The game is solid. It's a clear continuation of what Total war was in ETW and Shogun2... not so much of what RTW was.
So lets move on to the nitty gritty of the whole thing shall we and look at the core mechanics of the game.
The easiest thing to start off with is the combat.
Land combat is pretty good. There are some complaints with the fact that units MOVE TOO FAST and that the battles are over too soon. That's true... the whole affair is kind of arcade-ish if you will. That was an option in RTW mind you. The combat is more close to Shogun 2... but even more fast paced than that. Generals are pretty fragile, like they were in ETW and various unit types specialize to counter some other unit types. Unless you're a Roman and then all your melee units specialize in kicking ass all the time.
Sea combat is really good. I mean really, really good. probably the best in the series. No, definately the best in the series.
And the mixed combat is great too. This is where you have both land and sea forced working together. You find these kind of battles most common when assaulting harbor cities. Mind you, it's a nice trick and all but it's utility is limited. A decent land army is always superior to any "marines" you may land with your ships so their purpose is to gain a strategic advantage only. Draw some forces from their main army to deal with a potential flank or backstab.
The campaign map.
It's gorgeous. Drop dead gorgeous. If you were a map-o-phile you would marry that map and make beautiful babies. It does feel a bit more restrictive at times since it's not as open as say, RTW map was... you need to stick to the roads more than anything, but then again, that does help with the fluidity of the game. Speaking of roads.. you can't build roads anymore. If you're playing Rome, you can shaft that piece of historical notion out the window. Now, roads auto-evolve depending on how prosperous your provinces are.
(Some of) The game mechanics.
Tech tree -> 2 tech branches, military and economic/societal each with 3 different branches themselves. In my limited experience, I can say that each tech tree is unique to each faction which does mean that your game experience will be unique and fascinating for each faction you play a campaign with.
The province system for cities. So you know how in Shogun2 and ETW you had the main city and then a number of villages/special locations around the city that gave you all sort of bonueses but were very vulnerable to attack and sabotage? Well now you have the same thing with provinces having 1 capital city and 1-3 more "villages" that provide bonueses. The capital has a wall and 6 building slots for buildings and each village has NO wall and no possibility to build a wall and 4 building slots. this has the effect of making you heavily consider campaign strategy and optimizing each province you hold to suit a certain purpose. Is this a good thing? Maybe yes.. depends on the kind of player you are.
Political system -> with the exception of Rome and carthage whose political system has some depth to it... the rest is just the way in which you get generals. This is a replacement for the family tree in RTW. You need generals because you can't have armies without a general or fleets without an admiral. This I feel, is a good thing. With a bit more AI balance and "intelligence doping" you can prevent the pain-in-the-ass things that happened in RTW when the AI had a lot of small troops here and there which you could wipe out easily.
Diplomacy and AI diplomacy-> it's good. it's really, really good. Much better than any TW game before it. Allies can be realiable. I played as Rome and had a long-lasting relationship with Athens of alliance and friendship. Until I decided to move in to Greece. But we had an alliance for 30 turns. that's more than most alliances lasted in any previous TW game on average. As long as the guy you befriend has a good reputation, you're golden.
The factions: the factions are good. Really good. they're all unique. They've all got their strengths and weaknesses (unless you're Rome, in which case your strengths are OP and your weaknesses don't count) and there is a lot of room for improvement.
There is a lot more to be said about RTW2. Overall, it's a good game. A really good game. I'm sure that after a few patching and 1-2 more expansion packs, you can get a really good game out of it. Premium stuff.
Thanks for reading the review, cheers.