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If you spent much time on playing the first Medieval Total War, you should have tons of fun with the sequel :)
I have bought all the previous Total War games, and got sick of Rome:Total War after 4 years of playing, much to my wife's disgust and nagging, and decided to buy Medieval Total War 2:Kingdoms, to bug her that much more. Different from Rome and the other previous Total War games, you have to please not only your own nobles, but have to make the Pope happy, usually by not attacking other Catholic Christian factions.
To me it seems that Medieval Total War 2 is a combination of all the previous Total War games into one. If not, you incure the wrath of the Church and can become excommunicated, then all havoc breaks loose on you for different Catholic factions as well.
I have recently bought this game off Amazon and have been very, very impressed with it. Graphics are great, battles are much harder then Rome: Total War, Politics and Religion actually play a large part.
The cool assination video from Shogun Total War, the ransoming of captured prisoners and depth of troop types from Medieval Total War 1, and the stunning graphics and map (not like a Risk board but actually holding mountain passes or hiding in forests to ambush unsuspecting armies)of Rome Total War. The only word of caution I have would be to invest in a higher quality graphics card if you are looking into this game, plus the memory requirments are steep.
:)My overall expereince is very impressed.
And there are castle sieges where you must defend your city from invaders. Think of it as chlorine in your family gene pool. There are the battles. some make great generals, some make great governors. You may ask another nation for Map Information and offer 200 gold. The game is rated T for Alcohol References, Blood, Mild Language, a bit of innuendo, and Violence in the form of large scale battles.Buy it cheap if you want months of light strategy and epic battles.If you're looking for a Starcraft Killer, you should probably keep looking. When they flee, you can let them retreat, or run them down to finish them off.
There are also infantry (swordsmen) who fare well against the spearmen. It's up to you to put them in the right places. The game would have been much better if the Map Information cost X, and you had to negotiate to get X down.Overall: 8/10Learning the World Map and Battle Strategies is great fun and feels rewarding, but the limited AI and clunky interface keep the game from being GREAT. There is a World Map where you can move armies and units across a battlefield and into enemy territories. The battles are fought between units in an RTS, rock, paper, scissors, type of battle.
You strategically use diplomats, merchants, religious figures, spies, assassins, princesses, and armies to thwart your opposing nations. If you see a bunch of enemy swordsmen, you can pepper them with arrows and kill half of them as they are charging, then run them down (literally) with heavy calvary. The "Short" Campaign could take you anywhere from 8 - 40 hours to finish. I was up until 4am, 4 nights in a row.Concept: 9/10In Medieval 2GP, you play as 1 of 17 different Factions / Nations in an attempt to use diplomacy, treachery, and military might to take over the world. If you have a brother in-law who is a weak commander and not very loyal, you can send him off to fight the Mongols Far Far away from your homeland. You can even form an alliance with another nation, and use spies and assassins on them if you don't get caught. If they declare war on you, the Pope may excommunicate them for violating the alliance, or even launch a Holy Crusade against them.
If you want to play the game like an RTS, you can have the AI govern your cities, while you fight the battles. If you are at war with another Christian Faction, the Pope may order you to cease fire for a few turns, which usually allows the enemy to regroup and counterattack. I picked up Medieval II Total War / Total War Kingdoms Gold Pack for $30 and I have to say, for that price it's a great deal. Creative Assembly's and SEGA's websites were less helpful than a Magic 8 Ball. How you conquer your enemies is completely up to you.Interface Screens: 5/10Switching screens to manage your cities is pretty clunky and it seems that you have to click to 3 different screens to gather information before you make a decision. There is also a dedicated Modding community that has further enhanced the game.Graphics: 8/10The graphics are impressive on the high settings and it's pretty incredible to watch 4000 soldiers clash on the battlefield with arrows raining from the sky and catapults destroying fully destructible cities.
They may refuse and GIVE YOU 1000 GOLD. For example, after a battle, if you decide to execute your Prisoners of war, a box appears on the far left of the screen. Diplomatic Negotiations are pretty broken in the game. There are literally hundreds of different types of units. Send spies, and assassins to take out the governor, kill the militia, and the citizens could riot and rebel against their king.
On the World Map, you can hide your armies in the woods to ambush enemies, or position them in choke points to halt enemy advances. But you can actually destroy an enemy city without attacking it. This gets a little irritating after a while because it feels like everything is 3 clicks away, when it should be 1 click. With the expansions, there are more maps, 13 more Factions, and 110 more military units. You don't want his offspring inheriting your kingdom. There are months of gameplay packed into this game.
The game displays their morale and you can see when they are about to break. I'll post the solution in the Comments Section below.Gameplay: 7/10There are three types of gameplay in the game. This plays out like old school RISK.There is faction management, where you govern your cities, raise or lower taxes, build structures that provide troops and upgrades for your army, balance your budget, put your leaders in the most optimal places, and assemble your armies. Unlike Starcraft, you don't have to kill every enemy on the battlefield. Left Click on the Box and it says, "Your Commander has +1 Dread" - right click to close the box.
The game features a Battle Mode where you can fight a Battle against AI, a Short Campaign where you must wipe out 1 or 2 rival nations and occupy a good portion of the world map, or a Grand Campaign, where you must occupy Jerusalem and a very large portion of the world. Now find your commander on the battle map, left click on him, then double right click to bring up his stats to see how much Dread he actually has and what it means. You can break their morale and get them to run away. There are many ways to topple an enemy town. or you can send diplomats to negotiate with your enemy and harm their economy. It was a great idea to cater the game to both styles of play.Strategies: 8/10The AI is pretty simple in the game, and once you figure out how to play, you will rarely lose a battle.
You can use units and the terrain to your advantage. It feels like a die roll, instead of strategy.
There are open field battles in different types of environments, mountains, snow, forests.There are castle sieges where you must use catapults, rams, ladders, siege towers, to take over a walled city. It would have been great if that first window showed my all of my commander's stats and his location.Issues: Diplomacy.
NOTE: I had an awful time getting my NVidia 7900GT to work with this game, but I finally found the solution on a forum. If you have a charming princess, you can marry an enemy general into your family, stealing their army.
During a battle, you can also pause the action and issue commands, or speed it up 2x - 6x so you don't have to wait for the troops to get into position.If you want to play the game RISK style, you can have the AI simulate the battles and get a results screen that says something like: Victory, you lost 200 men, the enemy lost 650 men. Your Heirs, Commanders, and Governors have stats.
Archers are great at long range, Horsemen can run over the archers, spearmen can set themselves in a defensive formation and impale a cavalry charge.
The expansion includes 4 new campaigns 1 the new world 2 the crusades 3 England 4 the Teutonic order. This game is among the best strategy games ever made. the rts play is awesome and it is not like other games where the richest one wins not always the richest one who wins it always gives you an edge being rich but it is the best general who wins in the end. It runs great and I have been playing it for a year and it has not crashed my computer. It is very realistic but I do not like the fact that I have no control over navel battles. The possibilities are endless there custom battles and over 40 factions to choose from (counting the expansions).
Not an issue for me, but some buyers might care. As shipped (from Galactics), this product was two separate boxes, Total War 2 and the Kingdoms Expansion pack, rather than a single box and disk as many other Gold Edition products are, and as the picture suggested.
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