How good is it? ETW, overall....review

[Kulgan]

In my opinion ETW has many great assets. However for every good asset there are 10 major flaws, and I don't see it possbile to patch all those flaws. In order to get the game practially flawless they should better simply start all over.*

I never saw such a big ( in terms of money/people involved ) come out so poorly.

I think ETW is a very dark chapter in a great series.



* Although I still hope for succesfull patching, I seriously doubt it!

[Scribble]

when the bugs get ironed out it will be, imho, the best in a series of extremely good games. ETW has soem excellent features - particulaly the tech tree - but has some widely irratating bugs. One of the previous posts said the AI seemed bi-polar and that's very true. I've found that if you leave a very small window for the AI to hurt you, suddenly you've lost 5 territories and the Ai has destroyed all your buildings. It's good to see these raiding tactics.
But the numerous bugs are frustrating and, after being unable to unlock the US as a faction because of a bug, I'm thinking of returning to Milan in MTW2. But just until the bugs get fixed then I'll return to ETW.

[SpencerH]

I'm glad we've got a thread like this since I managed to keep my vow to not buy ETW on release. As I had somewhat decided from gleaning the various rants at other sites, I'll be waiting a while until this one is "completed" before I purchase it.

[Grumfoss]

Empire to me is a real advance in the Totalwar series. I got quite excited the first time I saw one of the naval battles on Youtube.

When I first installed the game (I was a little concerned about using Steam as I had heard conflicting stories about it) but all went well, and the updates seem to work fine. I started the game and ran through part of the RTI campaign. The land battles were beautiful to watch (I am lucky enough to be able to run the game maxed out) and when I got to the Naval battles I was really pleased, the level of detail was amazing from the reflections on the water to the ships heeling when the sails are filled, brilliant. yes I will admit that the path finding has occasionally made me mad and I can't board or capture anything but now that I have fought many battles I now know ways to get around most of the problems, not ideal but not game breaking.

On the Campaign map I really like the torn national flags to show a damaged army/navy a really nice touch, the animations of the characters are great as well as the appearance of things happening with carts going from town to port and then trade ships sailing away. The smoke rising from cities and damaged towns really makes the map come alive.

On the land battles there are a few problems with poor AI path finding and friendly fire issues, but in general the animations of the infantry firing and reloading is excellent and when artillery works correctly it is great to see it smash through buildings. The use of the insert key is a real breakthrough, it great to be able to be part of your cavalry charge (seeing the horse's head in front of you) or be on the front rank of your line infantry advancing on enemy is really great. Its fun if your a unit hiding behind a wall, loading your gun then popping up to take a shot and then bobbing back down hehe what fun. With the mods for smoke and fife and drums the battle fields look even better with the smoke drifting across the battle field and the new particle effects on artillery look excellent.

Yes there are bugs in the game, but every game that I have played on the PC has been buggy, we are lucky on the PC that patches are forthcoming and soon all of the killer bugs will be ironed out. I really feel for those people who have not been able to play the game and I wish that I could wave a magic wand and sort your problems out, but I think that CA are doing what they can as I'm sure they don't want to upset their customers.

I have only had one CTD (this was caused by trying to merge armies) i'm sure as time goes on i'll experience more...yes I will curse the game but It still won't stop me from loving it.