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All I Can Say Is FUN!...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: September 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Medieval:Total War is one of the funnest, most addictive games I've ever played. This game plays more to the mind than just going around and fighting battles. You have to strategicly place your armies in your states, and ally with the right countries to get anywhere in this game, and that's what I like.

The Turn based system is excellent in this game;while giving you the freedom to move and build in a turn (year, in the game), it also is almost like real time in that after your turn ends you can see exactly where the other countries have moved their pieces (but, only in your "zone of influence", aka where you have spies/emissaries).

The diplomatic system is excellent with emissaries and princesses that you can use to get alliances or marry off to forge alliances in blood.

The real time battle sequences are stunning with excellent graphics (the people look a little corny though!), in real life environments. Up to 10,000 troops of all kinds of ranks can be on the battle field at one time, with the option of calling in reinforcements.

All I can say is, BUY THIS GAME,ITS FUN!...

A good mix of strategy and tactical battles

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: September 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Those of you who are familiar with the Shogun Total War series will find this a good improvement and a fun adventure. There have been a number of significant improvements in various aspects of the game. For example, the tactical battle controls have been significantly improved. Also, in Shogun the geisha was unstoppable. In Medieval Total War there are no such things as unstoppable assassins. There are more buildings to choose from in Medieval Total War, and there is a naval aspect as well.

For those who are not familiar with the previous Shogun series let me say that Medieval Total War is a combination of a turn based strategy game as well as a series of tactical battles. As with most strategic games you must balance the expediture of resources between building up your economy and building up your military. Diplomacy is an important aspect of the game, as well as the careful use of spies and religion. The strategic aspects are easy enough to become competent with, but over time a deeper mastery will develop. The highlight for me is the ability to control the tactical battles. You can position and issue orders to the individual units in your army in each battle, and thus can have a substantial impact on the outcome. For example, in a recent battle I used a force of English infantry to destroy a much larger force of desert warriors by careful use of terrain and a knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of each type of unit. You can concentrate on the strategic game and let the AI fight your battles, if you want, or you can ignore the strategic games and play a series of individual battles if you prefer that. My preference is to play the strategic game and also fight the tactical battles myself.

As with many strategy games the chore of managing your empire can become a bit tedious at times, assuming you are successful at building a large empire. However, that is a drawback to success in many games.

If you haven't got it you're deprived!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: March 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have had this game for about 3 months now but I only get to play on it once a fortnight, still those weekends are some of the best. The game, like it's predecesser (i'm sorry i'm really bad at spelling) shogun is truely amazing. The only thing that shogun lacked was stratagy, on the main map, but medieval total war has it all:
you can be decitfull, build huge armies, ally with someone so they leave their borders unguarded and then crush the peasants left to guard them
you can marry your heirs into rivals clans and have claim to their lands when they loose their king
you can build huge infastructures and unlock the technology needed to crush your foes
you can assassinate enemy genrals and uncover vices that make the provence untrusting towards them
you can sit in the seat that many people of the time only dreamed of, controlling huge armies and using them to conquer the whole of europe
this game has no flaws, the army size has a limit yes, but if there were any more men on the battle field then you would need a super computer to run it without problems, the stratagey is superb the battles awesome, the game is a must buy and if you haven't got it you're deprived

Hardcore strategy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Opinions may vary. I am a strategy player since 1992 and this is the most detailed strategy game I have ever played. Basically the game looks like Risk; the table game you play with small symbolic troopers on a world map. But in this game you will have the chance to construct buildings in your provinces and as you build better buildings you will get better troops.

The real excitement starts when you attack somewhere. When you choose to command the battle personally, the battle screen opens in which you will experience the most realistic battles ever created. It is as detailed as real battles

-Your army routs if they see the general running, dead or captured

-Your army routs if they are demoralized like when the enemy occupies a hill or attacks from flanks

-Cavalry cant fight in the woods as it does in the open, giving it -2 attack and defence in forest.

-Heavily armored units fry and get exhausted in the desert.

-Archers cant fire well in the rain. So if your army is attacking and the defender has too many archers, you may choose to attack when it is raining.

-Friendly fire is very realistic; you will have to stop archer salvos once your melee units engage enemy

-You have the option of capturing enemy troopers and if you seem to lose, you can kill em.

-While you are battling with a different religion, both you and them gain bonuses.

-I have been playing the game for a year now and still I use different tactics in each battle. There is no such thing as repeating tactics. You have to recreate your moves.

Bottom line: It is much more realistic than all strategy games combined.

BUT!! PEOPLE WHO ARE USED TO PLAY QUICK STRATEGIES LIKE STARCRAFT OR AGE OF EMPIRES (IN WHICH BATTLES END IN 3 SECONDS) WONT LIKE THIS GAME AND WILL BE BORED. BECAUSE IN THE BATTLE YOU WILL PREPARE YOUR OFFENSE/DEFENSE FOR QUITE A LONG TIME. FOR EXAMPLE IT TAKES TWO MINUTES FLAT TO REACH ENEMY POSITONS.

As for the "Risk-type" game screen:

-Your generals have 5 characteristics:
Loyalty:How loyal is a general to you
Dread:How much fear does he cause (handy if you entitle him as the governor of a rebelious province)
Piety:How religious is this man. If he is very religious his jihads/crusades will gather vast people.
Command:How good a general he is (in case you dont want to fight battles manually)
Acumen:How good he is in eceonomic matters

You will assign titles to your generals or give governorships according to these characteristics.

-Hardest thing in the game is to ensure loyalty of a province which is affected by the garrison size and the characteristic of your governor. You have to station many troops in your provinces to defend against possible rebellion or attack, so you cant push all of your troops to the frontier.

Well all in all the game is perfect and against the common belief it has no bugs. The features that many people call "bugs" are only normal occurrences resulting from neglected determinants and dynamics of the game. There are vast variety of unique units, exclusive to each faction. While Turks have "Jannissaries" Germans have "Chivalric men at arms", but this is not equal in the sense of a footmen to a grunt in Warcraft. All units have their own weakness and no unit is an equivalent to any other in the game. If you have any questions about the game, please feel free to contact me, because I know a lot about the game..

In a class of its own...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: August 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

You could buy this game simply for its fantastic 3-D battles alone and it would be impressive. However, just as exciting is the "bigger picture" strategy where you get to see your faction's color spread across Europe and the Mediterranean coast.

Each faction plays differently, so that the Turks and the Mongols favor horse archers that harass and wear down enemy units while the French and the Germans prefer the impressive charge of the knights. The sheer number of different factions available gives this game staying power, because not all nations are created equally and some starting positions are harder than others.

If you still doubt whether or not to get this game I would DEFINETLY head down to TOTALWAR.com and their downloads page.

Check out their playable demo which is basically a battle tutorial to teach you how to fight in Medieval: Total War. The demo ends with the fantastic historical battle of Jaffa between Saladin and King Richard the Lionhearted.

Multiplayer is great too, because you get to test your generalship against flesh and blood opponents, who are much craftier (and sometimes more foolish) than the computer can be. Playing as part of a team can be an excellent way to participate in a gigantic battle!

Best of all, Creative Assembly is hard at work producing the sequel to this game, Rome: Total War! The soldiers in that game will be in full 3-D! You can check that game out at totalwar.com as well. But Rome won't be out for a while, so in the meantime definitely check out Medieval: Total War and its expansion pack Viking: Total War.

Excellent yet Infuriating

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Usually games of this nature are very small scale and require countless tedious tasks to gather the resources you need to grow your kingdom. With Medieval Total War I was pleasantly surprised. The premise of the game is excellent as are the battle sequences. The pros and cons of the game are as following:

Pros:
- Excellent story and historical accuracy. The inticracies of medieval europe is portrayed well. Nations present in the game come from the following locations: Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Holy Land, and Northern Africa. All the major players of the period are present.
- Lots of different troop types, many of which are exclusive to different nations. This gives the game some replay value since different nations have different strengths and weaknesses.
- Large scale battles can be fought using your own custom armies. These armies can be set up to fit your own particular generalship style. Your generals and troops develop into better soldiers each battle that you win.
- The game focuses on the battles NOT on all the other tedious stuff.
- Everything isn't always peachy. Rebellions, civil war, assassinations can all happen. So you have to think and play certain countries a certain way.

Cons:
- Bugs abound in the game. The most infurating one is when the game boots you out when you try to save after fighting a large battle for 45 minutes. This happens occasionally.
- The computer cheats at times making your good battlefield decisions irrelevant. Like any game the computer needs a little help to keep up with you at times. For the most part this is not a big deal.
- Graphics are sub-par for type-A games now. Not horrible, just not as glossy as you would expect.
- Some battlefield troop mechanics are stupid. For instance a cohort of 100 peasants will attack one foot knight in an open field and not break their rectangular formation and surround the knight. So basically the 2-3 guys on the front of the rectangle will fight the knight.
- Sieges are very simplistic. You can't place your archers on the walls etc.

In summary, I feel that this game definitely has more pros than cons to offer the strategic gamer. Sure it has some problems but when you take on a project like this it would have taken forever to get everything perfect. If you like empire games or medieval warfare this is a must have. Kudos to Creative Assembly. Medieval was such a step up from excellent Shogun that I can't wait for Rome: Total War.

Medieval Total Frustration

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: March 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

For the first few weeks I loved the game, though I was disappointed by the lack of certain refinements I took for granted in the Shogun version. Unlike Shogun the game lacks cinematics for events like assasination, the death of a King etc...These were very well crafted features in Shogun. I would at least have expected some fanfare when certain tasks were accomplished such as conquering the Holy Land but no such luck. Even at the end of the game when the whole map is at your command we are treated to a mere mediocre graphic of a King sittimg on a throne with ambassadors milling about humbly. Luckily the game does feature great maps and battle scapes. Unfortunately the game does not have any reliability when deciding upon weather during campaign as you may decide to fight on a "fine" day only to discover yourself in a torrential downpour.This really buggers up a lot of the subtleties of strategy. Likewise maps which aught to display lowland vistas will instead reveal a river crossing which really buggers up the fine subtleties of strategy. But nonetheless the game does provide entertaining battles to make up for these annoyances. Unfortunately the annoyances will begin to mount on you after a while and spoil what should be masterful game. The variety on units and their special skills does make the game more interesting. It also makes the game more confusing. Basic rules such as spearmen beat cavalry, cavarly beat archers, archers beat spearmen just dont apply. Figuring out which special units defeat which special units can be utterly frustrating.The computer knows these odds and will engage you where it has the upper hand and defeat will become a frequent visitor. The English longbowman should be able annihilate any unit in fair weather but that just won't happen. I have witnessed 160 longbowmen firing until their ammo was depleted at point blank reange into an enemy unit without so much as dropping half of them.So the basic rules from my experience are haphazardly applied (I have been playing for several months so its not like I just haven't clued in yet). But by far the most annoying thing is generating income and building technologies. Income is very stingy and trade does little to boost it. This was a major flaw in Shogun but is even more tasking here. Technologies, given the tough financing, are extremely expensive and take an eternity to build (20 years for a citadel may be historically accurate but they also built other things in conjunction not queued up. We'd still be waiting for the first steamship if that was the case). Given that the game is on a fixed timeline the technology tree takes as long to complete as does a real tree to grow. This game is very closely modelled on Europa Universalis II ( which lacks in game cinematics and a combat simmulator). What annoyed me about that game is also prevalent here, the constant risk of revolt. If its not bad enough that you have to deal with threats from without you must also guard from internal revolts. This is more easily said than done. Despite building monestaries, palaces, grand inquisitors, spies etc... the risk of revolt just never seems to go away. If this doesn't freak you out then the knowledge that one or several of your generals will turn traitor and steal half your kingdom will. I think this feature is over done. All in all the game is entertaining just learn to put it away when the stress begins to build and you will enjoy it much longer. I destroyed mine.

Medieval Review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

EVERYONE STOP BUYING THE SIMS AND GET A REAL GAME! Everyone who likes simulation games should get this game. Everyone who likes Strategy games should get this game. Everyone who breathes and has a beating heart should get this game. Enough said.

Don't miss it.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I've played Shogun:total war and was obsessed in it. Medieval total war is a successful successor. Two factors make this game great:

1.Morality of soldiers, formation and weak/strong relationships between different troops make this game more realistic than any competitors.

2.The separation of strategy game and RTS game. Instead of mining and building troops while you are battling (like starcraft, AOE), you have a different world map interface to produce troops and collect your money. This eliminates the bad tendency in most RTS games of becoming a competion of who build faster.

Bigger, better, and sillier!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: April 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Like most reviewers here, I was a huge "Shogun: Total War" fan and thus was looking forward to Medieval: Total War. However, my first playings of MTW left me feeling a little disappointed. It looked great and I've never had any technical problems with it, but some of the same design flaws that took some of the luster off STW remain. The strategic part of the game, although not as shallow as "Risk," was obviously a secondary consideration to the game's wonderful 3-D tactical battles.

MTW added more "gloss" to the strategy part with inquisitors, cardinals, and princesses, but these just add more micromanagement and I've won easily without using them. Diplomacy is just as weak as it was in STW- the AI seems to accept/break treaties at random. It just doesn't seem to calculate any sort of historical/religious, threat level, or total strength factors in making diplomatic decisions. Thus a one province AI faction will attack a weakly held province of a massive empire! However, the biggest failing of the strategy game is the new trade system which is nothing more than a HUGE player cheat. For some reason the AI was never programmed to use MTW's rather awkward trading system, but it's very available to the player and trade is a VERY lucrative. Therefore the player has access to literally tons of money and the AI just can't compete. I generally quit most of my MTW games before completion because the endgame gets so dull- my provinces all have fortresses or citadels churning out high level units with all the tech improvements while the AI is countering me with hillforts and low level units.

(On a side note: I've never had a problem with the revolts that other MTW gamers complain about. Revolts are easily avoidable if you know what you're doing- build "happiness" buildings, keep a strong military presence, lower the taxes, and use strategic units such as spies and religious figures to keep the loyalty above 100%. Voila, no revolts.)

The tactical battles are still the showcase of the Total War series with their 3-D battlefields, morale levels, bonuses for flank/rear attacks ect. No other RTS game really is able to show how a heavily outnumbered army could defeat a larger opponent like the Total War series. The battlefields of MTW are bigger than STW and thus allow more room for maneuver. Also the tactical AI has been slightly improved from STW, but an experienced player will usually still beat it. MTW also tried to beef up the castle siege part of the game, but it's just gloss and most players will rarely bother with it after awhile.

My initial disappointment with MTW eventually wore off and I do appreciate the game's depth: campaign games, historical battles/campaigns, and quick battle modes. There's alot of replayability. Yes, the strategy element is not as strong as it could be and the trade system cheat is ridiculous, but it's still a fun game and the tactical battles are still fantastic. However, one final criticism is the silliness of the campaign game. The sight of Egyptians conquering Finland or the Poles in Portugal make the history geek part of me roll my eyes. Where STW allowed the player to unify Japan within a realistic timeframe, MTW has the player conquering the world with medieval armies. It took France over a 100 yrs to expel England from its soil, but the MTW player can accomplish the same feat in less than five and then go on to conquer England. It's just silly!

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