Kraxis
08-28-2002, 03:22
I thought it would be fair for your guys to participate in our rolling discussion of his review.
Quote
Grandgnus Review Of Total War
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW OF Medieval: Total War
Sound: 85%
Graphics: 85%
Documentation: 20%
Tutorials: 60%
Fun Factor: 80%
Interface: 75%
OVERALL SCORE: 80%
My experience is based on having played a few hours a day since last Friday (August 23, 2002) through today (August 26, 2002) on Normal difficulty setting in the early era (having tried the Germans and Danes, both showing up as Moderate for my difficulty setting)
I also turned off the fatigue levels because I remembered them being such a pain in the demo (your troops fight for a minute and become extremely tired and then you wait five minutes for them to be rested so they can fight for another minute).
I should have turned off morale because otherwise you wind up having to speed up each battle as you try and chase down all the retreating chumps.
In addition I shut off the limited ammo since in larger battles where you’ve got five archer units or more you’ll wind up either setting them to fire-at-will and they’ll waste ammo and then when you need it you won’t have it, or you’ll have to run around the battle trying to micromanage every archer unit by telling it who to fire at, when to stop, etc. All the while trying to manage your troops holding off enemy charges and form your offensive troops into wedge formation for their charges, etc.
They try to sell you on a Braveheart style battle-system that proves to be more your troops standing around rather than full-on bloody battles, thus the need to disable these features so that you can actually enjoy battles.
I should have known that this game was “too good to be true”. Everything that has been pushed on the public has been geared towards fighting massive battles. The demo was all about that; the sales pitch was based on that as well.
But when you actually sit down with the game it’s more empire-management than action. You’ll spend 90% of your time trying to manage your provinces effectively. Unfortunately this is no cakewalk.
The documentation that comes with the game is VERY poorly done. The in-game tutorial for battles is decent, and the in-game tutorial for the campaign is horrible just like the documentation.
There are so many details that are left for you to try and figure out by yourself (I’m just waiting for the developers to say that’s “part of the fun”, when that to me is just a lame excuse for them to not take the time to actually put together a decent manual, which would probably have to be three to five times the size of the current one, gotta love those new tiny boxes they cram stuff into).
Of course, they didn’t even take the time to try and rip you off with semi-decent “on-line” documentation that you could view from your harddrive. The online documentation winds up just being more of a tech support style document and a medoicre manual addendum than anything with actual worth for learning the game.
With so many unit types, building types, trade goods, special units (assasins, princesses, emissaries, priests, etc.) it would make the game much more enjoyable for the player to actually be able to read more about these units, their effects, etc. How the heck am I supposed to know the population of each province, how that population grows, how the various resources and trade goods effect my income, etc? when little or nothing is presented in documentation or even in the game?
In addition, there are a variety of virtues and vices for you to “discover”. Some of them will happen based on the actions you take with your units (i.e. their leader/general will gain virtues and vices that effect him in your provinces or battles in a variety of ways based on his actions in battle or how he manages a provinces building setup, etc.)
Some virtues and vices will just appear randomly (but you aren’t notified, you have to keep a constant vigil by checking each and every unit to figure out who has added to their list every turn). Sometimes you’ll have a leader who has high “acumen”, which is good for having him run a province as it’s duke or whatever title may be appropriate for your faction. But if you don’t keep track of him every turn then you may wind up messing up your province.
He could develop the dead drunk vice or other vices that lower his acumen. Then you’ve got this chump running your province doing a poor job (which drops your income significantly from that province) and you don’t know it unless you’re constantly checking (not so bad when playing the Danish starting out with less provinces, but if you’re the Germans and you’ve got a ton of units and provinces to keep track of it becomes a micromanagement pain in the butt. And this is just starting the campaign, not even having gotten very far into things. Imagine when you’ve got a ton of provinces spread out throughout the world!)
Also, everytime you train a new military unit (a unit of spearmen, a unit of archers, cavalry, etc.) they come with a general who has various ratings that effect his ability to lead troops in battle or to manage a province should you decide to give him a title.
This becomes a huge micromanagement issue as well since you’ve will have a ton of troops/generals that may improve or worsen in different skills based on their virtues and vices. If you aren’t keeping track of them (and making sure that your key generals or titled dukes, etc. are well protected from assination or being killed in battle) then you may very well wind up with a really messed up nation.
The level of detail and micromanagement is too much, and it is the opposite from the way this game has been advertised, as a game of action (yes, I know I can play the battles only and avoid the campaign, but I’d like to play the campaign with more documentation available and less mystery and micromanagement necessary).
I have read that many people with systems similar or even much better than mine had problems installing or running the game, but I had no issues at all, so I got a stable CD.
In the end, the battles can be fun (if you turn off the realism settings so you can enjoy a more Braveheart style battle) and the campaign can be enjoyable with it’s huge variety of random events, vices and virtues, trade options, etc. The game is certainly stable on my system and I can’t complain there.
But, with the horrible documentation provided, the poor campaign tutorial and the huge amount of micromanagement it is impossible for me to score this game as it should have been scored, in the 90-100% range. I’m guessing the developers were probably rushed to get it out the door and went cheap on documentation to accomplish this.
Maybe micromanagement wouldn’t be as bad if you actually had more information on the various units, buildings and strategies to employ. But with so much left as a guessing game where you can’t find out about buildings and units and such until you are able to build them it is extremely hard to recommend this game to anyone who doesn’t have a good deal of patience.[/QUOTE]
One would think he has lost his mind, but to me it seems he simply don't want to think or act too much.
[This message has been edited by Kraxis (edited 08-27-2002).]
Quote
Grandgnus Review Of Total War
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REVIEW OF Medieval: Total War
Sound: 85%
Graphics: 85%
Documentation: 20%
Tutorials: 60%
Fun Factor: 80%
Interface: 75%
OVERALL SCORE: 80%
My experience is based on having played a few hours a day since last Friday (August 23, 2002) through today (August 26, 2002) on Normal difficulty setting in the early era (having tried the Germans and Danes, both showing up as Moderate for my difficulty setting)
I also turned off the fatigue levels because I remembered them being such a pain in the demo (your troops fight for a minute and become extremely tired and then you wait five minutes for them to be rested so they can fight for another minute).
I should have turned off morale because otherwise you wind up having to speed up each battle as you try and chase down all the retreating chumps.
In addition I shut off the limited ammo since in larger battles where you’ve got five archer units or more you’ll wind up either setting them to fire-at-will and they’ll waste ammo and then when you need it you won’t have it, or you’ll have to run around the battle trying to micromanage every archer unit by telling it who to fire at, when to stop, etc. All the while trying to manage your troops holding off enemy charges and form your offensive troops into wedge formation for their charges, etc.
They try to sell you on a Braveheart style battle-system that proves to be more your troops standing around rather than full-on bloody battles, thus the need to disable these features so that you can actually enjoy battles.
I should have known that this game was “too good to be true”. Everything that has been pushed on the public has been geared towards fighting massive battles. The demo was all about that; the sales pitch was based on that as well.
But when you actually sit down with the game it’s more empire-management than action. You’ll spend 90% of your time trying to manage your provinces effectively. Unfortunately this is no cakewalk.
The documentation that comes with the game is VERY poorly done. The in-game tutorial for battles is decent, and the in-game tutorial for the campaign is horrible just like the documentation.
There are so many details that are left for you to try and figure out by yourself (I’m just waiting for the developers to say that’s “part of the fun”, when that to me is just a lame excuse for them to not take the time to actually put together a decent manual, which would probably have to be three to five times the size of the current one, gotta love those new tiny boxes they cram stuff into).
Of course, they didn’t even take the time to try and rip you off with semi-decent “on-line” documentation that you could view from your harddrive. The online documentation winds up just being more of a tech support style document and a medoicre manual addendum than anything with actual worth for learning the game.
With so many unit types, building types, trade goods, special units (assasins, princesses, emissaries, priests, etc.) it would make the game much more enjoyable for the player to actually be able to read more about these units, their effects, etc. How the heck am I supposed to know the population of each province, how that population grows, how the various resources and trade goods effect my income, etc? when little or nothing is presented in documentation or even in the game?
In addition, there are a variety of virtues and vices for you to “discover”. Some of them will happen based on the actions you take with your units (i.e. their leader/general will gain virtues and vices that effect him in your provinces or battles in a variety of ways based on his actions in battle or how he manages a provinces building setup, etc.)
Some virtues and vices will just appear randomly (but you aren’t notified, you have to keep a constant vigil by checking each and every unit to figure out who has added to their list every turn). Sometimes you’ll have a leader who has high “acumen”, which is good for having him run a province as it’s duke or whatever title may be appropriate for your faction. But if you don’t keep track of him every turn then you may wind up messing up your province.
He could develop the dead drunk vice or other vices that lower his acumen. Then you’ve got this chump running your province doing a poor job (which drops your income significantly from that province) and you don’t know it unless you’re constantly checking (not so bad when playing the Danish starting out with less provinces, but if you’re the Germans and you’ve got a ton of units and provinces to keep track of it becomes a micromanagement pain in the butt. And this is just starting the campaign, not even having gotten very far into things. Imagine when you’ve got a ton of provinces spread out throughout the world!)
Also, everytime you train a new military unit (a unit of spearmen, a unit of archers, cavalry, etc.) they come with a general who has various ratings that effect his ability to lead troops in battle or to manage a province should you decide to give him a title.
This becomes a huge micromanagement issue as well since you’ve will have a ton of troops/generals that may improve or worsen in different skills based on their virtues and vices. If you aren’t keeping track of them (and making sure that your key generals or titled dukes, etc. are well protected from assination or being killed in battle) then you may very well wind up with a really messed up nation.
The level of detail and micromanagement is too much, and it is the opposite from the way this game has been advertised, as a game of action (yes, I know I can play the battles only and avoid the campaign, but I’d like to play the campaign with more documentation available and less mystery and micromanagement necessary).
I have read that many people with systems similar or even much better than mine had problems installing or running the game, but I had no issues at all, so I got a stable CD.
In the end, the battles can be fun (if you turn off the realism settings so you can enjoy a more Braveheart style battle) and the campaign can be enjoyable with it’s huge variety of random events, vices and virtues, trade options, etc. The game is certainly stable on my system and I can’t complain there.
But, with the horrible documentation provided, the poor campaign tutorial and the huge amount of micromanagement it is impossible for me to score this game as it should have been scored, in the 90-100% range. I’m guessing the developers were probably rushed to get it out the door and went cheap on documentation to accomplish this.
Maybe micromanagement wouldn’t be as bad if you actually had more information on the various units, buildings and strategies to employ. But with so much left as a guessing game where you can’t find out about buildings and units and such until you are able to build them it is extremely hard to recommend this game to anyone who doesn’t have a good deal of patience.[/QUOTE]
One would think he has lost his mind, but to me it seems he simply don't want to think or act too much.
[This message has been edited by Kraxis (edited 08-27-2002).]