dancho
08-22-2002, 18:53
I raced down to EB, picked up the game at about noon yesterday. I flew home (which is hard to do in a Honda) and started the installation. Everything seemed to be going well... then I went to adjust the video settings and my struggle began.
To make a long story short, I finally did get the game to work with my TNT2-- but it refuses to allow me anything but 800x600 on the strategy map and (gag) 640x480 on the battle screen. At first, it killed me playing it at that resolution, but now I'm starting to get used to it. I worked for a couple of years doing tech support for PC's and I've been building my own computers for about five years. I have done everything I can imagine (including some stuff that fouled up other stuff and I had to fix that) and I can't get it to properly utilize the TNT2 card. Anyway-- I'm sure it will be addressed in a patch. Now, to the good stuff.
Game play is quite a lot like Shogun: Total War. The similarities outweigh the differences. This includes the sound the armies make when you break down larger formations-- I always thought that it was "HAI" and it made sense in Japan. I don't know what it's supposed to be in MTW-- "Hi?" "AH!?" Whatever. I played for several hours as the good old Byzantine Emperor in the Early Campaign. The map is huge, and the game is LOOOOONG. There are about a billion different little units with different capabilities, all requiring different tech trees. I felt that I really ought to get some kind of diploma when I complete a game. "Complex" is an understatement. But, ultimately, the little characters work a lot like Shogun-- nothing really that new. Spies, emissaries, priests, etc.
Of course, there are some new things, especially the ships, but they are not so peculiar that you won't be able to figure them out. Okay-- maybe the ships. I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be doing, then I did some experiments and found out that armies move from port to port as long as a friendly ship is sitting on the sea area that must be crossed. Ships act like a 'bridge.' Guess I should have read the manual...
There seem to be about a billion ways to foul up and get in trouble over religion, and building churches and keeping the peasants happy is a major job. It's easy to hire mercenaries-- and they are butt kicking units so it's possible to make your army up of these guys and do some damage. Most of the clan loyalty stuff from Shogun is long gone. In Europe, loyalty is traded on the stock exchange. In Japan, you make friends and kill them. In Europe, you don't have any friends, if you're the king. So-- the "feel" of the game is different. Especially since there are no legendary geisha-like-characters (as far as I can tell) the game is decided by brute force and I suppose that's the way most people like it. Personally, I dunno...
This game is so deep that I suppose that I could spend the rest of my life playing MTW, and nothing else. I suppose that would be a bad idea-- but it's POSSIBLE. One of my few beefs with the game is that the Holy Roman Empire is, well, like nothing out of history. It's big, it's bad, it's holy, it's roman, and it's coming to KICK YOUR ASS! I don't recall anything like THAT in the history books. But hey-- artistic license, no?
I give MTW four and a half stars out of five, with the other half star awarded when they get the video problem fixed. All in all, an outstanding PC game.
To make a long story short, I finally did get the game to work with my TNT2-- but it refuses to allow me anything but 800x600 on the strategy map and (gag) 640x480 on the battle screen. At first, it killed me playing it at that resolution, but now I'm starting to get used to it. I worked for a couple of years doing tech support for PC's and I've been building my own computers for about five years. I have done everything I can imagine (including some stuff that fouled up other stuff and I had to fix that) and I can't get it to properly utilize the TNT2 card. Anyway-- I'm sure it will be addressed in a patch. Now, to the good stuff.
Game play is quite a lot like Shogun: Total War. The similarities outweigh the differences. This includes the sound the armies make when you break down larger formations-- I always thought that it was "HAI" and it made sense in Japan. I don't know what it's supposed to be in MTW-- "Hi?" "AH!?" Whatever. I played for several hours as the good old Byzantine Emperor in the Early Campaign. The map is huge, and the game is LOOOOONG. There are about a billion different little units with different capabilities, all requiring different tech trees. I felt that I really ought to get some kind of diploma when I complete a game. "Complex" is an understatement. But, ultimately, the little characters work a lot like Shogun-- nothing really that new. Spies, emissaries, priests, etc.
Of course, there are some new things, especially the ships, but they are not so peculiar that you won't be able to figure them out. Okay-- maybe the ships. I couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be doing, then I did some experiments and found out that armies move from port to port as long as a friendly ship is sitting on the sea area that must be crossed. Ships act like a 'bridge.' Guess I should have read the manual...
There seem to be about a billion ways to foul up and get in trouble over religion, and building churches and keeping the peasants happy is a major job. It's easy to hire mercenaries-- and they are butt kicking units so it's possible to make your army up of these guys and do some damage. Most of the clan loyalty stuff from Shogun is long gone. In Europe, loyalty is traded on the stock exchange. In Japan, you make friends and kill them. In Europe, you don't have any friends, if you're the king. So-- the "feel" of the game is different. Especially since there are no legendary geisha-like-characters (as far as I can tell) the game is decided by brute force and I suppose that's the way most people like it. Personally, I dunno...
This game is so deep that I suppose that I could spend the rest of my life playing MTW, and nothing else. I suppose that would be a bad idea-- but it's POSSIBLE. One of my few beefs with the game is that the Holy Roman Empire is, well, like nothing out of history. It's big, it's bad, it's holy, it's roman, and it's coming to KICK YOUR ASS! I don't recall anything like THAT in the history books. But hey-- artistic license, no?
I give MTW four and a half stars out of five, with the other half star awarded when they get the video problem fixed. All in all, an outstanding PC game.