Medieval 2: Total War
Paul falls for this historical epic
It struck me while playing Medieval 2: Total War (ME2) that perhaps I'm a bit too much of a pacifist at times. I was quite happy ruling my bit of Europe and keeping the populace safe and happy, I had fought hard to secure the whole of the UK and most of France (because, well, you've got to haven't you...) and had no real desire to expand my empire any further and risk unsettling the relatively comfortable status quo I'd managed to build. Perhaps if I just patrolled my borders and kept up trade agreements with my neighbours I could live out the rest of my reign in peace and harmony. Then, in a strangely inevitable turn of events, an arrogant German noble invaded my lands and soon enough I was back sending my armies ever wider across the map pushing the boundaries of my military might in the quest for dominance. After all, as Tears For Fears once said, 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World'.
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ME2 is a truly massive game, a huge and engrossing turn-based strategy game coupled with an epic real-time battle engine that lets you play out every battle in mind blowing detail. One thing it's not however is easy to pick up and play for a novice, and as such the first few hours of play can be an arduous climb up a very steep learning curve if you're new to the Total War games or historical strategy in general. A brief tutorial takes you through the basics for controlling the game but once you're dropped in at the deep end of the main campaign it doesn't take long before you're wishing you'd paid more attention in history class, and that your history class had in some way covered in-depth military tactics and the intricacies of European politics at the end of the eleventh century. Total War veterans may scoff at such concerns, but for a newcomer whose knowledge of medieval history is sketchy at best the otherwise admirable level of detail and historical realism can be more than a little daunting.
Fight your way through the first few hours of trial and error however and you start to uncover a game that rewards such perseverance. The main campaign sees you become the leader of one of seven factions (more become playable once you've completed the campaign once) and embark on a quest to control the whole of the map before, in a slightly surprising move, moving onto the new world and the chance to pit your might against the Incas. The meat of the game takes place on the turn based world map from where your armies are built and managed, your settlements grown and fortify and the diplomacy of government takes place. The level of detail is staggering as each turn sees you having to keep track of a seemingly endless number of aspects, from sending out spies, entering into trade negotiations and marrying off your most eligible princesses to gain favour in foreign courts and that's before you even start to think about growing your cities, building defences, training new units and eventually waging war.
When war is finally waged you leave behind the turn based world map and move into the nitty-gritty of the real-time battles. On a capable machine (something way above the on-box minimum spec) the battles in ME2 are nothing short of spectacular, individually modelled foot soldiers and cavalrymen give a convincing illusion of a real army marching into battle. Little touches like slight differences to the uniforms amongst regiments increase the sense that each individual soldier is unique and as they engage the enemy under your command you feel a certain attachment to them that other large scale war games often lack. As fantastic as the graphics are and as much fun as you can have sweeping the camera through the battles watching the brutality of war at close quarters, in reality the only way to seriously play is from a far more zoomed out perspective which, to a point, makes some of the graphical splendour on offer slightly redundant. From such a viewpoint it soon becomes apparent how much thought needs to be put into each battle and it doesn't take long before the realism on display hits home, for example sending infantry and archers in to attack the same enemy regiment only to see your archers arrows doing as much damage to your own infantry as the enemies is a rookie mistake that you'll only make once. Battles soon become much more tactical as you start to see how each units strengths and weaknesses can effect the overall impact of your army. You can auto resolve conflicts from the map screen if you wish to remain focused on the more global plan but to do so would be to miss a large part of the ME2 experience, and the chance to see your armies fight on such a grand scale is worth the time and effort.
On top of the general empire building idea of the main campaign, religion plays a large part in proceedings too. Keeping on the good side of the Pope is to be advised unless you want to see your lands swarming with the Inquisition or at worst becoming the subject of a Holy Crusade. To this end it pays to try and complete the Vatican suggested missions that present themselves throughout the game doing so can see you well rewarded as well as keeping you in favour. The inevitable changing of Pope's also adds a twist to the game as you may find your own plans less in favour with the new pontiff and there is also the chance of getting one of your own cardinals elected if your have courted enough favour amongst the council.
Such an epic and technically impressive game isn't without its faults however, the interface on the world map is a bit of a mess and while the sheer level of detail involved makes a clean and simple interface something of an impossibility it does feel a little clunky and unrefined certainly not going out of its way to be intuitive which, especially for beginners, is a shame. A longer tutorial, or some kind of hand holding option through the first few hours would have been a nice inclusion for the uninitiated amongst us. Also, as impressive as the battles are they do start to get a little routine after a while and the temptation to hit auto resolve grows as you get deeper into the game and you'd really just like to move onto the next turn.
Put such minor quibbles aside however and ME2 is a wonderful achievement both technically and, more importantly, in the level of historical detail that it contains. For existing Total War fans keen to get their next fix it offers a step forward in the series that will delight if not surprise, for the strategy crowd in general it's a game you really owe it to yourself to try and for the rest of the world it's a game that's historical realism can be daunting at first but will reward the effort you put into it once the learning curve is climbed.
88%
Comments
so.... is there multiplayer?
ive played Rome:total war.. Brilliant game! im sure this one is just as good
Wow, now I know I'm going to buy this one.
I'm very disappointed with this new version of what was once my favourite game. I would have happily continued with the original version but my new Toshiba P5 won't run it.
With a dual core 1.6MHz laptop, this game runs like a snail. I can only assume the designers haven't considered the fact that dual core cpus exist.
The graphics, even at the map level, move in 'jerk - jerk - jerk - jerk' mode and as for playing an actual battle, forget it! It takes so long to fathom what's going on as units slowly and jerkily react, that it is nothing more than an exercise in frustration.
Trying to position a unit seems impossible. In version 1, you simply 'draw a line' with the mouse and the unit deploys along that line, facing either forward or back depending on the direction you drew with the mouse.
In version 2 there seems no way to accurately position units nor any way to make them face the enemy. A complete nightmare.
Overall I believe this is a waste of money. Maybe it might be interesting on a Cray or something similar, but on my dual-core machine it runs about as fast as a chocolate clock.
I've only been playing a few hours, but so far I'm enjoying it. Note that I have a 1.6 ghz board with a 128 meg ( maybe 256 not sure ) video card... Runs smooth, although I haven't tried max video detail yet...
You can position your troops with the mouse in basically any direction you want view holding & dragging the right mouse button...
I'll agree with the review that it is fairly difficult to get into, and the campaign view is definately not intuitive, but then again neither was Rome Total War... I still think it's easier to get into that the Paradox games like Hearts of Iron...
The tutorial and book are missing A LOT of information... For example, to save or load a game, there is no mouse button to press and instead you HAVE to hit "escape" and go from there...
Also, not a lot of info on buildings or exactly how they impact your towns / castles... I've restarted several times already just to try to figure out which buildings actually help my income ( which seems awfully low )...
Overall though, seems great, although not THAT much of an improvement over Rome Total War... I'd give it something like a 85% right now...
I have a dell 620 with 2 gig rama nd a 256 nvidia card and the game runs fine for 5 mins and then screen movement slows down to unusable. If I leave it alone for 5 mins it starts running fast again. The game has video issues that RTW never had.
when do u discover america in this game
wen the map cuts off on the left - send troops on best ship available over
dudes i hav a intel 2core duo 2.4ghz(summin like that) 2gb RAM and 512mb ATI X1800, will it run on full grafix?
definitely. i have a dual core 2.o ghz cpu, 1 gig ram and 512mb nvidia 7900gs and with that the game runs fine in full graphics in all but the largest battles. be aware! if you have the unit size on huge (a full army is about 2000-3000 men on that) and two massive armies battling reinforcements may not come right away because your computer cannot handle it. normally though this is helpful because it's often the computer's reinforcements that get delayed.
do u have 2 pay 4 this???
do u have to pay a monthly for for this?
medival total war 2 is the best
Total war is a great game even for a novice (first time with economics etc. I only played WWII strategy games). When beginning its good to have the advisors say everything so you dont do anything bad like throw your cavalry headon to spear men. I'm still waiting to discover amerca tho yr:1446. Also when playing as england, Denmark declares war than the next turn asks for a ceasefire. This occurs every other turn for a bit.
It feels so real!
is thier multi playa??????????????????
its cool
This game kicks ass. I only wish my crappy comp could play the game on unit size huge.
Mitch, u can drag and line men up... hold in the right hand mouse button...
it is multiplayer and their is no monthly fee :)
an amazing game (as long as your computer will run it well) once my com was going really slow (virus) and trying to play it was a nightmare lol
i have a pentium 4 dell 3100 with 2 gig ram and a 256mb geforce graphics card with 3 pixel shader will this be enough to play the game plz reply.
i have Intel Celeron D 2.8GHz 1GB ram 256mb nvidia 7600GT
and i can't play in HUGE battle :(
i'l wait then come's EMPIRE total war then i'l Buy the best PC ever
i have a mac and i wanted to know if i can play this game on it. the specs are
2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
256 NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
2GB of RAM.
what highest unti and graphic setting you think i can put it on?
i wont to play