Your personal review of Rome Total War II and forthcomming DLC´s

[Taraphir]

I would like to invite you to place your personal review of Rome Total War in this thread. Also comments and reactions are very much welcome. Please seclude your review with an evaluation of Rome Total War II on the basis of a 100 percent scale. Correct your rating in a new post when the occasion calls for it. An occasion could be patch or a DLC. Well, let the games begin and grant me the privilege to give my perception of the game in its present state.


At the very start I would like to travel back in time. I had my first real convincing impression off a Total War Series Game with the initial Rome in 2004 and immediately learned to appreciate the product very much. Compared to other software strategy titles it has even to the present date many unique selling points.The substantial individual faction characteristics in combination with the actual centrepiece, the tactical battle simulation and the overall epic approach are very much unparalleled. Apart from other Total War Titles no real competition is in existence. At least to my knowledge no other software company was able to deliver a competing product with comparable capacity. Therefore the only real basis for a profound comparison are the preceding games of the Total War Series itself. Except for some aspects of the the AI, Rome improved on its predecessors Shogun and Medieval substantially. It provided far more content, new features that made sense, bettered the graphics significantly and delivered a fluid and far more fun game to play. Rome was a material step forward and became deservedly very popular. An ever growing lively community full of congenial people emerged with Total War Center as the omphalos of it.The relative open structure of the first Rome opened the way to countless modifications which contributed largely to the longevity of the product. Unsurprisingly it is still alive and kicking. Rome I became a household name becauseit was the biggest step forward within the evolution of the whole series so far. The following Medieval II improved on Rome. It was bigger and better, but took not as far a leap because it was build on the same program-engine as Rome. In fact the next intentional attempt to lead the series to new heights was the very ambitious Empire Total War, which comprised the then new warscape engine and introduced many new game mechanics. Unfortunately Empire was released far too early and therefore was in a somehow unfinished condition. That contributed primarily to Empires notoriety, which is if we take the current state of the program into account no longer opportune. Right now Empire is in a decent state and I might add one of my personal favourites. By no means perfect but enjoyable. Then came Napoleon. A great disappointment since it was not incorporated into Empire to the merit of both. The following Shogun II brought minor technical advancements. However it lacked the essential epic approach and diversified faction characteristics. Absolutely necessary ingredients for a true Total War Game defined by the Original Rome Total War.

But what about the newest instalment of the Series Rome Total War II. Expectations are enormously fuelled by an impressive and rather grandiose marketing campaign full of superlative promises. Since the third of September Rome Total War II is finally at hand. Now we can make our own judgement on facts rather than on speculation. At first I usually take a good look at the graphical appearance of the game. The campaign map is indeed very beautiful and I have to admit I'm very pleased with it. The surface of land and sea battles is also attractive. I n regard to land battles I noticed that while we had never more variety within an individual unit there is in my opinion no progress in regard to the quality of the textures. I rather detected a minor regression in comparison to former vanilla total war titles. It has somehow the nature of assembly line work. When you zoom out detail is lost much earlier than even in Rome I. Furthermore the fighting animations are not even equal to those we had since Empire Total War. They are in my opinion of lower standards. Sadly land units feel almost like feathers in the wind and seem to lack any weight. A problem that does fortunately not occur in regard to naval units. I might also add that the naval units look absolutely marvellous. Not unexpectedly I witnessed several graphical bugs. Many of you might remember dead soldiers flying in the air from Rome I. They are back again. Well perhaps some form of degraded tradition. I take it that some of you have also seen ships melting into buildings. Pathfinding has also some minor flaws not only in actual battles but also on the campaign map. I do loath the star wars laser javelin beams and I am certainly not the only person who does not like them at all. Please remove them CA or the Disney Company/Lucasfilm will send a lawsuit against you. I am happy with the user interface albeit it might be to small for the taste of some people.


The surface of a game is not unimportant, but sometimes intentionally obscures from the even more important AI. Most people playing Total War Games in single player mode and therefore expect rightfully an AI that is a challenging opponent, creating the impression of human procedures not only on the field of battle, but also on the strategic campaign level. Contrary to the marketing campaign, I have not perceived major advancements in the battle AI. I am under the impression it might have become marginally better. Perhaps due to the new and very welcomed combined land sea battles and the not so much welcomed revised victory points system betterments are difficult to observe. The changed rules make it much more difficult to program an advanced BAI I presume. What I dislike very much, is that with fancy moving of single units you can still trick the AI into compromising its battle formation. Furthermore I did not find any glimpse of different AI character battle types that would add some additional flavour to the battlefield. I would like to experience an almost human nature in my enemy instead of what I felt in reality. Fighting a CPU! In opposition to some people I find that the AI at sea is rather decent and not lost at all. On the campaign map the AI is capable enough todevelop cities in a well-balanced manner. However I played about 80 rounds as Athens and was never attacked by another faction. The campaign AI seems to be very passive. Perhaps a more aggressive AI behaviour on the campaign level was consciously avoided to disguise shortcomings in the current Diplomacy system and the AI`s handling of it. Diplomatic actions are almost always initiated by ridiculous claims of unilateral lump sum payments. To be perfectly honest the diplomacy AI is clownish. The whole approach of the present diplomacy system feels shallow.


In regard to overall gameplay I would like to address the battle system first. Battles are way to fast and this is not so much because of the in my opinion only slightly exaggerated movement speed. In fact the kill speed seems to be the problem and its direct connection with the relatively small unit sizes. I think that the problem of formation cohesion is also related to some extend to kill speed and unit size. I managed to maintain battle line formation to some degree by letting the AI run into my troops while giving no direct counter-attack orders myself. As soon as you issue an attack order formation cohesion is elementarily lost. If both sides give attack orders it is definitely lost. Creative Assembly must take care to avoid the drunken brawl effect of Imperial Glory a competing product from past days. It would also be very nice to have the guard mode back and also for the first time to have an AI capable of using such an feature, witch would also be helpful in regard to overall cohesion. I'm missing the fire at will mode for medium and heavy attack infantry armed with javelins. All that are little problems that can be solved quite easily I believe. The real gamebreaker for now is in my opinion to be found on the campaign level. Open Land battles happen hardly ever. So far I only read about some lucky chaps who encountered such an occasion. My open land battle experiences for now are confined to the custom battle mode. So far within the scope of the campaign game I had only to fight siege battles on land. As mentioned before I played 80 rounds with Athens. I had a field army of 14 units station in the city of Athens and a garrison forces of about 12 units. The city was a secure stronghold and virtually impregnable. Open land battles do not happen that often I believe, because they have no real meaning due to the present province/region system. The problem is that at land aside from cities there are no other points of strategic importance as far as I can see it. You either protect your cities by concentrating your forces there or rush for enemy cities to siege and conquer them. In general you have not enough to do on campaign level. Especially since beside the cities there is nothing of importance.Frankly speaking my campaign game became a little of a boring task. It was monotonous. The lengthily calculation of the AI campaign moves contributed also to this. In summary CA must work with all energy on the campaign part of the game. There is the Achilles Heel for now.



I have to say that SEGAS/CA´s marketing campaign in my opinion was very misleading. Some people speak even of false advertising and deception. Well that might sound harsh and a bit to critical, but trust me at least I'm meaning well. Feel free to correct me on anything you think that I'm wrong about. In general I'm open to an argument as long as it is conducted in a civilized manner. Please don't forget or write your own review of Rome Total War 2 if you like to do so. Last but not least I want to say some positive things about Rome Total War II. I noticed the enormous unit variation for each individual faction. Creative Assembly has really done a great job in that regard. The sea battles are also superb in my opinion. You can fell the weight of the ships and ramming or boarding enemy ships is great fun. In fact sea battles have kind of an chaotic feeling to it, something I would expect from battles of that era. I think there is great potential in Rome Total War II. Creative Assembly has given us very encouraging signs by supporting modding from the very start and patching the game on a weekly basis so far. My Rating right now is 64 percent. I will correct my rating associated with a new post when the occasion, for example a patch, calls for it. My version of Rome includes the Greek Cultures Pack.

Yours sincerely

Taraphir

[arius32]

you do realize that no one is going to read through all that ?
at least while it's a big glob of un-formatted text without any paragraphs ?
right ?

[Taraphir]

Good day to you arius32. Please take my words for it. I really tried to section my monstrous text into paragraphs.In fact the text was originally structured into paragraphs but the format was not kept when I imported it to TWC.Scince TWC is very sluggish at the moment I unfortunately will have to wait before I will try another correction attempt.