The "feel" of the game(s) / A brief foray into RTW:BI

[Koga No Goshi]

Remember all the posts over the years by MTW afficionados who struggle to explain the many ways in which MTW is superior to its series counterparts? It often comes down to the "feel" of the battle field, the "immersion", or other slightly intangible factors which can be hard to put into words...

So anyway, I got a major system upgrade and thought I'd have another crack at RTW:BI now that I have more than 256mb of RAM.

Man, it's depressing... It looks really nice at first...

Sorry for the whine. I posted it here because I didn't want to offend any die-hard RTW fans. I just needed to offload some of my chronic depression...

So many cool iron-age European tribes... So many interesting units... Multiple siege options... Sweet looking campaign map...

It could've been so cool if they just tarted up the graphics for the MTW battle engine and firmed up the campaign map AI...

Anyway, you've heard all this before. I hope I haven't given anyone the irrits too badly.

Anyone know any games made by other developers that are comparable to, or better than, MTW:VI?

Thanks for listening.

I feel the same way as you. Some "oomph" was gained in some ways starting with RTW. But also, quite a bit of "oomph" was lost. As you say, they are mostly inexplicable things that aren't easy to fingerpoint. But I have felt the same as you for quite some time, but it was a vague feeling and I suspected the change in "feel" and "atmosphere" would be called out as being just old boy purism. (Which, maybe, a little, it is.)

I don't think it's something really localized in Total War. I think you would be hard-pressed to find an opinion from me about games in general, of all genres, of the last five or six years that is hands-down more positive than you would have heard 7-10 years ago. I think the frantic, helter-skelter manic panic rush to cash in on the "casual market" has had an effect on every single genre, including the most hardcore of RPG and strategy games. And I think that however subtle (although in most cases it's overt and not subtle) the trend has been to fixate ever more on things like graphics, impressive graphics engines, levels of graphical detail and rendering that are completely aesthetic and insanely resource-intensive, and much less emphasis on gameplay innovation or creativity, story, options, etc. I think the attitude there largely has been "well we left editors/back doors open for you guys to hack up the game and mod it yourself" while game designers seem hellbent on capturing that perfectly realistic reflective water that ups the system requirements by 30% while contributing nothing to the game that will make a loyal fan.

This is not to say that the Total Wars have been dismal disappointments or aren't still extremely high quality strategy games. I consider them to still be basically the pinnacle of what's out there in terms of well developed, high profile strategy games. And I think they have "dumbed down" far less than most other games have in the last five years in the mad rush to capture casual gamers. (I think, though, that the day they announce that a Total War release will happen on PC after its console release, it's all downhill from that moment, mark my words-- taking a complex game and dumbing it down to something that can be easily navigated with six handheld buttons has lobotomized plenty of other high quality game series that hybridized out to consoles to capture more casuals.) But I think this trend to temporarily attract superficial players to games for things like graphical effects (it's the best-looking thing out there right now, but I won't be playing it anymore in two weeks type gamers) has had a dominant hand in game design for several years now, and I'm hoping a backlash to it or at least the emerging of even LARGER numbers (out of all the new gamers being exposed) of people who want genre specific, gameplay oriented games over simple flashy casual ones will rectify the industry/game market. (Not counting on it, but hoping.)

Again, Total war has probably suffered the least from this out of all the game series I have played and followed over the last five/ten years. But I think this bigger effect is at least a little of what people "sniff twice" about regarding the most recent Total Wars, wondering if the paint has a funny smell or what the problem is that they just can't pinpoint.

I think this line you said sums it up nicely, as a general comment about the direction of game advancements of the last five years:

Man, it's depressing... It looks really nice at first...