Conclusions after four days: not satisfying
Friendly German Amazon delivered the game on 8th November. It is the German game version, of course. I also have played the other three TW games, considering Medieval 1 to be the the best.
M2 now left me with mixed feelings. It has potential, but AGAIN this is a game that was intentionally released several months too early. It is not finished, and issues from Rome got transported into M2 without having corrected them. the improvements lie in the visual field. The game looks awesome even on medium and low settings.Tactical battle AI has learned flanking. that is the good news. In all other areas, find it it to be of inferior competence compared to M2 or Rome. Only leading rows take up the fighting, the majoirty of people behind simply stay far away (setting: hard). charging only is effectice if it is an Ai-controlled cavalry unit - I find charging attempts of myself to be a joke only. A soft breeze of air already stops any charging of mine. I now click (and order "run") BEHIND enemy units, that way I have a better chance that actually a larger proportion of my men will find themselves an enemy to fight with. Psychological and tiredness effects I find to be far less convincing than in earlier games. It all seems to have been tuned towards more action and less tactical affinesse. Tactical AI concerning city fights is a total mess, and even worse than it was in Rome. Movement orders on walls are broken. Moving in streets often makes them run into the opposite direction, or doing something totally different, or the game suddenly selects a complete different set of units from my lineup. Battles at rivers were as bad and stereotypic as they were in Rome. I must agree with those saying the best thing you can do is select all your army units and make them charge, then watch the unfloding movie - that's what it is, a movie. but where is the playing idea in that? There is no need for any tactical subtleties, and much of what I tried did not work due to broken AI messing up my intention. Why flanking when the flanking force cannot be made to charge and gets stopped by a single man standing in their way. why seeking higher ground, when for the enemy it is not important if he runs uphill or downhill. the hole principle of what makde battles in the TW series different from other games - is severly messed up here. THE GAME IS NOT FINISHED, and received some very unwelcomed chnages in it's philosophy, I think, more action, less tactic. In no way it compares to the battles I had in M1. Rome already was not as good as M1, in that field, but M2 is even worse.
Unit balancing was left uncompleted by the developer, there still is plenty of work to do. When
in melee combat heavy knights get massacred by shaken crossbow shooters with their tiny little
knifes and the knights are superior in numbers by 2:1 then there is something wrong. Many units
I found to share exactly the same profile of numbers, although the game lists them as
different units. I do not know why the English have several types of Lanzenträger (Spearmen).
They all have the same value. Not much thoiught went into the balancing of relations between
strengths and weaknesses between units. I would even go as far as questioning if the basic idea
of "rock-scissor-paper" still works reliable here.
Campaign AI is also a mixed thing. My subjeczive impression is that alliances work more
reasonable, sometimes - sometimes it is no difference to Rome. diplomacy may do a bit more
useful, or not - I am not sure. But if it is said that diplomacy and campaign AI hav been
improved, but I find myself unable to clearly identify such specific details, and think
sometimes yes, sometimes no, then this is a signal that it all is not really convincing, and
far from being obvious. Also (on hard setting), the campaign AI leads other factions too
passively. until you have crossed a certain troop level, it seems, than all your neighbours
suddenly run amok against you. Idiotic, and nerve-killing.
Conclusion: the game is a wonderful graphics demo currnetly. It looks awesome. But it does not
significantly improve gameplay over Rome, even more, it transports lots of flaws from Rome to
M2, and does a considerable ammount of tactcial details even worse than in Rome. I live by the
very strong impression that this game was rushed out and was released several months before it
was finished. and I must question the reason and competence of the betatesting, for there are
so many very obvious issues that I wonder how they could have slipped by unadressed. If they
noticed it, and did not repair them, then this attitude towards the paying customer would be
even worse. This game is not finished, it was released before completion, and it has many bugs
and lacks tuning and balancing. I should have kept my money were it belonged until they did not
delivered all paatches that are needed to clean up the place.
However, SEGA may eventually do better in support than Activision. If they support the
developer as long as is needed to repair the bugs and broken issues, and if the modders come up
with finetuning of unit statistics, then this eventually could become a very impressive game
one day. right now it is a construction site, and currnetly I cannot recommend to spend money
on it as long as it stays in that condition. I myself have put it on ice this morning, after
many, many angry cursing, frustration and dissapointment. I demand more from a game than just
slick graphics. For the occasional battle challenge during the brake, I return to Medieval 1.
Idea: great
Execution: not completed
Looks: great
Play value: low
Moddability: very good, if it is like Rome
Future prospects: depends on the willingness of the producer to pay the fees for the developer
during patching. If it goes like it went with Rome, then it is not worth your money. Get one of
the older games for smile price instead, and spend the rest of the money on something that
gives you more playing value.
It is a very bad habit of business today that you are expected and pesuaded to pay full price
for something that is not fully completed and is not yet finished. It is like buying a car with
three wheels, one seat and no lights, and you get told that these things will be delivered
later - maybe. Maybe not. All you can do is wait and learn about how the story ends. And that
state is not satisfying and unacceptable for that price. So - wait a couple of months before you buy. See
what it turns out for before loosing money.
General Rating: :hmmm:
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by RTR Fan
), and I advise people who are thinking about their buying decision to take into account that the game currently needs massive repairs and seem to have toned down strategy and tactics AI.
) in cities. The issue with cities I've found is the annoying restriction on positioning of units pre-battle, it sometimes takes me 10 minutes to get everyone in place as I have to carefully drag out the units so they fit to seemingly arbitrary restrictions. I want to be able to click on a street with my cavalry, and have them automagically reform themselves to fit.
