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There are three time periods to choose from, the earliest of which features more fragmented factions and primitive weaponry, the last represents a more unified period where most power struggles have been decided and gunpowder has entered the scene. With three time periods and 12 factions representing three different religions, there's a lot of replay value in the strategic game alone.
Like Shogun, the game is divided into two parts: strategic and tactical. The strategic part features a map of Europe, some of Asia, and some of Africa. It's divided into territories à la Risk or Axis & Allies, and each territory represents a kingdom. Each faction begins with its own holdings and must quickly begin to out produce and conquer its neighbors. Each kingdom has its own population, loyalty rating, economy, and religious affiliations. Installing a feared or loved general as governor can enhance the kingdom, but giving an unscrupulous general the job could lead to revolt. Building structures can enhance the kingdom as well; a dock or a salt or silver mine can lead to riches while a castle protects. A bowyer or spear maker can outfit new troops. As time progresses, your king will grow old, have children, and die. If he dies without a male heir a revolution can occur. Daughters are used primarily to reward your governors and generals or offered to allies as wives.
The tactical portion of the game is the 3-D battlefield, complete with deserts, rivers, rolling hills, forests, mountains, and the vast rainy plains of England. It is here that you will decide the fate of your empire. You have to use terrain effectively to win, managing your varied troops with efficiency and skill: pikemen against mounted troops, mounted troops against archers, archers against pikemen. The specialized troop types of the Turkish, Byzantine, French, and other cultures offer unique abilities and open up combat options to wily generals. Guiding the actions of thousands of meticulously researched troops and watching them execute historical military maneuvers on a giant battlefield is a joy, but if deep tactical combat is not to your liking, you can skip individual battles or have the computer control them for you. Creative Assembly added sieges to the game as well, and those can be spectacular undertakings--complete with castle walls, sorties, and machines of war. A multiplayer option is offered, but only using the tactical battle engine. There are also a few warfare only historical battles and scenarios.
The two halves of the game make a rich whole. The AI is sharp, and a sense of history permeates the game. From the eerie medieval chanting that underscores playing as a Western power to the lively Islamic music that you'll hear if you play as a Middle Eastern power. The game recreates history well, but more importantly it's also fantastic to play. --Bob Andrews
Pros:
- Excellent gameplay; strong AI
- Two perfect game engines working together
- Deep, intellectual subject matter might be too dense for some
- Multiplayer only exists in battle mode
| PLATFORM: | Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP |
| CATEGORY: | Software |
| MANUFACTURER: | Activision |
| ESRB RATING: | Teen |
| TYPE: | Computer Games, Action, Strategy (Strategic), Historical (historic) Recreation (Recreations), Military (Wargames, Mechanized action |
| MEDIA: | CD-ROM |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 047875322479 |
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Customer Reviews of Medieval: Total War
Tiny Troop Graphics Make Tactical Battle Less Satisfying (First, a patch was released months ago (in 2001) that fixed the problems that N. Ferguson referred to, especially the one involving reinforcements. Find the patch at Totalwar.com)
This is a game that in complexity is more difficult than most RTS games but less complex than most wargames. The gameplay combines a turn-based strategy phase in which the player using a RISK-style map of Japan makes long-term decisions as to which province to invade, what buildings to construct, and where to deploy his armies. The real-time phase occurs when a battle is fought and the player attempts to defeat his rival. The battles are tactical and success depends on many different factors: troop numbers, experience, weapons, formations, weather, battlefield maneuvering, and terrain.
Although the graphics are usually highly-praised by most people (and in truth, there is much to praise), I was VERY disappointed with the troop graphics. Despite having a high-end machine, and the latest graphic card, the 2D troop sprites are too tiny, and difficult to distinguish (even before combat). When cavalry aren't easily differentiated from archers, and archers can be mistaken for spearmen, and a gamer with 20/20 vision like myself has to move to within 2-3 inches of the computer screen to fight a battle, something is wrong. I don't care how beautiful the terrain is, or how interesting the cut scenes,other non-game graphics may be equally stunning but it doesn't matter.
The troop graphics are extremely tiny. Many reviewers defend this with sarcasm: Well, so what if you can't see the trooper's faces? If you want Age of Empires, go play that! Hey, how else can you get 5000 men on the screen?
I say, "So what! Why bother with troop graphics in that case? Why bother trying to make them look like anything then?"
I don't care about making out tiny details. I do care about spotting my archers easily from my arquebusers. I do care when my spearmen look much too much like my cavalrymen.
You may not care about the graphics and enjoy the game regardless. You should be aware however that it is an issue that have put off many other players.
Excellent yet Infuriating
Usually games of this nature are very small scale and require countless tedious tasks to gather the resources you need to grow your kingdom. With Medieval Total War I was pleasantly surprised. The premise of the game is excellent as are the battle sequences. The pros and cons of the game are as following:
Pros:
- Excellent story and historical accuracy. The inticracies of medieval europe is portrayed well. Nations present in the game come from the following locations: Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Holy Land, and Northern Africa. All the major players of the period are present.
- Lots of different troop types, many of which are exclusive to different nations. This gives the game some replay value since different nations have different strengths and weaknesses.
- Large scale battles can be fought using your own custom armies. These armies can be set up to fit your own particular generalship style. Your generals and troops develop into better soldiers each battle that you win.
- The game focuses on the battles NOT on all the other tedious stuff.
- Everything isn't always peachy. Rebellions, civil war, assassinations can all happen. So you have to think and play certain countries a certain way.
Cons:
- Bugs abound in the game. The most infurating one is when the game boots you out when you try to save after fighting a large battle for 45 minutes. This happens occasionally.
- The computer cheats at times making your good battlefield decisions irrelevant. Like any game the computer needs a little help to keep up with you at times. For the most part this is not a big deal.
- Graphics are sub-par for type-A games now. Not horrible, just not as glossy as you would expect.
- Some battlefield troop mechanics are stupid. For instance a cohort of 100 peasants will attack one foot knight in an open field and not break their rectangular formation and surround the knight. So basically the 2-3 guys on the front of the rectangle will fight the knight.
- Sieges are very simplistic. You can't place your archers on the walls etc.
In summary, I feel that this game definitely has more pros than cons to offer the strategic gamer. Sure it has some problems but when you take on a project like this it would have taken forever to get everything perfect. If you like empire games or medieval warfare this is a must have. Kudos to Creative Assembly. Medieval was such a step up from excellent Shogun that I can't wait for Rome: Total War.
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