OK expansion to the best game ive ever played!
If you haven’t played RTW yet, what are you doing here? Bludge school, take a sicki from work, do what every you have to do, just play this seriously addictive beautifully created, deeply strategic game.
But this review is about the expansion & while i did have fun whilst playing it, i was left feeling a bit empty. Lets look at the P & C's:
Pros:
* New units. Nicely skined, good variety etc.
* Much harder game play. 'Very hard' setting is now literally, 'very hard' this is the best fix for me, vanilla RTW was WAAAY to easy.
* Bugs fixed. Personally i think they should of been fixed with 1.2 patch but anyways.
* Religion is a new feature, while its not an over dominating force, it can effect happiness in settlements if say you have a Catholic leader in a Muslim city.
* Night battles. I’ve only played 1, but gee it looked swell!
* Hordes! they look big & tough & are an interesting new feature
* Swimming units. No more crammed bridge battles, light units can now swim around the sides which i think it a great strategic addition
Cons:
* Too similar to vanilla RTW in terms of once you get x amount of settlements, you’ve basically won the game. Your raking in 1000's of dinary per turn & no faction can possible defeat you unless you loose on purpose
* Barbarian factions all a bit too similar, not enough variation in units.
* Hordes! they look big & tough, but in reality, their not. 1/2 are made up of peasants & they are just like fighting an enemy with 3 full stacks. Nothing new if you play mods like SPQR
* Little to no elephants ;( they are only available in 1 or 2 provinces. i used to love sending a search party to find mercenary elephants around the globe, but alas, no more.
* Iluminity Cataphracts (Arabian armored horsemen) are like ancient battle tanks! i swear 1 small unit of them routed 1/2 my army! bit unrealistic i say.
Conclusion
BI is an ok expansion, i must admit im not that interested in the barbarians & i find them less interesting to play. i would of preferred an expansion like Viking Invasion for Medieval total war where the campaign map has been changed, the time line has been dramatically changed & there was a bit more of an aim to the game. Crushing Rome at the barbarians is a piece of piss.
Still, BI does bring some good new featured & bug fixes to the table, which im sure the mod community will lap up (once 1.3 patch has been re-patched, dont ask). If your just looking for some new gameplay & you don’t want to spend any money, download the mod i uninstalled BI for, SPQR. Its action packed & everything ive always wanted RTW to be. But in the future, most up-coming mods will be using BI so your going to need it anyway.
Give it a go, you wont be disappointed in the long run.