I write this review with a heavy heart, I am a huge fan of the TW series and my favorite game of the series was Rome, so this game has been a let down to me.
I am reviewing this game only now because I wanted to give it chance to fix the problems it had on launch. The graphical glitches, the sea combat not being balanced, the long wait times between the turns, the passive AI in the campaign and the stupid AI in the battles.
4 patches down the line some of the issues have been resolved, unfortunately they are not the ones I was most worried about the game finally looks great sill not as good as the supposed in game footage we ware shown before release but still great, and the wait times between turns have been lowered not to mention multipayer campaigns actually work from time to time.
Unfortunately the AI still does not offer any challenge neither in the Campaign map or in battles, and the game still feels unfinished even with all the DLC. Speaking of DLC making people pay for the chance to play as Sparta is evil especially when in Rome you could play all factions for free.
The main problem with the game is that apart from the improved campaign map that finally offers a really easy way to control your provinces the game has zero improvements from Shogun 2, ok id does look a little bit better.
The most frustrating thing about the game is that it had the potential to be great, but it was all lost somewhere, doe to the fact that in areas that I care about most the AI, multiplayer, and campaign the game is worse than the previous installments little things like videos of the actions your agents take, or speaches before battles are gone. Big things like the options to level up your general in multiplayer are gone too, the siege battle AI is broke again which is terrible after the decent battles Shogun had.
In the end I will say this, the game is good on it's own right but since I see that it is a step back from the previous tittle I can not give it a good rating.
Should you buy it? Maybe I would suggest buying Shogun 2 and it's expansions if you have not played that before, since that is a better game in all aspects and is much cheaper now. Fans of the series should be couscous, all I can say is that this game is on par with Empire and that says it all.