My Review!

[theDaedricPrince]

I'm here to give my honest and most confident review. To start it off, I have spent about 6 hours playing the crap out of this game. I had about 3/4 breaks during that time.

Ignoring all the stupid complaints on the forums, I have found the game beyond enjoyable. The environments are beautiful, the entire map is gigantic, combat animations are terrific, the politics system is very in-depth, and for the first time in HISTORY, the naval combat was actually worth while.

I can't really point out the negatives, but I do have some, unfortunately.

Apart from all the graphical issues (that I rarely experience) there was some lag here and there. I have an AlienWare gaming computer, so I don't really get that sort of lag in the game. I have to play on slow motion to see the units fight.

Another negative is the diplomacy. God..the diplomacy. I can't make a single trade agreement without having to pay money. Especially the larger factions, arrogant b*stards

In terms of AI behavior, I was really impressed by both the BAI and CAI. Eh..kinda. I saw an improvement from Shogun 2, so I guess that's good. I just find it amusing how an entire barbarian army decides to charge into one side during a siege/camp attack and literally tries to break through my line of Roman units..yeah..they all died.

And that is all the complaints I have. Sorry, I just really love this game xD

Unit Cards - this is not a complaint. After six hours, I have adapted to the new style. And I must say..I really like it. Sorry CA for making complaints! Please forgive me. :3

Graphics - mleh. I know the dark and gritty graphics were intentional, but I prefer a bit more light.

Animations not finishing - this has been huge in almost every Total war game. When two soldiers engage in a battle, and when one of the units break, the animations just stop and my soldier just lets the enemy run off. Don't worry, he was tortured reasonably.

New Penalties for expansion - I found expanding really hard due to the populace being a pain in the #$Q. It makes the campaign even tougher and adds more room for patience and strategy.

Interesting Events - from time to time, you'll get random events that are really unique and interesting. Stuff like blackmailing, hurricanes, assassination attempts, slumps, etc.

Battle Speed - I like the battle speed. It really balances everything out. Sometimes I spend about 3 minutes to destroy an army, sometimes I take 20 minutes when I have to really power up my brain. I wouldn't change it.

Army size - It's pretty good for a starter. But I can take a 40 unit sized army.

Funny chants and insults from units - it really brings a lot of immersion to the battle. I love it.

Wild animals - you'll regularly see wild animals running about, which is cool. I saw a group of deers though, their animations were laughable. Their feet were moving like robots

That's all I have to say for now, i'll be posting more stuff as I experience new things and go throughout the game. So far, I rate the game a solid 9/10. I find it hard to stop playing.

[Destraex]

Is powering up a brain a console term? Have not heard it before.

I agree the game so far for me is a lot of fun. But I also don't like a lot of things.

The city in the last battle of the prologue campaign is simply amazing.

I was gov smacked by the amount of detail surrounding the city. The outlying suburbs and ruined aqueducts.

Amazing stuff.



Things I would like changed currently:

(i) Animations and speed are way too fast. I like RTS and this is driving me nuts. Unless you go defensive units tend to go into superhero melee.

(ii) Units blur at a distance into oblivion.

(iii) The damned black sillouette unit icons are driving me crazy. I hate em. They don't tell me jack and they ruin the immersion.

(iv) The whole icons replacing text thing is also annoying me at least initially. A lot of the time information is just not their and the silly encyclopedia seems to go to the wrong references.

(v) Armies building ships instantly. I mean did sparticus build his own damned ships to escape the romans?

(vi) I am not sure about some of the gimic skills for some units. Like flaming spears (which existed) but were not common as far as I am aware. THere are a LOT of general and unit skills to use. Close battles will be a question of who has the greatest army veteran bonus traits and who presses on the most skill buttons per battle..... well maybe not.

(vii) When they fight the troops just don't really have the hard hitting physics feel of previous total war games. They seem to act more like sprites with no wieght to them. Perhaps this is just the speed of the battles.

(viii) If I have naval units garrisoning a town they always start a battle in the water and I have to land them... maybe I am doing something wrong!!! I assault my own damned town to get re-enforcements to the town centre!!!

(ix) The text is hard to read because the contrast does not work that well. I must be getting old as I feel like using the windows zoom function on it. Especially in the main menu where everything is tiny and only takes up 1/10th of the screen.



Things I like:

(1) The epic feel of battles

(2) The unit detail. Although in larger battles the system seems to dynamically remove detail.

(3) The special attributes and skills - this will take a LOT or learning. But that's what it's all about right? I mean the Romans have a "forced march" option which makes them march faster but if they enter battle they get massive penalties in morale and other things. Absolutely a nice touch.

(4) You get told if you end the turn without researching or uprating a trait. This feels like cheating but it will be useful when things get bigger.

(5) 40 units can be used IF you have an allied unit coming into battle with re-enforcements.... in a battle I played my total force added up to more than 20 units. So the game offered to put them all on the field at the beginning, or have them arrive in the old re-enforced way from off map when a unit dies. This is damned epic.

(6) Just early days but it seems the siege options are fairly well fleshed out and varied.

(7) Ability to turn off all flags and markers in the menu!!! Yay no more .cfg or .ini mucking around.

(

So far the battle AI is imho a little smarter than previous total war games. Sure it aint perfect and nor should it be. It makes some good and some very bad decisions. I am finding that like with most total war games, it aint a walk in the park just yet. But then I have no lost a battle either. But am about to start a real campaign now I am finished the prologue.

(9) Diplomacy seems very cool. All dialogue is spoken and at least on the surface well done. It is very sparse on the info though.

I hate the windows8 style "everything is hidden unless you find the hidden reveal hover cursor spot".



In short it is what I expected and I am having a ball so far. I am far from comfortable yet however with the interface, which seems to be over simplified. This takes away a lot of character. Some things I even found to be backwards. For instance on one screen it shows a break down of your income for the next turn on the left and previous turn on the right. Now I don't know if this is some weird bean counter accounting standard. But I look from left to right and expect to follow things into the future towards the right. But then BC is kinda going backwards

[NZV]

Like Vanilla Civ5, the problems in this game didn't really have time to grate on me after only 6 hours. I'm pretty sick of it after 20, though.

[TuranianGhazi]

Wild animals - you'll regularly see wild animals running about, which is cool. I saw a group of deers though, their animations were laughable. Their feet were moving like robots

Hahaha, I thought I was the only one who noticed that among my brothers lol.

Anyways, in a town defense battle against the Massagetae (I stole their town while they were away somewhere lol, but they came back), I saw a pack of lions running just sitting there. Then, when the Massagetae were running towards their direction, the lions got up and started running away from the mass of people. I thought it was sooo cool. Yet, in the back of my mind, I was like... "Hey lions, those humans look mighty tasty, why didn't you chomp on them?" Sadly, the wildlife doesn't attack the humans. It's just eye-candy... Anyways, I'll try some Custom Battles where lions are and trying to provoke them into attacking my unit or an enemy unit lol.

[stevehoos]

LOL, this is a classic thread.

[Sharpe]

LOL, this is a classic thread.

Dude, we get it.

Stop the whole broken record act. You're bluddy annoying.

[Sharpe]

Oh Daedric Prince - I'm pretty sure diplomacy is connected to your factions power - win some big battles and conquer a few regions and people will start offering and accepting treaties.

[TheVerySpecialK]

Sorry CA for making complaints! Please forgive me. :3

What is this? Why the hell would you feel sorry for criticizing the game? Are the people at CA gods now? Yep, you're a sinner now, and you've been damned to CA's hell for eternity. ROFL!