Product Details
 | Medieval II Total War |
| List Price: | $19.99 |
| Price: | $12.65 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by BLS Mart
40 new or used available from $4.71
Average customer review:
Product Description
Take complete control of your kingdom like never before and grow it into a continents-spanning empire through diplomacy, trade, espionage, and war! Join the Crusades as a Christian or Muslim empire and battle over the fate of the Holy Land. Raise mighty armies to crush your neighbors and conquer all of Europe and even the Americas to become the greatest power of the Middle Ages.Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2999 in Video Games
- Brand: Sega Of America, Inc.
- Model: 85177
- Released on: 2006-11-21
- Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP
- Dimensions: .75 pounds
Features
- Manage your empire in the turn-based Campaign Map, handling everything from building and improving cities to recruiting and training armies
- Employ diplomacy to manipulate allies and enemies, outsmart the dreaded Inquisition, and influence the Pope
- Lead the fight in the Crusades and bring victory to Islam or Christianity in the Holy War
- Improved combat choreography, larger armies, quicker pace, and spectacular finishing moves make this the most visceral and exciting Total War ever
- New epic campaign - The ambitious single player campaign will span three continents and let players sail across to the Americas to confront the Aztecs on their home soil
Customer Reviews
When Portugal Attacks
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
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.
Medieval 1
vs. Medieval 2
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment