Just so that everyone is aware, mainstream game reviewers are completely bought and paid for which is why it's possible to predict which extreme accuracy what score any given title will receive. Empire: Total War was always going to receive high scores no matter what the reality of the game was.
Because of this, I really don't think anything has or will change. The average person isn't logging onto any website to voice dissatisfaction with any game, only the fans are doing that and writing lengthy posts about why they're broken.
Until either mainstream reviewers start being honest, or the majority ignore them and start logging on to listen to the fans nothing will change. Since neither of these will ever happen, hype will continue to keep the Total War franchise alive. Yeah so a few of us around here have finally learned our lesson and won't be buying NTW but I can't see that seriously making a dent. Maybe I'm wrong.

As for the blog entry, the actor on the last page said it all for me.