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Thread: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

  1. #1

    Default Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    So when this game was announced i was super excited! I watch all the rally point YouTube videos, downloaded all the screenshot, kept tabs on the new DLCs etc etc. I know im a few years late to the party but i finally saved enough money to buy a new computer in order that i could finally play this game. Super super excited.

    However...

    Just bought the game today for Ł29.99 on Steam and i have to say i am hugely disappointed to the point im a quite upset

    I had been playing a modded version of Rome 1 for years (with the help from many of this community) and love every aspect of the game apart from the point that it doesn't have the visuals that Rome 2 does. Rome 2 simply looks gorgeous and historically and aesthetically very pleasing. Some of these battles look so historically correct that they look like they have come right out of a Peter Connolly illustration!

    But for me the game just does not play well. I find it hugely unappealing and confusing. I pride myself on my strategic abilities in both Rome 1 and in strategy games in general, but the battles just seem a complete mess - very hard to have any control what so ever and have any idea what is actually going on. The camera is awkward and clumsy - i cant zoom far enough in to see the details of battle (the director camera thing just isn't practical) or zoom far enough out to get an overview. And when you do zoom out is hard to identify the units anyway! I find the map un-useful, and the displays in general too large, the information on them too confusing / not clear enough, and that they get in the way of what you're trying to see on the main screen. And then the unit cards... the less said about them the better!

    As for the campaign map - again gorgeous! But again, miss the main control panel as in the battles and the city management is as confusing as heck! No idea what is going on with these technologies things, far too confusing, and not clear enough what these buttons do / how long they take, whether they are already developing something and a dozen other questions. I have little to no idea what building is being built and which have already been built, how to set these to build, no idea what the city mood is, how far i can push taxes - etc etc - in short i try to get away with not developing cities at all because of these points which is utterly absurd!

    All i wanted was for a Rome 1 with all its basic features, its user control panel, building tree, family tree etc etc and the basic controls, unit cards and clear information so that you knew when a unit was running and not running, firing and not firing, would hold their ground or pursue the enemy when victorious etc etc but with the visual of Rome 2 - the historical armies, the animations, those awesome looking cities, that campaign map etc etc.

    Im not sure which mods are out there or if there are any that can even address some of these fundamental problems, but is it too much to ask!?

    Im considering asking for a refund from Steam if i cant get this game to make any sense

    Thanks for your help,

    -Bright.

  2. #2
    Spear Dog's Avatar Primicerius
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Rome 2 isn't as bad as many make it out to be, but plenty will turn up here to contradict me - there is no doubt opinions on RTW2 are strong and divided. There are literally hundreds of mods that let you tweak the game to your satisfaction that are easy to find and extremely simple to install. Just find what you want in Steam's Rome 2 workshop and subscribe to the mod, turn it on or off in the mod manager.

    Straight up, I can help with the camera with a very simple DIY mod (many thanks to Turumba ), I never play any TW game without doing this first these days. Here






  3. #3
    Daruwind's Avatar Citizen
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Rome 2 is not so bad. BUT. Attila is more polished in terms of gameplay mechanisms (family tree, politics, horde system....) And for example I liked the old building system while the new one introduced a lot of problems (almost infinite food production with grain regions......). R2 is simply missed opportunity because the time frame is almost the best possible for grand campaign
    DMR: (R2) (Attila) (ToB) (Wh1/2) (3K) (Troy)

  4. #4
    Alwyn's Avatar Frothy Goodness
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Different things annoy different people. Having read the criticism of Rome II, I'm surprised by how much I am enjoying this game. Yes, the interface takes time to get used to. After some practice, I do not find it difficult to manage units in battles. I'm happy about several differences from Rome: Total War. While I enjoyed RTW, taking wooden-walled settlements (fight at the gate or breach, then fight in the town centre) got repetitive. Rome II offers more variety, including unwalled towns and port battles (involving both lan and sea units). In RTW, an army could acquire experience and then get unlucky, be surrounded by enemy armies and destroyed - all of its experience lost. With the army traditions system, not everything is lost when that happens in Rome II. I like the way that different factions offer different challenges - fighting a horse archer army requires a different approach from an army which rely on heavy infantry, for example.
    Last edited by Alwyn; March 11, 2017 at 04:30 AM.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    If you download the DEI Mod from here http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...t-Impera-(DeI) then you will love ROME2.
    The game without this mod is terrible

  6. #6
    Diocle's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    I don't like Rome 2 because:

    1) I can't recruit an army without a General, in this way you lose any chance of fighting tons of delicious skirmishes all around the world and you can't do what the Romans historically did: sending small detachments taken from their mother legions, called Vexillationes (formed by one or more frequently two cohorts), to form up field armies ready to act where needed.
    2) The sieges are horribly broken. CA has never built a working siege engine, and sieges in Rome 2 are a ridicolous experience.
    3) The strategical map has ben realized so that you can jump in one turn from one city to the next, and this presents two horrid effects:
    4) Too many sieges!
    5) Too few pitched battles.
    6) There is no corrispondence between strategic and tactical maps, so you can't chose the ground where you want to face the enemy. Actually the battles in history are mainly focused in the terrain choice (Hannibal, Alexander, Napoleon, Wellington, Rommel, etc., etc.). With Rome 2 engine instead the battles are fought on a predetermined set of terrains, having nothing to do with the real terrain you have chosen.
    7) Units in melee have no penetration, they do not push, it's like they have no weight and this makes the battles boring and repetitive and very, very arcade in style (I would say "childish" but I don't want to offend anyone, apart the developers).
    8) This happens because warscape engine has been created for firearms and its not suited for melee fights.
    9) Family tree is such a horrid and disgusting painful experience, that I don't find the words to describe or to talk about it.
    10) For builders like me, the building tree is so limited that they could have suppressed it.
    11) Agents are a tragedy in any TW title but in the case of Rome 2 they are so terrible that they become ludicrous.
    12) The whole idea of transports making armies moving and walking on water is so idiotic that even in this case I've no word (just this: it's enough reading the Commentarii de Bello Civili of Caesar to understand the historical and military rilevance and the extreme difficulty of building, or finding a fleet, to move your army on water during a major conflict! Think to William the Conqueror, think to Dunkerque or the D-Day and then compare this military reality with the ridicolus decision taken by the developers of Rome 2: Q.: "How can we move an army on water?" A.: "Easy: we walk on it like Jesus Christ!" Congrats!)
    13) Naval battles are ridicolous, actually they are a shame!

    .. I stop here, but I would add a lot of more things. In short: I hate the lights, I hate the colours, I hate the textures, I hate the interface, I hate the gameplay, I hate the (lack of) atmosphere, actualy I hate almost everything in Rome 2, so that for me its hard finding something I like in this product.



    Side note: I've totalized 581 hours of gameplay with Rome 2, and in my experience Rome 2 is possibly the worst CA title I've ever played.

  7. #7
    Darios's Avatar Ex Oriente Lux
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    To put everything in simple terms - Rome 2 completely lacks a soul. There is no storytelling, the victory conditions are randomly ridiculous (the Scythians have to conquer both Libya and Italy), and you are left with nothing to do save for coloring the campaign map your faction color. It gets boring very quickly.

    Attila is a bit stupid in its own respects, but is light years better than Rome 2. The Age of Charlemagne campaign is what both games should have been.
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  8. #8
    Junius's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    I still find myself coming back to Rome 2 again and again, almost as much as M2. The setting of both is just the perfect place for the TW games. I've enjoyed Atilla and Warhammer, thanks to the monthly bundle, but after a couple of campaigns with each I just had to go again with Carthage or Macedon. There is plenty wrong with R2. Agent spam is still horrible and the lack of a family tree is terrible. I guess what I find so engrossing about R2 makes these failings seem worse since, in my mind, it was so close to giving me that same experience as with R1 which really made me fall in love with the series.

    The game isn't bad, I'd say it is quite good, but where it falls short, it really falls short. Luckily mods exist for most things.
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  9. #9

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    There is a lot of fun to be had with this game. Its not perfect but there is not anything else like it out there for a Rome sandbox type game. All games have their warts but they are still fun to play and there are WAY WORSE games out there to play than Rome 2.

  10. #10
    johan_d's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Hmm, on the movement over water, is there a mod that requires a pre-existing fleet, that has to move to a boarding place, port prefferably to let the army board and then transport to another port ?
    I saw a mod that let armies only travel/board from a port, but does it require an fleet to be constructed first ?
    That would solve the issue I think.
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  11. #11

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    There were several new mechanics introduced which I really did not, and still do not, like but I find it an interesting game to play from time to time.
    "The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them." - Samuel McChord Crothers

  12. #12

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    It was really bad at release, and now with EE it is slightly better. I've put 327 hours into Rome 2 and I did have fun, but eventually went back to Rome 1 and its mods. Sure its a fun game, but it has some gameplay mechanics that were removed or replaced for little reason at all. And these inferior gameplay mechanics all interlope to provide a worse experience than Rome 1.

    For example removing forts and watchtowers and introducing army stances and limited army management. Armies in Rome 2 are restricted to one general, who recruits units directly to the army. Individual units cannot move without the general. Also armies are limited to your imperium, which means you can only have a certain number of armies which increases as you get larger. Armies also have a 'stance' that they take on the campaign map. None of this was in Rome 1.

    How this all worked for me was that 'defensive stance' (which is supposed to replace forts) was never used, because it locked down your army, used a precious army 'slot', you can't move troops out of or into to reinforce that army, and the army was a full stack anyway because I didn't want to waste precious unit space and you were at a severe disadvantage since everything was full stack or recruiting a full stack, which meant sitting locked in one spot in 'defensive stance' was useless since I needed the army to be attacking an enemy since it was a full stack. Whereas in Rome 1 I'd build a fort blocking a pass or something, throw some units into it to fend off attacks so that sieges on my city didn't continually disrupt construction. Rome 2 defensive stance also doesn't give you a turn to defend like forts did, aka sieges, with which you could use to send in reinforcements. The forts could be used effectively to lessen the heat on a frontier if you were in a two-front war.

    Usually fans say Rome 2 is crap because of some (probably valid) reason but no indepth follow up on how the mechanics affect gameplay. Rome 2 can be fun at times but it has, for me, at lot more annoying things that dampen gaming experience. Sure I do get annoyed sometimes of Rome 1's pathfinding but its a drop in the bucket compared to Rome 2's lot more basic gamebreaking issues. Like the totally lack of sieges.

  13. #13
    Retógenes's Avatar Libertus
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    After years of abandonment, I returned yesterday to play Rome II. Last time I played the game (when EE Edition came out), I felt that the game still was uncomplete, souless and empty.

    Well, I remembered yesterday why this game was the title in charge of my total distrust with game industry. R2 was my first game preordered, and it was the last (except two Paradox titles: HoI IV and Stellaris).

    I think the only way to enjoy the game, at least for me, is playing a strongly modded campaign to HatG or WoS.

    No politics. No management at all. No planned campaigns. Zero immersion. The damn unfinished UI. The provincial system... The campaign is only designed to have an excuse to play battles (battles with a maximum length of 10 minutes)... Just pick a random army with a random general and conquer a random city. Then, repeat the process until boredom. Finally, uninstall the game.

    And those things are more painful when you realize that the previous game developed by CA was Shogun 2... And the next title, Attila...

    Summarizing, in a world where Rome II never happened...

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    "Primus flammis combusta quam armis Numancia victa" Anonymous

  14. #14

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Play Divide et Impera mod. It's like Rome 3 or what Rome 2 should be since the release day.

  15. #15

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tenerife_Boy View Post
    Play Divide et Impera mod. It's like Rome 3 or what Rome 2 should be since the release day.
    This x1000

  16. #16
    Morticia Iunia Bruti's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Quote Originally Posted by Alwyn View Post
    Different things annoy different people. Having read the criticism of Rome II, I'm surprised by how much I am enjoying this game. Yes, the interface takes time to get used to. After some practice, I do not find it difficult to manage units in battles. I'm happy about several differences from Rome: Total War. While I enjoyed RTW, taking wooden-walled settlements (fight at the gate or breach, then fight in the town centre) got repetitive. Rome II offers more variety, including unwalled towns and port battles (involving both lan and sea units). In RTW, an army could acquire experience and then get unlucky, be surrounded by enemy armies and destroyed - all of its experience lost. With the army traditions system, not everything is lost when that happens in Rome II. I like the way that different factions offer different challenges - fighting a horse archer army requires a different approach from an army which rely on heavy infantry, for example.
    This. I´ve played 2896 hours with Rome II so far. An end not in sight. There a thousand little mods for tweaking vanilla to your own pleasure. And there are many good mods like Vae Victis, which will make the game playable for me for years.
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  17. #17

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Quote Originally Posted by Brightside83 View Post
    Rome 2 simply looks gorgeous and historically and aesthetically very pleasing.
    thanks for the laugh

  18. #18
    Artifex
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    I too am very disappointed with Rome II. While the battle mechanics have greatly improved over Shougun II (finally a line of sight system!), the campaign feels somehow shallow and empty. The province system is strange, the limited amount of building slots - as well as the building chains - are going on my nerves and the campaign map can't be fixed/modified.
    The same is true for Attila.
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  19. #19

    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    I have extensively played Rome 1 [my favorite in the Total War series], I have enjoyed Rome 1, and Shogun 2. I do not much care for Rome 2 and I am liking Warhammer but finding many things disappointing about Warhammer. I believe I will need to hunt down a mod for Warhammer soon.
    "God is, as man conceives Him, the reflected image of man himself." Albert Pike in Morals and Dogma (33° AASR)


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  20. #20
    Retógenes's Avatar Libertus
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    Default Re: Is Rome 2 REALLY that bad!?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tenerife_Boy View Post
    Play Divide et Impera mod. It's like Rome 3 or what Rome 2 should be since the release day.
    Thanks for your recommendation, I'll give a try.

    I have been looking the features of the mod (that really reworks absolutely the whole game, an amazing work), but I think there are a lot of problems that, unfortunately, no mod can solve. They made a titanic effort to make RII playable (manpower, supplies, etc. are spectacular additions!) but the core issues of the game are still there (the mastodontic UI (~40% of the screen) in battle when you control 20+ units, the lack of a proper political system (with offices, governors, intrigues, etc.), random generals, the minor settlements without walls, the lack of the hordes and all the additions of Attila that would have made the grand campaign enjoyable... I still think that R2 with Attila features should have been the minimum for the R1 successor, R2 in his actual state is a shadow in comparison with S2 and Attila. They are infinitely more polished and complete games by far.

    As I stated before, the lack of faction management (politics, trade...) features ruins the Grand campaign for me. But I think that I will have good moments with DeI in more focused campaigns like HaTG or WoS, where the management of the faction is less important, and can be supplied with the good addittions that DeI introduces in military aspects.

    Thanks again for your recommendation.
    "Primus flammis combusta quam armis Numancia victa" Anonymous

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