Medieval II Total War
Rating:  -
On its own, the game is fairly average. Just like Rome Total War, it is barely historically accurate, but at least goes further than RTW. The morale system is typical arcade style in which the most hardened and disciplined troops will piss themselves and flee the battlefield after about a minute or more of actual combat. Everything below that will be even worse.
The graphics and music are great. The voices are great and accurate (I love hearing my Holy Romans call me Kaisar, or my Seljuk Turks say Salam Alekum to me).
Whoever set up the configuration for the game is quite frankly an idiot... the game can and does have a section to show the year and the season, but by default, it is DISABLED. Meaning unless you know how to edit the Preferences.cfg file, you will not know what year it is in the campaign map. Not only that, but some idiot thought it was a good idea for each End Turn to have 2 years pass in the game... despite the fact that the game is still operating under default circumstances, in which 1 End turn = half a year. This means that while the game will process 4 years having gone by after 2 turns, your leaders will have only aged 1 year.
The game also, in true Rome Total War fashion, gives the factions highly informal and almost offensive names that factions of this period of grandiosity would never call themselves...
For example, in the early period there is the Seljuq Empire in Turkey, and in the late period there is the Ottoman Empire. The entire faction is just bluntly and blandly labeled "The Turks". The Almoravid Dynasty is just "Moors". The Duchy of Milan is just "Milan". The Republic of Venice, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of France, the Egyptian Sultinate, the Mongolian Empire, etcetera, are all base "Venice", "England", "France", "Egypt", "Mongols", "etc". Considering how formal and grandiose the leaders and such were at the time, this is almost as insulting as a game featuring Canada calling it "up there".
And then comes the big EFF YOU! to the modding community.
Rome Total War was not at all a perfect game, but with all the game files layed out neatly and nicely in the data folder, you could easily modify what you wanted, replace unit textures, download massive and expansive mods like Rome Total Realism, or Europa Barbarorum, which could not only make the game historically accurate, but seem to completely change the game itself in the process.
RTW was released by Activision. M2TW was released by Sega. It's probably not Sega's fault, but all the game files are now packed into massive files, making them unreachable.
By patch 1.1, an unpacking tool was released, letting you unpack the game files for modification. HOWEVER, the tool openly admits that it's not fully effective, and may DAMAGE YOUR GAME INSTALLATION.
Modding the game is outright hell, as the preferences file which must be altered RESETS itself every time you open and close the game. This means you must make ANOTHER preferences file and create a .BAT file to link this preferences file with the game file. If you have no idea how to do that, you're completely lost and will have to rely on downloading someone else's mod to change the gameplay even slightly.
THEN you must create a new mod folder if you don't want to alter the game files and have to unpack them again (7 gigabytes worth of stuff, long time) when (and it WILL) go wrong. You must then copy the "text" and "world" folders from the Data folder into the new mod's Data folder with your included changes. The text files in the "Text" folder are not even in .txt format, so you must download a utility to convert them---then the game thankfully re-converts the .txt file to its original file extension.
After all this is done, it's really a crapshoot whether or not your modification will even work; thus far, I've attempted to mod the game and have had to reinstall it once. Right now, a problem is occurring where HALF the game's text is missing. Missing. Just not showing up at all. And the game is not at fault---I can play the original game just fine, but god forbid I should try to change it easily like I could with Rome Total War; it seems like the makers of M2TW are strongly encouraging their way or no way. I'm very likely going to have to reinstall the game for a SECOND time just to make the little changes of renaming the factions (like I mentioned above) and fixing the timeshifting (like I mentioned above) and improving morale so my battles are more fun and don't end in 6 or 7 minutes. And the game hates me for it.
Rating: -
Building up your empire and getting new types of units is fun, as is the variety of countries you can play (Poland takes over the world?). Graphics look really good and its fun to see the fights up close. However, the battles can get a little monotonous - fire missiles (optional), send your infantry in, attack with your calvary from behind, chase down broken units with calvary, repeat. Missile troops aren't that useful in general, except when fighting missile cavalry or defending a bridge (any missile) or wall (flaming archers only). The flaws in the AI don't bother me as much as some other reviewers, but some things it does are really dumb. For ex, the AI will leave very valuable cities right next to an enemy virtually undefended. There are several things that aren't realistic, for ex, the whole siege process seems much too easy for the attackers. Also, troops in the town square won't break, so even peasants become more powerful. I have fought off MUCH larger formations just by putting all my defenders in the town center. Overall, a fun game but has some flaws.
Rating:  -
I'm going to get to the point, if you already have Rome: Total War, you do not really need to buy this game. For anyone who is just jumping into the Total War series, this would be the best place to start. Since Rome: Total War was so good, Sega decided to redo the whole Rome: Total War formula. There are some inprovements here though, these include
- Better graphics
- Unit diversity
- More units
- Better pathfinding
- A very anoying pope
- Medieval units
The graphics are very good, but don't expect to be putting the bar that high unless you have the lattest graphics card and computer system. Sega also introduced a feature that adds diversity to your units. In short, they don't look like clones. Cities are very detailed, and completely desructable. If you are buying Medieval 2: Total War for its graphics over Rome: Total War, you have a legitimate reason to upgrade.
Sound, well, not impressive. Standard booms and clanks. The music is halfway between the genius of Beethoven and an unmusical teenager trying to compose.
Gameplay, Rome: Total War, there is not much new here, not to say it is not good.
Well, all you Rome: Total War fans, if you are buying this for something new, you are going to be very disapointed (as I was). Yet, all you strategy gammers, this is a great place to jump into the Total War series
This game is great as an individual, but in the Total War series, it falls a little short of what was expected.
Graphics 9/10
Gameplay 10/10
Sound 6/10
Presentation 7/10
Stability: No problems on medium to high end PCs
Score 8/10 - Good
Rating: -
This game was pretty good. The only thing that kept me from giving it 5 Stars was the fact that it is too similiar to the Rome: Total War Games. It basically is like a new version set in a diferent time period. It could have used a few more changes.
Rating:  -
This program freezes after only a few seconds of gameplay in the campaign mode, requiring a cold boot of the computer to regain control of the OS.
Here is my system specs:
XP Pro SP2 with all upgrades from the Microsoft website
AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core
GeForce 8500 with 512 MB RAM
3.3 GB system RAM
Realtek Audio integrated 7.1 sound card
For whatever reason it just doesnt work on this system. If you have a similar system, you might want to stay away from it.
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