3/5
The naval combat tutorial is the most frustrating I've ever experienced in a game. You're prevented from operating controls for much of the beginning of it, it often takes a long time for it to acknowledge a completed action, and it got stuck on the first attack order (no matter how many times I ordered the attack, I was still prompted to do so, despite the fact that the order clearly went through). It's pretty much broken. My first attempt at the sea combat historical battle went poorly towards the beginning as my units did not behave as expected. Too early to judge though, I'll need to try it again.
Land combat didn't disappoint. I like the new default camera control scheme, IMO it's the best of the series so far. The pace of combat and movement is reasonable, and the interface remains functional, though an unfortunate amount of micromanagement is necessary to ensure the combat efficiency of your troops. Cannons seem a bit overpowered, but I think that's just because the Americans have so many deployed in that battle (I would never attack across a river with so little artillery). Cavalry are extremely good at dying. Even if you only send them on perfectly legitimate attacks on enemy flanks and rears, they seem to suffer immense casualties all the time. Don't think I'll be using melee-only light cavalry in the game. If memory serves, the AI is better than in Shogun. It reacted sensibly to every one of my actions (it still lost, of course; it's not as smart as a person). No single unit or ability seems considerably overpowered, including the grenadiers' grenades.
The graphics, including the framerate, are impressive. My only complaint there are the sprites used for distant trees: the color of the bark is vastly different than on the 3D ones, making the boundary and transitions unconvincing. Load times are the worst I've experienced in a PC game. Textures and sounds are the only game resources that are large enough to induce large load times, and the difference between M2TW's load times and ETW's cannot be fully explained by those resources. So maybe it'll improve in the final game.
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