rome are also added into the game, including the 3D strategy map. On top of this it adds a vastly greater variety of new factions and units as well as the American continent to explore and exploit. Most exciting moment:The new graphics and gameplay features all come together for the new night time sieges, with tens of thousands of soldiers on screen at once as the boiling oil and the flaming arrows create a sight to make Hollywood weep. Since you ask:The game is, as much as possible, historically accurate, with in-game information available to explain about the Crusades, Renaissance and the discovery of the Americas. The bottom line:The largest scale Total War game ever created with the best graphics in a strategy game ever.HARRISON DENT |
Average User Rating: 80% (77 Reviews) | |
| 4 / 5 | A solid "version 1.5" of the original Medieval: TW
Dr. P. J. A. Wicks (London, England) - 22 December 2006 I've been a big fan of the Total War series since its first release, "Shogun", a fair few years back. Medieval Total War 2 (MTW2) is the latest in the series and rather than move to a different period, is actually a further development of the previous game Medieval Total War. The most recent entry, Rome:Total War was one of the best games of all time, hands down. Read its reviews (and if you haven't played it please do!!!) to see why. The rest of this review is aimed at gamers who know the series quite well; if you've never played a total war game I would go and get Rome first, and come back to this one later on or if you are really interested in the time period. MTW2 feels to me like it is version 1.5 of the original MTW rather than a whole new game in itself. Yes the graphics are improved, and yes there are some neat units out there. But really the game dynamics have changed very little indeed and there are still some underlying flaws which haven't been addressed since the first installment. The first issue is enemy AI on the battlefield. Enemy spearmen are quite happy to stand there getting pelted with arrows when if they only charged you, you'd be ripped to shreds. Unless the computer has a sheer weight of units to use against you, you can usually defeat it on "medium" difficulty. So far as I can tell, increasing the difficulty just makes the AI's troops harder to kill, it doesn't make it particularly sneaky. This sense that you are just playing against a computer and not a devious general takes away from your sense of immersion and reminds you that you are just going through a routine, which in my view detracts from the experience. The second issue is one that is not unique to Total War by any means; the game is totally indecipherable without buying either an expensive (and usually poorly written) strategy guide, or reading one of the excellent FAQ documents you can find online (GameFAQs is a good place to start). As game boxes get smaller, manuals are becoming thin and flimsy with very little info on how to play the game. If you are not an experienced Total Warrer I think you would get quite frustrated playing this. The in-game "advisors" are as useless as ever, chiming in with repetitive reminders of what a spy does every time you click on one, but never actually giving you relevant, timely, specific advice. That's enough of the negatives, let's move on now to some of the positives. One of the major ways in which this game is an improvement upon the first MTW is that managing your faction and your settlements is a lot less fiddly and prone to frustration. In the original MTW you only had to turn your back on a settlement for five minutes and they'd be revolting, forming a new faction, and generally needing massive troops garissoned there to keep a lid on things. In MTW2 your population is a LOT more forgiving and you are provided with several buildings which increase happiness by big chunks. That means less elite units stuck behind your castle walls filing their nails and more action out on the battlefield. The religion system has also been streamlined and the relationship with the Pope works very well in my view. I have yet to play as a Muslim faction but the crusades, papal elections, and need to purge the heretics is a fun thread of the game that doesn't become too frustrating. There is a welcome return to the fun in-game movies that appeared whenever your assassin attempts a mission, and even better once you've seen a movie you can opt not to see that type of movie again. My favourites are still the "geisha" assassin from the original Shogun: Total War and I wouldn't mind seeing a remake of that game too! If I could give a couple of little tips to those about to embark on a campaign: - Trade will make you more money than farming ever will. Only improve farming twice, then switch to trade buildings otherwise your cities will overpopulate. - Merchants aren't worth it unless you're sitting on a resource making >100 gold per turn - Specialise castles to produce troops, don't try and make every settlement a "jack of all trades and a master of none" - Keep the Pope happy. - When assaulting a castle, blow the gates down with catapults or cannons. All in all then a worthwhile addition to the series and a good piece of workmanship. It takes some of the splinters out of the origial MTW but doesn't really advance the series forwards very much. Apparently there's an all-new era to be tackled in the next installment, I for one will be looking forwad to it!... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | The best war/strategy game - but beware the system specifications
Will (UK) - 16 November 2006 As with most Total War veterans I've been waiting for the release of this game with some anticipation. I won't go into the quality of the game, other reviewers have taken care of that, and any criticism of Medieval 2 as a game is churlish. However, and this is quite a big however, beware the minimum system specifications! I built my computer (on a budget) ostensibly to play Rome TW (amongst other things), approx 12 months ago, and it handled everything the game could throw at it. AMD 64 3200, 1Gb dual channel RAM, 256 Mb PCI express graphics card, etc. When I first started using Medieval 2 on the above machine battlefield movements were at best `clunky' and the response time was rather slow, and frustrating. Perhaps I'd been spoiled by being able to play Rome at its top setting seamlessly. After some research on the web, it would appear that all TW games are usually memory intensive, Medieval 2 being no exception, and therefore the greediest. Anyway I've whacked on another 1Gb of dual channel memory (so four banks of 512K), and it now works beautifully. Unless you have at least 1Gb of memory I wouldn't even bother with Medieval 2, you'll have more fun playing the previous TW games. I hope this helps any potential purchasers... ... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | A less aracde offering and more mature offering.
Seafireliv "I" (UK) - 21 June 2007 MTWII is a very good game. Less like RTW and more like the original MTW and Shogun Total War. Rome Total war was very arcady and imho appealed to the mass pop-corn eating crowd, yet, even though graphically MTWII is similar, it drops a lot of the pretentious bits that RTW had. You don`t get thousands of female horse archers (or Amazons) fighting you, which I found incredibly unbelievable (with so many females dying how would the Faction procreate even adequately? Would society accept the death of so many?). Also, thousands die, but no blood? RTW battles were too short, infantry ran as fast as horses. Now MTWII addresss much of this and therefore is more `realistic` without becoming boring. More authentic historical units take you on. Faction accents are now based on reality (English sound like English, French like French, Italian, etc). With 1.2 diplomacy is more logical and nations keep peace longer if you get on with them. Women have the role they would mostly have had at the time, as princess` producing Heirs, or being married off to cement an Ally or for diplomatic talks on behalf of the King. I even like the odd comments they come out with like `I get seasick, M`lord` or `Is that the way you talk to a Lady?` MTWII is filled with little spoken word comments from all factions. It would`ve been nice to have the occasional Queen happen though... The battlemap is much better and perhaps the most realistic part of the game in that battles are realistic slower, and on the higher difficulty settings will ebb and flow (but the speed can be adjusted by the difficulty - Very Hard is not really Very Hard, just the most realistic setting to life)... Men will get tired and soon you undestand that FATIGUE ,alien to RTS games, becomes a real facter. In fact, MTWII is not a RTS at all, you don`t churn out men while fighting unrealistically (which I can`t stand) but have `em set and ready from the Campaign screen. Makes `em feel more like Humans who were actually born and trained to battle, not clones. And on clones, MTWII is different in that each soldier on the battle is an INDIVIDUAL, they all look different. Dunno how they managed that. And they bleed too, not much, but it`s there. Oh yea and you get the classic return of film bits of attempted assinations just like STW. There are some annoying bugs, as usual with every game. Sometimes units get stuck in cities on battles, diplomacy AI can at times be illogical (offering me more for less in a counter-proposal)and crossbow men lobbing bolts like arrows, which has never been addressed. But... A worthy successer to STW, let alone the others. 5 Stars.... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | Well done CA
M. Vermorken "Chris Vermorken" (Brussels) - 22 October 2006 Speaking to you all as a total war fanatic, I felt a need to give this monumental game a review before it is even released. I' ve played total war games since the very first release of the hallowed beginnings with "Shogun: total war" and have bought and loved every edition since. Medieval: Total war was a huge improvement compared with Shogun and this trend has continued, one could even say that the creative assembly have an exponentially growing game quality rate. Rome Total War has obviously been the best version yet but it lacked some of the more captivating features ffrom Medieval such as royal weddings, civil wars, crusades(which obvioulsy couldn't be included) and teh apparition of historical figures at certain periods. Medieval II total war is without question the best game to be released in 2006/2007 and a part from the breathtaking graphics, it finally offers the features from Medieval which Rome did not include, and many more. It is very rare for me to publicly say this but In view of many more fantastic releases and as a sign of respect towards those who made it, do not download this game; buy it, install it, love it. Ch.Vermorken... Read Full Review » |
| 5 / 5 | A real leap forward in realistic gaming
Exvirilis "exvirilis" - 13 November 2006 For reference, my PC is 2-3 years old - I have a 3000+ Athlon, 1G of Ram and an ATI. I have played all the total war games - Japan, Medieval, Rome and now this one Extraordinary. I have had this game now for one weekend and have had to come up for air to go to work. Installation - faultless. The game comes on two discs. No problems loading up. Campaign: Very similar to the Rome:Total War campaign map. Seems like there is more graphical detail though. It's easier to choose appropriate terrain, although there is still the issue that you think you're on high ground, but when a battle comes you find yourself fighting uphill. No biggy, but slightly annoying. The main change from Rome is that now your settlements are either cities or castles. Cities produce more cash and have walls, but are not as easier to defend as castles. Castles have great defensive walls but do not produce as much cash. It's a small change but actually does change gameplay significantly - you now have to think more strategically. In addition, cities can only produce infantry - no cavalry or decent missile units (although they can produce ballista and later, artillery). This means that you can't get away with having just cities - you need castles for those units. The change also means that after a battle, you have to get your cavalry and missile units back to a castle to retrain. Difficult sometimes. It means that you need castles on your borders. Once you expand territory, you then need to think proactively about changing castles to cities that are secure within your borders. There's so much more I can talk about but no room - the merchants are new. Assassins and diplomats work in a similar way as before. Battles: Wow. Just wow. I know gameplay is everything, but let me spend a few moments talking about the graphics. The difference between this and what has gone before is amazing - I keep losing more men than I should in battles because I spend so much time zoomed in watching close up melee battles. In particular the cavalry units. If you still have the original medieval on your pc, load up a battle from that and then one from this. Just gives you an idea of how far they've come. Ok, now the gameplay. It's much more realistic. Some things I've noticed - Tiredness and morale seem to play a bigger part. You really can't just run your cavalry everywhere and expect them to fight. That may be just me though - I never played on hard settings. I'm a coward like that. Battles with rebel armies in your territories - seem to be harder than before. You can't just roll over them with a few decent units as you could in Rome - more thought is needed. They don't seem to run away as willingly. My old trick when I'm besieged of luring besieging armies towards walls so that the towers and missile units on the walls can pick them off with arrows - doesn't work anymore. Enemies are not just going to sit next to the wall dieing off in great numbers. They'll sit out of range, even with no commander. Much more realistic. So, I've only been playing for a weekend. Clearly there is more to discover, but for those who have played and enjoyed the other total war games, there really is no question - you must get this game. For those who have not played the total war games before - there is a lot to learn. You have to invest a lot of time in learning how everything fits together, but definitely worth persevering. I have no hesitation in recommending this game. ... Read Full Review » |
RRP
£34.99
Release Date
10 November 2006
Price Range
£5.90 - £13.83