R:TW fans, thinking about M2:TW. I wrote this for you. "I bet my Spearmen could beat up your Spearmen."
There isn't alot new to explain about this game.
In this review im gonna totally constantly refer to R:TW
The one reason that I can't is. That I'm a long time Rome total war player, So i cant help but feel that everyone else is, because Rome released before Medieval 2.
Only problem is...Medieval 2 is graphically superior (fps wise too)...And it was released, much later, and the majority played it....So, the newer players will obviously come nicely to Rtw: m2
Off the bat Medieval2 offers nothing new over Rome: total war, well nothing uniquely groundbreaking next to its graphical makeover that is, truly its a hard concept to reign victorious over anyways, Rtw is a different and very difficult game to out do, firstly, they had to round up everything about the award winning Rome total war, and deport the crap out of it, and make something better, within the target the Medieval period of time, of RTW gameplay.
The result is a pretty shiny engine, some changes and tweaks, and some truly, comparable (in a bad way) amounts of laziness shown by saga (or whoever made it, I dont care someone needs to be blamed)
I played this game normally.
Then quickly moved onto the mod
Custom Campaign mod 2 (which provides a bigger campaign map, more factions, and some minor tweaks to the game, but nothing spectacular, still a good mod close to vanilla).
Everything is familiar, everything, as you'd expect, the chain of TW games has came once again to the medieval times. and this is its exact flaw, historically, TW games havnt been supremely accurate and must banish alot of historical truth for gameplay reasons, but even in this trimming which was commonly done in any game, it wasnt enough to savor the games experience.
List of gripes. (which stop this from living up to the expectations of RTW, take it all word for word, think pessimistically)
Cavalry has been nerfed with the nerf gun till it suffocates.
I was surprised to see that a 50 meter stretch of land was insufficient to make my Mailed knights destroy a formation of running peasants. Every single cavalry unit in the game is like this.
And cannot do anything, Cavalry, ends up being highly useless, breaking formation at the last minute, have NO momentum and a really broken charge, even the stopping power of the armored cavalry is pretty shaky.
Ontop of that, every single piece of unique cavalry you will come across sucks just as much as the other factions.
egs. Knights Templar, yeah those badasses, lets look what they have.
12 damage 16 armor, right, their description even says they kick ass.
...feudal knights ? Who the hell ?...12 attack 18 defense or something.
90% of all cavalry is 12 attack 16 damage, or similar.
live with it. There is no such thing as unique cavalry, and its really hard to use them well, also response times from units is very stiff, also they are in some cases slower than infantry, most infantry types are spearmen..and get bonuses against this useless cavalry, putting them out of their aristocratic misery.
Cavalry barely even manges to chase down routing enemies...they cant attack the units..they just...run straight past them, broken as said previously you may manually tell your supremely brain deficient knights of hurp de durrr to run through the routing enemy, but they, wont attack them. then letting them attack the enemy, will, make them pan outwards and run along side them again.
so, Unit and computer AI, is, quite dumb as always, not really much better than R:tw's, but it is playable, large battles sometimes give you a good run for your money. Most units are prone to being dumb. As a side note the archers are alot more entertaining to use now in M2:tw. I don't know, they just look and feel better.
All factions have the same units.
lets just say all the factions were like the 3 Roman main factions in Rome:Tw, yeah, pretty derivative.
Well how about I say there are some factions with less units, who become instantly extinct and useless, most the uber Rome-like factions are in europe, so your victory always depends on rock paper scissors battles, AI flaws and geographical causes. Lets move back to RTW...a few words.
Greek like
Barbarian like
Desert/middle east like
Roman like.
Done, all kinds of factions, stereotyped, all factions, quite unique.
M2:tw,
Catholic.
Orthodox
Muslim.
Religion ? This is what creates the differences and dynamic gameplay.
Yeah, religion, 2 orthodox factions, Russia and Byzantium, who cant call crusades/jihads, get screwed over, big time, and russia is poor and deprived as it ever was.
Muslims, get crusaded to death, mainly because their units are quite different to the catholic ones, which is interesting.
Catholics, just be douche bags to each other, same units, same goals, wait till one attacks another catholic nation, excommunicate, jump him, done.
Canons ! And Siege equipment are real useful now...
Towns make siege equipment...yeah what else would ? A fort ? lol..whatever...
yeah but hear this, your military units come from a castles.
Towns are economical strongholds, they dont make military units anymore ! No-sir-ee a barracks cannot possibly be in a city !/balancing
Instead, in a castle ! =DDD
Yeah a castle, its an alright idea, you can convert towns into castles, or capture castles (as half the damn map in the beginning of the game is rebel, total rush.), they have advanced defenses, and are primarily the only settlement, capable of creating military units, also, they cannot create economical buildings, decreasing their income.
All towns on M2:tw Generate great income, no longer will large towns sink into outrageous states such as -3000, always, will they be 1000-2000, to varying degrees but usually never really anymore...
ahmahgad, new campaign map units ! Princess..and an uh...merchant, well..unless you want to count the priest in there too.
So, you just captured germany on R:tw, its not very rich, but its great to have that awful landmass of barbarian crap out of the way, settlements trade supplies suck, amber and ..wolf furs, yay.
M2:tw
Great, theres france totally bit** slapped, hundred years war ? 4 turns war ftw...Wine ? Valuable export. Nice, Wait a second...
Theres a spanish merchant ontop of my wine ? 'The hell...
...thats how you now use your resources, you plant a merchant ontop of them, and he generates like, 16money per turn, wow, imba...couldnt you have just THROWN IT IN WITH THE GODDAMN SETTLEMENTS INCOME ONLY FOR ME ? Merchants are a waste of time, balls out waste of time. If it were up to me, I don't even think they should be in my territory anyways. Stealing my money.
princesses, basically diplomants that only damn work if theres a single unmarried family member in the place your trying to get a message through, also you can marry them ? Cause a peace, perhaps even marry the king and own all their land, but still, that rarely happens...also....your princess might end up getting married when you accept a marriage, neither message seems to stand out...
Units traveling on their own are now id say..3x more susceptible to being asses and abandoning you to the rebels side. How the hell does it happen anyways ? seriously ? O GAIZ I HAV DIS AWESOME IDEA, CUZ WER ONLY MARCHIN TO GARRISON A CASTLE, HOW ABUT WE LIV A NYS LYF OF PLUNDERIN VILLAGES LOLOLOLO and getting your S*** turned real by the big ass army i have right behind you who was supporting you incase you ever needed help ?
thats how dumb some of the situations are. Royalty, comes into play. But singular units royalty just can not be controlled.
And I dont mean, like, town watch 112, I mean armies of 500 men...
yeah...
So with all the main differences between rtw and m2tw, as sided.
(senate replaced by the pope for catholics, and if your favour falls out with him, or if you attack another catholic faction, you get excommunicated, causing other catholics to call a crusade/attack you, missions are also scarce later on)
Although this is one of my earlier reviews, of, unstructured hate, vomited out briskly to make myself feel better about myself, there are plenty of people who love this game for what it is, and can stand fighting battles where 112 spear men hold out against an army of 700, exhausting both your unit and the unit being fought, i could call this valor or I could call it how to make an online game last longer than 15 minutes, it really did suck having Spain Vs Portugal, they were using the exact same units, except I thought i was a clever clogs and brought a load of ranged units, apparently they took too long to reload, especially gun powder units, so useless, I still managed to win, but with similar armies,i only won with about 40 units left out of a total 1400 or so that were fighting, I couldn't employ alot of tactical emphasis, all i had to do is make sure I had an even amount of troops everywhere, and no one was getting hammer and anvil'd, repeat until done, its not a time period I like either.
And another depressing thing..
The descriptions of units are very short and lame.
when you pause the game and right click your damn First Cohourt in RTW you get their life story
It tells you a shed load of stuff..the specific armor they would wear, hormica segmenta/lamata..
their reforms, their training, their job, the lot.
Even the barbarian units had a decent try...but the roman units, their detail was amazing, and maybe in the other groups
m2...
*pause* *right clicks Armored swordsmen*
Wow original...yeah..every other faction has this remember..
armored swordsmen...
this is basically what it said
"SOME OF THE FINEST SOLDIERS AVAILABLE, ARMED WITH SWINGING NUTSACKS FILLED WITH BRICKS, FSDF DSGD FGDF HFD HFDHGF HFJK"
*two more lines*
done
Im being serious, thats all thats in there
a very brief description which really you could work out yourself if you could press buttanz, its quite a shame considering there could have been alot of depth in such a game, thats what makes it what it is.
Its a little humiliating..detail has been sort of pushed to the side.
Oh by the way it might not actually say that, but you know I had to make something up without opening the game and checking the exact descriptions..
Im going to, leave this for now, Hope it was useful.
I will be editing this later after i get, ahem, noted of my creative writing and somewhat inaccurate trends, but honestly, who the hell wants to play a game for anything other than entertainment ?