User Reviews (1 - 11 of 107)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

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.

Makes me want to read Machiavelli...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 26 / 31
Date: December 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I loved Rome:Total War like little kids love Christmas. I just got done with Medieval II playing the Spanish Grand Campaign and...well, wow.

Rome was a definate step-up in terms of the fun factor and graphics, but there was always those elements of the original Medieval that I missed - Namely, the diplomatic features and perhaps the era itself. The map is reminiscent of Rome: Total War, but it is broken up to reflect the medieval period. Starting off you can only choose five factions - England, France, Spain, The Holy Roman Empire and ummm...Milan I think. However, when you beat the game it unlocks all the playable factions which is around 15ish.

I won't really go into what is better over Medieval I to Medieval 2, because there is a large technological leap. It is better to make a comparison to Rome. The graphics, by and large, remain the same with minor tweaks like making the trees sway on the campaign map, and the terrain will actually change as you farm and irrigate the land in your provinces.

The most notable difference to me was it is harder than Rome. No matter what faction you play, it is going to be a challenge. Any catholic faction you play puts you into contention with the Pope. Most of the popes don't like catholic countries fighting each other, so when I was at war with Portugal in the beginning I had them on their last province with my armies approaching and here comes his Popeness, "Ahem...Spain, you need to stop. You are doing too well and might have an increased economy as well as hegemony over the Iberian pennisula. Sooo, stop or i'll excommunicate the lot of you!" You can ignore his Popeness, but you recieve a severe penalty to the morale of your cities, you can have a crusade called against you (REALLY not fun) and generally upset every other catholic nation. This might not be such a big deal in the later stages of the game, but if you do it when you are starting out then you get a bunch of nutty crusaders at your doorstep (Thank you Saved Games).

The time period is static. That is to say, you start in the 12th century and ends with the conquest of the New World. So, if you want to play with the later muskets, cannons and all sorts of goodies you need to play a very long game to get to the time period where the "trigger" comes into play of discovering gunpowder and its practical application to firearms.

All of the playable factions are distinct, with their pluses and minuses. Each playable faction has a equal shot at conquering Europe, Asia and America. It really depends on your play style. If you like whittling away the enemy with arrow fire then England is a good choice. If you like slow, powerful calvary then France is a good choice and so on, and so on.

It does have some minor flaws; some techinical hiccups here and there, but nothing game killing. I have a 3.2ghz Pentium IV, 1 gig of ram and a 6800 GT Nvidia graphics card. No major problems.

The AI is improved over Rome, but there is a few things to improve on such as the computer not charging you if he lacks missile troops. For example, I have 6 units of archers and 4 units of infantry and he has 8 units of infantry and no archers. I hammer him until he has barely 100 guys and i'm out of arrows before he will make a move on me. Now, this is good for me because I win, but I really think the computer should say to itself, "Hey, I have no missile troops. I'm going to charge him now!"

To wrap it up, let me just say one final note. I...Love...Cannons. This game is worth it to buy just to watch a row of cannons go off, the ground shake and men get thrown around like rag dolls at your volleys. It is most choice...

Pros:
- Solid Graphics
- Fun Gameplay
- Great tutorial (Just like Rome)
- Distinct and varied voice-acting.
- Lots and lots of replayability.

Cons:
- Minor AI tweaks needed

Awesome Gameplay for New Computer Owners

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 32
Date: March 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Medieval II Total War allows you to fight throughout the European world during Roman Empire / Venice / young England times. You get a wide variety of troop types, weapons and armor suited to the medieval years.

The graphics are stunning. We have a wide screen flat computer monitor and the details you get even in the small mini-map are quite impressive. From the overall world map, to the detailed combat screens, you get easy to read text, atmosphere-imbuing backgrounds and accurate armor and weapon depictions. You can rotate at any angle, zoom in and out, as if you were a small helicopter traversing every part of the battlefield.

They do an admirable attempt at giving accents to the various factions, so that you feel like you're talking with someone from Venice, or England, or whoever you happen to be negotiating with. Battles sounds are the traditional clank - bash - yaaaagh that you have come to expect in these sorts of games. I enjoy the included music very much!

We didn't have any issues at all running the game on our system. This is a rather high-end game, letting numerous enemies move and fight on-screen at once. You really do need a current system to play it. I don't find this a bad thing - XBox 360 games don't play on an XBox machine. In fact, we had things happening too quickly at times, and had to scramble to keep up with the events.

There are the scripted campaigns, as well as custom battles where you can create teams of factions and see how you do on a given map. You can even choose specific units from different periods, mixing and matching to see "what if" scenarios.

AI is rather impressive for having so many units making decisions at the same time. Sure, there is the occasional issue where units being bombarded with an arrow assault can't quite figure out where to go to escape it. But I imagine that happens in real life too - if you're under a hail of arrows, it might not be clear which way is safer to run. I do agree that they shouldn't just stand still and wait to die :)

Still, as all strategy gamers know, it really doesn't matter what the AI of a strategy game does. That is just a training mode to help you learn the techniques. The real challenge in any strategy game is to take on other human gamers. So once you've mastered the basics, and understand the skills, take your game online and see how you do against other human players!

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.

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.

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.

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+

Not a huge leap forward, but fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: November 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have a DEll XPS with a NVidia 6800 GTO graphics card, 2GB of ram and a 3Ghz cpu. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could run this game at 1600x1200 resolution with most of the graphics options on high along with unit sizes set to large without the game slowing to a crawl. The reason? This is not a huge leap forward graphically from Rome:Total War (which was the reason why I bought a high end system in the first place 2 years ago). The upgrades are nice and welcome, but not revolutionary. I expect we will see something amazing in 2008/09 when directx10 (11?) is the norm.

Please, if your PC approximates the minimum requirements for the game listed on the box, do not buy it. Attempting to run this game at those specs would be an exercise in futility.

So far I am quite happy with the game.As another reviewer said, the diplomacy, inquisition and marriage contract portion of the game can be tweaked. Also, due to increased complexity, the pc's turn can be excruciatingly long. I recommend turning it off.

The best thing so far are the siege battles. The cities are gorgeously rendered and the fighting is getting closer and closer to being truly cinematic. Unfortunately the added graphical details tend to make the battlefields confoundingly busy in a way that never seemed to happen with Rome. I recommend turning vegetation detail to low and perhaps minimizing some of the other effects; better to use that computing power for larger units imo.

Another caveat-I did have the game blink off once in my limited time playing. Can we get some better error-handling CA? It would be nice. Also, I want to be able to play more countries.

I recommend "1066: The Year Of The Conquest" by David Howarth as a companion piece to the game. The game starts immediately after the events from that book.

Needs To Be Redone

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 17
Date: July 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I went out the first day MTW2 came out and bought it, installed it, and tried it out. I was a big fan of the first one which completely changed RTS's and was really enthusiastic about the sequel. I was a bit skeptical when I saw it was done by SEGA, which completely destroyed the fun in Rome: Total War when they unleashed their own version. Needless to say, MTW2 is no different.

Lets start off with my gaming rig. It is important to know what the reviewer is using to play the game, in my opinion.

SPECIFICATIONS

3.5 GHz AMD 64+ processors
Nvidia 8800 GTX
2048 MB
380 GB

That covers the basics needed to run the game. Now, I am using the most advanced and sophisticated graphics card on the face of the earth. However, MTW2 doesn't seem to care. I average 30 FPS with everything turned up to full, and I can't place over 3,000 troops in a battle, or I risk crashing. That is truly pathetic. Honest to God, why would you even buy something that's barely going to get a playable FPS rate? If you've seen the trailer, you need to ask yourself what the developers were using to create that. Mistake number 1.

The battles can be amazing, but your graphics card is probably going to melt if you want them to look nice. Mine almost did (no, I'm not kidding). However, the in-game AI is very unbalanced and seems to cheat at times. Your own units also have a habit of quitting an order you've assigned to them. The most unbalanced aspect of MTW2 is the auto-solve battles. If you don't want to fight one yourself, then click this little button. Be warned that outnumbering the enemy 5 to 1 probably isn't going to count, and you'll probably lose.

Sound is something that MTW2 doesn't fail to capture. It still has great music and voice-overs, but they get repetitive after a while.

The events system uses the worst drawings I have ever seen to describe what is going on. They look like BMP images done with MS Paint. Very outdated and lame. Couldn't you at least contact the people who made the paintings for Rome: Total War? Those were true beauties.

In game units are also something that are normally pathetic. Sherwood Forest archers... yeah, sure, they own if you're English and PWN all others, but they are FICTIONAL. WE WANT UNITS THAT ACTUALLY EXISTED. Remember the flaming pigs in RTW? Just about that bad...

The look of fights is still spectacular. Soldiers go one on one and use a large assortment of moves, including thrusts, slashes, stabs, shield smacks, and more.

Multiplayer is just terrible now, that is IF you can even access a session due to small amount of servers running. Be glad if you can find more than 15 total...

In conclusion, I'd say you should probably buy the predecessor of MTW2 or Rome: Total War. MTW2 needs a lot more work done. I feel it was released too early and should have been tweaked a bit more for bugs and repetitive issues.

I already know that this review is probably going to receive 0 ratings in trust and tons in "this is false". Well, it's going to be coming from the fanboys. That's just an early warning to you fair people. Personally, I don't care. Medieval 2 does need to be reworked.

Dumb AI, Fancy Graphics = Mediocre Innovation [Sigh...]

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 14 / 19
Date: December 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love TW games and haven't lost a campaign in over two years (playing at the hardest level). Despite all the innovations, Medieval II is somehow disappointing, and you better wait for a lower price, for the following reasons:

The improvement in graphic detail at the individual level is outstanding. The introduction of fire weapons makes battles more chaotic and dramatic, and the view of besieged settlements is magnificent. However, visual elements are not critical in defining a strategy game. More important in Medieval II are the innovations in urban and religious strategic components, such as traders, city vs. fortress, and Crusades.

However, the main problem still is TW series' incredibly stupid AI. As some reviews note, the AI is seriously flawed at the diplomatic and battlefield levels. Too bad. After all the these years releasing new game versions, CA/Sega developers should have been able to deliver a smarter AI. This sure is a big turn off for the experienced player.

Despite the rave reviews, Medieval II does not deliver what it should and could have. It is not revolutionary, and considering its notoriously primitive AI, you will learn to beat it pretty fast. Finally, because of the new graphic complexity, the player will have to consider a better capable computer system, with a superior graphics and CPU.

In sum, wait until the price drops. For those who don't know Total War, Rome and its extension Barbarian Invasion will be as or more entertaining (and more affordable) than Medieval II, and you won't need to worry about having a super PC. (For more info, see my review on Barbarian Invasion).

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions