Hands on Rome 2, sent to me by Osoros
hey guys, my buddy sent me this from the other forum. I pasted it on here seeing no thread that had this info. Heres the link to the main check it out:
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...Ptolomy-s-butt
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Reserved
Okay so we'll start with my impression of the campaign map. Okay first of all, I think it looks much BETTER in reality than it did in the Cleopatra trailer. For any of those worrying about the scale of the map, rest assured you can put that worry and burry it in the grave yard of thoughts you don't need anymore. Because its MASSIVE!
So I saw the politics screen
Note that they said it was a WIP screen, but it looked pretty good, it was certainly more clean than I expected, but I have no idea how that will change between now and release. There are three families obviously, and these are divided in this screen according to their allegiance as far as I can tell. The info you learned in Stratagy informer was pretty accurate as far as I can tell..
So the big question!
Generals avatars are 3D active renders, which means they move around (slowly) and make faces while you look around. Ect. There were some interesting things to note, one of which was the variation. Sure some had similar Armour and such, but the faces were quite good looking.
CAMPAIGN
I saw the differences between the desert parts of the campaign map, and the wilds of central Europe. And WOW! you can tell they have put an insane amount of effort into showing all these differences. Guys, I cannot stress enough how amazing this campaign map is in person. When you all get to use it for the first time. You are going to be totally immersed, and totally bound to the game. You WILL loose whole portions of your life to this game.
DIPLOMACY
There are new diplomatic options just like everyone else has mentioned, the new rollout that shows you what the AI thinks of you isn't really complicated, not quite like I had expected. But actually I'm sort of happy that it lets you quickly see what you have done so you can know what to avoid in the future. Or how to put something negative to your advantage.
PERFORMANCE
Now I don't know what hardware they were using, my guess was the integrated video chips in the Intel CPU's from the HASWELL generation. If it was, then it makes some sense. I believe it may have been running at 720P with the graphics turned pretty high up. High at least, with SSAO on. Which is impressive all things considered. I think its going to run fairly smooth!
The battle
Okay so now that I've really gotten down and played...4 battles. XD twice with Rome, and twice with Ptolomy. I can say that I am very impressed overall, even in its current state its extremely EPIC!! I mean seriously guys, the combat is pretty awesome, there is more feeling to the soldiers now than there were before. You've got really good sound, lots of cool things to hear!
In terms of battle speed I would say its about 25% slower than Shogun 2, Sure there was a rush on because we only had like 25 minutes to go through the campaign map and see what it was all about AND hopefully play both sides of the historical battle.
Now I don't know if this means that you will be able to choose which side you play as in Historical battles. But in this case at least you could. (One was labeled easy, the other was Challenging)
NAVAL WARFARE AT ITS BEST:
So during one of the battles I payed attention to the naval units they gave me, and I was definitely impressed. Both by the re-activity of the commands, and the way they handled themselves. BTW some units of ships have two ships per unit, and some DO NOT.. this appears to be mostly for siege based ships.
The boarding was amazingly fluid, the ramming feels extremely powerful but not ridiculous, plenty of variation in the ships as well they didn't all look the same, at least not up close. Unless the ship is of a different type you likely won't be able to tell the differences from far away. Which is fine. Makes perfect sense. the larger ships of course look like larger ships from far away as they should.
PHALANXES
While this feature isn't finished yet of course, from what I could see of the phalanxes given to me, they act similar to the yari spear wall, where the units try and get in between the spears. The charge went semi threw the pikes, but there wasn't that invisible wall either. Im not sure about how I really feel this looked, It both looked EPIC and it felt very fluid, as did most of the other elements of the battle.
The animations were very brutal, and down to earth, there was lots and lots of different ones. They weren't kidding that this game will show you some of the most epic sights you will ever experience in a stratagy game. Lemme tell you all right now, your in for a treat!
Overall the men in the units felt both more unique and individual, while also being able to keep formation, and react to eachother, and enemies, as well as with their environment. This is probably one of the most upfront and stunning improvements with the battles. It felt VERY GOOD!
ELEPHANTS
My god, this was the most impressive, fun thing to watch ever. Somehow they managed to make them feel extremely smooth, and reactive, both in animations and collateral damage. Arrows, and barbs stick out of their hides! And they go down hard in some cases. massive variation on animation from what I could tell. Almost felt like ragdoll but it wasn't. Much more realistic.
Of all the things I saw, I think I was most impressed with how fluid, and realistic the battle felt. It didn't take too long, yet it didn't feel too quick either.
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Originally Posted by Dan113112
Total War is the only massive war game that has yet to be Surpassed keep up the good work CA don't let us down!!!!
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