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After 20+ hours of play -- not satisfying

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 66 / 118
Date: November 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Creative Games has once again released a Total War game that is loaded with bugs.

1. These bugs include a very passive AI which often sits still while the player shoot arrow after arrow into the enemy army.
2. Laggy game for anyone that does not have a high performance machine even with graphic levels turned way down.
3. Pathfinding bug that has the AI walking back and forth during city assaults.
4. Several crash to desktop bugs
5. Overpowered agents particularly the inquisitors which seem to kill everything.
6. Not a challenging game with too many easy-to-exploit bugs. The game in its current form is not much fun.

Now, there are better aspects to the game.
1. The graphics are better
2. The AI does seem to better in battle (when it isn't passive).
3. The diplomacy is better than Rome Total War but that isn't saying much. It is still simplistic and does a lot of irrational things.
4. A patch was supposed to be immediately available to correct bugs that were identified by CA prior to release. However, CA is now saying they need a minimum of 2 weeks to correct all the bugs. I suspect 2 weeks is very optimistic.
5. The patch is supposed to correct some of the more obvious bugs. Although they are releasing an unpacker for MODS, modding is very very limited since models can no longer be changed. This essentially makes modding very limited.

Same as Rome total war

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 26
Date: November 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This version is too similar to Rome Total War. Theres no reason to be a pagan who wants to destroy(Mongols, Vandals). You must want to build dirt roads, roads, then paved roads or lose.

The new Pope election is fun, and maybe because its something new. The rest is just a repeat.

It takes like 50 years to finish making a town.

When Portugal Attacks

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 139 / 147
Date: November 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

When I first got this installed and running on my middle-of-the-road system I was expecting it to be a chugging, slow mess. I was happily surprised to find that except for battles against larger cities or against thousands of foes, it runs just fine. I have yet to have a crash, something which in this day and age of "shove it out the door broken and patch it later" game releases is to be commended.

The graphics are beautiful but are not the amazing leap forward like occurred from Medieval 1 to Rome. Think of it more as putting an extra coat of shiny polish on your car. The effects of firing flaming arrows and the pageantry of heraldric colors on the knights and other troops are beautiful to watch. The little movies showing events like weddings and your assassins' antics are often genuinely hilarious (until you've seen them all 100 times). But all that is also just eye candy, there's very little NEW here that wasn't in Rome. Also, the medieval setting has now been done to death in this game's predecessor and other games in the last few years and I'm praying that the next title WON'T be a remake of the original Shogun but will move the series squarely into the gunpowder age, culminating with Napoleon. Enough with the primitive and medieval weapons and tactics.

The AI has been improved marginally, but I am still attacked for ridiculously random reasons no matter the difficulty level I play on. As England I had developed into one of the largest powers on the map and Portugal inexplicably attacked me without provocation despite our neutral relations (not "poor" or "abysmal", mind you) and trade rights. Needless to say they were immediately squashed, but why would they even bother? This is not intelligent AI, it's just annoying AI. Alliances seem to be equally meaningless when they are made with the human and are difficult to achieve unless the AI brings it to you. I have yet to ever form one when I initiate the offer even when it would be a massive advantage to the comp.

Battle AI is more clever at using its archers as harassment and has no hesitation in squashing yours if you leave them unguarded. When outnumbered it does tend to sit there passively as one other reviewer wrote. I have nearly obliterated an entire force with archers while they just sat there in the corner before the general turned tail and withdrew.

Overall, it's a small step forward and the Rome engine is certainly beautiful to watch in action. The Total War series still is unparalleled in strategic enjoyment on both levels but the next offering in the series needs to be groundbreaking in both time period and AI complexity.

Rome: TW with a Medieval twist

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 18 / 19
Date: November 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Medieval 2 is a good game, but considering the last big technological break through already happend with Rome: TW and the fact that its been years since it came out means to me that the makers of Medieval 2 should have been striving a little harder to make the game more than what it is. There are some great new features, just as IGN's review explains, but I think IGN gave the game a little too much credit. I've been waiting for this game to come out for some time now and I am happy I purchased it, but for those of you who already have Rome: TW, expect pretty much the same thing with better graphics and slightly different interface. However, the strategy map is absolutely identical, no time put into that. Taking turns between the different factions will be just as tedious and mind-numbing as it was in all the other Total war games, something they really need to address before the next release.

Game itself comes with some nice features, like an audio CD including all the music from the game and several DVD's from the History Channel's "Crusades" series on TV. Enough to get you pumped to play? Yes. But not an excuse for some of the hangovers from Rome: TW to still exist. Over all good buy, just getting into my second day of play, ain't bored yet but not exactly stunned either.

8.5 - Presentation
Good classic Total War presentation, what else is there to say? Oh a few bugs do exist but nothing a quick patch won't fix.

9.0 - Graphics
Deffinately an improvment over the last Total War game, however I did experience a performance issue while running high anti-aliasing and Ansotropic settings with a NVidia 7800 BFG (256mb) card.

8.5 - Sound
Classic Total War game sound and music, however not my favorite soundtrack out of the series.

7.5 - Gameplay
Gameplay falls short of what it should be. While Med 2 builds on some key principles, I just didn't have that "wow" factor there was when Rome first came out. More of a Rome: TW with a Medieval mod.

8.0 - Lasting Appeal
Second day of play and still interested. Although I can see myself on to something else within the next few weeks. Questionable if its worth $50 for those of you who already have Rome.

Beautiful, Challenging, & Addictive Grand Strategy Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: November 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Medieval 2 Total War takes all the best elements from all the previous great Total War franchise games and wraps them neatly into one powerful, incredible, almost unbelievably Beautiful, Challenging, & Addictive Grand Strategy Game. The gameplay combines a turn-based "table top" epic strategy component with a visceral, real-time battlefield experience. The game is literally two games in one, and both sides of the game truly shine.

I'm a long time fan of the series, so, I'll admit I have a strong built in preference for this series. I followed this game's development since it was announced, and I'll admit I had very high expectations for this next installment in the Total War series. After Rome Total War, the game had a lot to live up to!

I am pleased to report that my expectations were met...and then some. One need only read all the professional game review sites to see just how favorable the rest of the industry views Medieval 2 Total War. Although not as ground-breaking and original as the previous title in the series, Medieval 2 Total War still delivers incredible, jaw-dropping visuals, competitive AI, gripping music, and just plain tons and tons of fun.

I strongly recommend this game for any fan of the Total War series, any fan of strategy games in general, and even any gamer looking for something set in the medieval era to play. A+

Rushed to product = pesants beat most units!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 23
Date: November 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Despite good reviews, I must let you know of a serious game bug before you spend unnecessary hours before they correct the bug. This is my 4th total war game and the latest one has some serious bugs. The most serious one being incorrect unit defense and attack values resulting in peasants beating most of the early infantry units such as town militia, spear men and etc. Don't take my word for it, if you own the game already, test this bug by playing a custom game; try peasants vs. spear men and the peasants always win. Peasants suppose to have attack value of 4 and defense value of 3 and the militia spearmen suppose to have attack value of 5 and defense value of 7. The units values are all grossly incorrect. I am really fed up with waiting for strings of patches to salvage this half-baked game.

Best RTS GAME EVER?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: November 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Pros- Good A1
Lots of Armies and nations
Great Map
Not to hard to master
Great Graphics
AMAZING BATTLES
Very good diplomacy
Very addicting
Very Replayable
CONS
No in battle save
Naval combat Weak
Requirements are high

Medieval 1 vs. Medieval 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 17
Date: November 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm going to rate the game by comparing Medieval 1 to Medieval 2. In Medieval 2, the number of starting factions you can play as has been drastically reduced. Apparently you can unlock other starting faction when you first win the game. The starting options have been changed, for instance the starting time period is fixed. The strategic map is beefed up in Medieval 2 with a 3D look and feel. The option to not watch AI movement speeds up the time waiting between rounds. There are options for AI assistance in managing cities and castles as well as assisting with units in battle.

The strategic game in Medieval 2 is quite a bit more complex, but in many ways less tedious than Medieval 1. For one thing, you will find that your units fit withing castles and cities regardless of how developed they are. You will rarely have military units scattered all over the place, they will normally be clustered in cities or castles. Cities and castles have been seperated. Generally, cities are for money production and castles are for military production, but there is overlap with both. Aside from the princesses, diplomats, and priests, there are also merchant units that can move to resources scattered on the map and produce income from them. The diplomatic options are greatly expanded and can be an additional source of income by trading things like information or trade rights with other factions for money. Spies play a valuable role and the Pope can cause all sorts of headaches in Medieval 2 that were not part of Medieval 1.

The tactical game has also changed dramatically. First of all you will fight far fewer battles. Second, you will fight even less in the open, most of your bigger fights will be sieges. In Medieval 1 you could usually avoid siege fights because your force of 2000 men would overwhelm a castle that was only able to hold a few hundred enemies. You could simply automatically resolve most sieges with very little fear. In Medieval 2, this has changed. You will need a spy to tell you what is inside a city, and a spy may also open the gates for you when the battle comes if you get lucky. If you don't know what is inside a city and you go to attack it, you may find that you have seriously underestimated and be forced to wait for reinforcments or even withdraw. Conducting sieges is a major part of the game that was possible with Medieval 1 but practically unnecessary.

Other things that have been incorporated into Medieval 2 are missions or tasks from the Pope or a "counsel" of nobles. Ultimately you can ignore the missions but there can be consequences and lost rewards. The rewards can be very valuable. Sometimes the missions are too demanding because they will require doing something that is tough to accomplish at the time you receive it. The addition of the missions is welcome and will sometimes end up taking you in a direction where you might not have been sure what to do next.

At this point the game is not without flaws. Sometimes your units will not respond properly during a battle. For that matter sometimes the AI units don't respond properly either, or so it would appear. I've seen units go back and forth or run at an angles towards an enemy formation and right past them, when they were ordered to attack. Cavalry units are particularly adept and speeding right past an enemy formation that is on the run, completely missing it. Enemy units will sometimes take a horrible pounding from missiles without moving, running, or charging. In one battle I had 3 or 4 archer units expend all arrows from hilltop safety on enemy missile and infantry forces. They just sat there and got reduced by half their strength over 5 minutes. There have also been a few crashes to the desktop here and there, usually right after a battle starts. Hopefully a patch will fix these relatively minor issues.

The computer requirements have been stated by many as being too demanding. However, if you turn down the settings, the game will play pretty smoothly on 2 year old hardware at 1280x1024 resolution. I've got a large amount of RAM (2.5GB) which may help. But my video card is only an ATi X800 AGP and I have an old AMD XP 3200 processor. The game runs fine with the settings turned down.

Overall, I give the game 4 of 5 stars. It is a worthy successor and contains far more depth than Medieval 1. It's not flawless, but definately worth playing.

Solid Title

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: November 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Another great title from the creative assembly. Yes, it is a lot like Rome: Total War, but why drastically change what works? If the creative assembly had reinvented the game then people would be complaining that medieval II *isn't* like rome. Thank dog they didn't screw it all up.

Anyway, if your a fan of the series (or just love a good RTS) then this is it. The IGN review pretty much says it all: rich detail during battle (each warrior moves and looks slightly different, fights look more convincing, better shading, gently waving grass, etc. etc.), and the campaign strategy portion includes more variety over Rome. The "Cresent and the Cross" history channel documentary (DVD) included in the box was a nice surprise. It was interesting to correlate game features with the show.

I was surprised to find that this game performs on my machine about the same as Rome (a little better in some cases and a little worse in others). They must have put in a lot of effort to get all the visual extras rendering that fast.

Medieval II hits the spot for this reviewer.

Best TW GAME

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: November 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I ve been playing the tw series since rome. and i was blowen away. it is an awesome game! and so is Medieval 2!!!!! The graphics are very nice a lot of detail. individual armys ,no clons!!!diffrent shields and and and...the gameplay is awesome. it has afew bugs here and there but a patch is coming and i hope they will fix it. You can spent countless hours again and agian playing this game! The only con I have is that the map though a bit nicerr than in rome has stayed the same and the intro is the same as in rome just diffrent units. But those are small things that dont disturb me!

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