Medieval II: Total War

"Rome, with better graphics and worse gameplay."

This game is pretty much the same as Rome: Total War. That could have been a good thing, had they expanded upon the features Rome, but they haven't. In fact, they've made the game worse.

Essentially, this game uses the same engine as Rome: Total War. Sure, the graphics are prettied up, but the look and feel of the game hasn't changed in the slightest. What they've basically done is to remove the features that made Rome fun, and decided not to fix bugs and engine related problems that hampered it.

First of all, the balance is shot to pieces. A unit of peasants armed with pitchforks can inflict heavy casualties on expensive unmounted knights. It doesn't matter if the unit is the lowliest and cheapest unit available. This has resulted in battles where you take massive losses, even if you greatly outnumber your enemy, or have better units. I've spent countless hours playing Rome, so this is not a result of me simply being a poor gamer.

Furthermore, flanking is no longer particularly useful. If you attack a group from behind, that unit will no longer sustain heavy losses, but only gets a slight disadvantage. Cavalry, which should be a staple in a game based on medieval times is also botched. Why? My guess is it's a bug. Basically, when you double click a unit to charge them, the cavalry unit will stop right in front of them, and then engage in melee combat. The strength of cavalry is their charge, and this advantage is completely removed due to the aforementioned bug. It's very hard to make cavalry charge properly.

One of the thing that really bugged me in Rome: Total War, was attacking towns. The pathfinding was so horrible that units would get stuck in narrow streets and chokepoints, or would cluster up and become impossible to control. Well, guess what? They didn't bother fixing that for Medieval 2. Since it uses the same engine, attacking towns is as awkward as it ever was. Even worse, in a game that's so focused around attacking castles, the game becomes an extremely frustrating experience. Expect to take a lot of unnecessary casualties.

In addition to everything above, the game is also filled with bugs. In my case, the game would freeze every few seconds if I enable V-sync, and I've read countless reports on other bugs, most involving CTDs.

The graphics and sound are all nice, but what does that help, when the gameplay is botched, and the game is unplayable? Hopefully they'll use a new engine the next time they make a Total War game.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/06