I was one of the lucky people who went to Rezzed this weekend at Birmingham and got my hands on Total War: Rome II to play! There was one battle available to play, that being the Battle of the Nile, and I played as both Egypt and Rome a couple of times each so I got a good feel for the game . Here I'll detail my thoughts on the game. Also, please find linked some images. Please forgive the poor quality and angles. I'm not entirely sure I was allowed to take photos but others were doing so too, so I did it a bit sneaky like. Link to pics.
Firstly, I played as Egypt, as they are the easier team to play. They start fortified on top of a hill, defending, while the Romans must attack up the hill. At their disposal they have burning hay bales to push down the hill towards the attackers, numerous elephants to smash the enemy lines to bits and scythed chariots to cut the Romans down where they stand. But you already knew all this, so I'll delve straight into the nitty gritty.
Controlling your units feels very fluid and responsive. You issue an order and they hop to it; gone are the days in previous games where you'd issue an order just for them to ignore it, it would seem. Animations are nice and look well done (as I'd expect; I learned today Creative Assembly has the largest motion capture studio in Europe!) and the units themselves are very detailed and nice to look at. The environments too are particularly pleasant. Granted it was a desert map and the major feature was sand, but the dunes looked good and there was a lot of picturesque scenery in the background too, including the Pyramids of Giza of course.
The actual fighting was impressive too. Most of the animations and fighting was very enjoyable and worked like a charm, though there were a few issues from time to time. Soldiers would sometimes appear to stab and slash when no one was about. In addition, the actual fighting seems to pass quite quickly. Remember how quickly battles went in the original Rome? My play throughs weren't quite that fast, but still quite speedy. This may have something to do with the fact the Roman army is experienced and heavy infantry against light Egyptian soldiers but I'm not sure; I think the general pace of battles is quicker.
The first person view makes a return for artillery (nothing quite like scoring a bull's eye with a ballista!), but for other units it is replaced by the shaky cam we all seen in the Teutoburg Forest battle. This is actually really cool - I loved getting down on my soldiers' levels and charging with them into battle, or riding with my scythed chariots to cut down the enemy. It's quite immersive.
What I really loved though was the attention to detail and many little features present in the game. Seeing your soldiers raise their shields to block incoming arrows. Watching them jump over the sides of the ship after beaching to join the main army. When tired and stationary, your men will bend over and try to catch their breath back. My favourite moment was seeing my brave unit of Roman men charging uphill with flaming arrows stuck in their shields, with more and more men falling after each volley to get stuck into hand to hand combat. It really seemed like a great game, and one I now look forward to even more.
Of course though, there are some issues. The hay bales I mentioned were a bit buggy and only worked when they wanted to. As previously mentioned also the speed of the battles seemed a bit too quick. Perhaps it was the PC it was running on, but the game itself sometimes seemed a bit laggy. The projectile trails are quite ugly too, particularly for javelins, and look more like a smudge than a sleek javelin flying through the air. Finally, unit sizes just feel too small. I want thousands of men fighting (perhaps this could solve the battle speed), not hundreds. Maybe in the final game we can pick unit sizes and fix this.
Well I hoped you enjoyed the read. In addition CA also did a live code demo on the campaign map, but it was essentially what we've already seen before, with the exact same map zooming across Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and towards Germania. They did go into a bit more detail about how you deal with other characters and politics. Should someone appear who is a threat to you, you could assassinate or bribe them. On the other hand, a particularly helpful character could be supported or bribed to further support you. Characters will appear over the course of the game, both real and fictional, and will need to be dealt with in one way or another.
If you have any questions feel free to ask. I'll try to answer as best I can.
Re: Copy of a couple AAR's from the TW Dotcom forum
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