First Impressions

[Sp4]

The encyclopdia is a bit stupid to use but the game is fun so far. Just been playing lots of Coop campaign and except for the occasional OOS, it's good fun. Better than Shogun 2 with all the diversity and stuff.

[CaptainCrunch]

After playing through the Prologue, going 12 years into a campaign, and having run dozens and dozens of Custom Battles, here are some thoughts;

For me the battles have been particularly unsatisfying. As has been stated many times, the pace is absurd, they're over in minutes... but I expected this from the pre-release info. However it happens even when you setup really evenly matched battles. Even though they attempted to create a sense of mass and weight among the units, the fact that they just melt into one another during charges, and then often outright disappear from the scrum really nullifies any sense of 'solidness' among the soldiers. The collision detection is just extraordinarily weak at the moment... but not always! This is part of the inconsistency with the graphics/physics that I've experienced throughout the game so far.

If enough men encircle an opposing unit, that unit literally melts away into oblivion without a trace sometimes. I see soldiers standing inside one another, there can be 3 entire units standing in the same place all mashed up and you can't tell sometimes (especially if you have banners and selection rings disabled). When you mouse over them to see what the hell is going on, the game often gives you the wrong info about the unit ID.

Aesthetically, I feel the look of the game is several orders of magnitude inferior to what we were shown during the pre-release screens and vids. Even though I'm not playing with everything maxed, I am running just about everything on 'high' or 'very high', with unit details and textures set to 'ultra'. Shadows is where I had to take a significant hit where I had to set it to 'High' to get playable frames, but I'm not sure that's reason enough for me to not be able to see any unit details when I position the camera opposite the sun! Everybody on the battlefield turns into a night shade and it's really difficult to see what's going on or get any enjoyment out of the battle animations. I've also played a small scale battle (aren't they all? ) with everything maxed out just to see the difference and I can't really notice one except in the sky and for the water.

Also, my experience with disabling missile trails has so far been to hardly see missiles at all until they just appear stuck in the targeted units. Of course, on better systems I'm sure the appearance of the game is most certainly improved... but by how much? Out of curiosity, I checked out the R2 forum over at TWCenter and saw quite a few threads containing endless complaints about the graphics from players with top-of-the-line machines. I'm no graphics monger believe me, but right now there is very little crispness or definition to the look of the game. You don't have to zoom out very much before you can no longer tell what unit you're looking at, unless it's one that's really distinctive. This might sound nuts to some, but right now in its current state, I much prefer the look of RTW with EB set to max than this. Yeah the models are inferior and there are so many less polys and so forth, but the look is defined and the feel is 'solid'.

The icing on the shitcake for me today though was to discover that not only are there things such as flaming javelins in the game, but also HAs with flaming arrows and skirmisher cav with flaming magic as well.

Really CA... what were you thinking?

I can honestly say that there hasn't been a single aspect of the game I've been able to get excited about... and I'm really trying to. I mean I knew I'd be disappointed about a number of things, and I'm not trying to give the impression that there is nothing I like about the game. However, I really didn't expect this level of dissatisfaction, or the indifference I'm feeling towards it. Damn shame...

[BroskiDerpman]

Thanks for letting me know.

Online battle footage from youtubers I know seem to consist of heavy infantry spam, heavy cav, and no missiles.

If you got missiles it's usually fodder.

Rushes will take out balanced builds much easier than using a balanced army to take out melee rushes.

Against Parthia seems like you'd just spam more infantry.

[Barkhorn1x]

I seconds Caps comments regarding:
- Flaming arrows/javelins on the battlefield = what the hell?
- Shadows are pants = best to just set them to Low and enjoy the FPS gain and the sun

I don't think the pathing is horrible, merely just often bad.

What I really don't appreciate is the horribly lagging campaign map. And sometimes it freezes outright when leveling up or checking scrolls.

These issues better be addressed.

Bottom line = CA released a sequel alright. Unfortunately for us it was to Empire Total War.

[Lemur]

I skipped the prologue, finally played a few turns as Rome. Still trying to wrap my head around the new mechanics: What's with the family politics? I can't make head or tail of it. Not quite as underdeveloped as, say, the railroad transport menu in FotS, but I'm still puzzled by it. Replacing generals is really weird as well, apparently you can't swap 'em or move 'em between armies and navies ... I guess you're stuck with them? And the 4 random "replacements" you are allowed to look at?

Trade at least makes sense, and the diplomacy includes welcome feedback.

I dunno, going to have to dig in for a while and get a handle on the interface and systems.

-edit-

Obviously, I'm not doing any proper battles yet, just trying to get a sense of the campaign tools/interface. And flailing about a great deal.

[johnhughthom]

Still remember my greatest MTW moments as if they were yesterday, that campaign where I saved the Byzantine's butts countless times as Denmark, my epic crusade battle that came down to the Egyptian sultan and heir to the English throne as the last two men on the battlefield, my first taste of the Mongols as the leader of my little English crusader state became "The Butcher".

Nothing has come close with the recent titles.

[johnhughthom]

You can, there have been a few budget versions released, in the UK at least. Notoriously difficult to get running on modern machines though.

[mlc82]

Still remember my greatest MTW moments as if they were yesterday, that campaign where I saved the Byzantine's butts countless times as Denmark, my epic crusade battle that came down to the Egyptian sultan and heir to the English throne as the last two men on the battlefield, my first taste of the Mongols as the leader of my little English crusader state became "The Butcher".

Nothing has come close with the recent titles.

This is going OT, but I could not agree more, IMO Medieval 1 was the pinnacle of the series and none of the others have come anywhere near it. I know that the switch to the 3D map essentially broke the strategic AI, as it just doesn't know how to cope with all of the options/movement, but what amazes me most is that Medieval 1 (and Shogun 1 I think, I never really played it) had an honest to goodness, functional Battle AI. Not a brilliant one, but one that knew how to use units to their strengths, maintain and move armies in formation, run off to hills to defend- that sort of thing. A good player still won often but you actually had to TRY, and even battles where the AI had better units than yours could be really scary. I still play a lot of M1 to this day, so I don't think this is just me rambling nostalgically- my 1st time back to M1 (after several years of an nvidia card that wouldn't run it), the computer HAMMERED me in an even battle, simply because I went into it hardly paying attention and apparently had become soft from being used to the RTW and beyond AI performance.

It's as if they just removed any battle AI programming for Rome 1, and left it out in the subsequent sequels (thankfully modding helps with this to some degree).

- As a side note, on a win 7 pc with AMD card, Medieval 1 now runs just fine for me.

[Monk]

h-h-here i go


tl:dr version included.



The graphics glitches are a real headscratcher.

Turned up to extreme the game looks awful on my setup, and my PC is no busta. It's not a lag issue, it's a render issue, and I'm not sure what's up. Maybe video drivers need to be updated? Would have thought this kind of thing would be sorted for a game that got this much hype, and looked as good as it did in the press videos. For me it looks absolutely hideous.. I'm not far from hyperbole when I say the terrain set on extreme looks almost identical to the Original RTW for me. There is something seriously wrong with that and I'm saddened that the game is released looking as bad as it does, optimized as poorly as it is.


The technology tree is something I don't see nearly enough people talking about. There's nothing to it at all. You can blitz to Post-Marian reforms legionaries in 10 turns. 15 if you count building time.

What? I understand wanting people to have iconic legionaries but.. what? The transition feels completely pointless, and if anything, is a huge missed opportunity. It would have been much better to do an event like the legendary swordsman in the original STW (maybe a defeat causes Rome to rethink its military, etc) or just a plain event trigger like conquering a set number of provinces, giving the player the choice to reorganize the military to be more mobile/efficient ( Marius' Mules).



The new provincial system is needlessly punishing I think. Sacking and looting a city now effects all cities in that province, even if they are your home cities. Rome starts at war with the Etruscan League so naturally they are enemies of Rome. I kill my enemies. I defeat their armies. Crush their resistance and loot their cities.. but by looting their cities, my capital in Rome takes a happiness hit. Why? Rome should be celebrating! I just nailed the enemy commander to a cross and took his woman before his corpse was cold. I'm a hero! Why on earth would that upset Rome?

Provinces now share happiness, so what happens to one city affects the happiness of the region. Okay, i get that. It's an interesting mechanic and is probably meant to have two goals. One of which is getting armies to stop camping castles/cities which i hugely approve of, and the other to upset neighboring cities and make them more likely to attack you from your expansion. I take Sparta and loot it, causing nearby Athens to grow extremely worried and suffer happiness hits as war looms on their neighboring provinces. But the ability to cause "friendly fire" by natural expansion is rather puzzling. The problem comes in the fact that sacking and looting enemies of Rome is now causing riots in the streets of Rome. This is, unfortunately, not a logical balance system. When i first heard about this system I naturally assumed that friendly fire would not be possible but it looks like I was severely mistaken.



I really like the new recruiting system. It feels like a natural evolution of the way armies work and I wish we had this all the way back in medieval 2. The Army naming is really fun too - I sincerely enjoy any game that allows me to add some customization to my troops. I was worried when some outlets were reporting (most notably RPS) that the army leveling wasn't as fun as we were led to believe. That was correct, unfortunately. The bonuses you get are small and incremental to the point that, by the time you see any real benefit, you'll likely have to be closing in on the max level. The model of small bonuses over a long period of time is ultimately self-defeating. Since by the time i get anything good I've long forgotten about the customization.

It would have been much more fun to get honorary bonuses like legionary standards or relics of slain heroes that your men bring with them on the battle map (like in med 2, remember the giant crosses Crusaders could get?). Sure it would only add a small benefit, but the awesome factor is through the roof in my opinion.



This is becoming long winded, so let me sum up a bit..






TL:DR - AKA - "MONK I AIN'T GONNA READ ALL THAT "


The game feels rushed as weird as that sounds. Half-baked ideas and unfinished graphics, AI and systems. Every criticism you've read leveled at the game is fair, and so too is most of the praise. As disappointed as I am there have been serious moments of fun in the time i've played the game! But if I had to put this on the scale of past releases, this is definitely a huge step back for CA. Shogun 2 was tremendous experience from start to finish, one I wrote numerous AARs for, but Rome 2? It just feels like it missed the mark.

It reached for the stars and fell short. In many ways, it's the same as Empire: Total War.


Shogun 2 is still the best unmodded experience you'll find in the 3D TW series imo. (for modded that goes to Medieval 2). If you're thinking about buying this and really want to try it some day, keep an eye on patch notes and wait for a sale. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there's no fun to be had in Rome 2, because there most certainly is! But there's a lot of negatives.. some of which just don't make any logical sense as to how they got there.

[VAE VICTUS]

the learning curve on this game is quite steep for me ( I never really got into Shogun 2 ). I am likely doing everything wrong, but I enjoy because if the game were too simplistic I would grow tired of it quickly. This game is so rich, I think it will be still be fun and challenging to play ( I am a terrible general ) well into the future. Some controls could be more intuitive however, but this is a small complaint from someone who still frantically scrolls through the encyclopedia looking for ways to grow the economy.

[Ituralde]

This is probably a bit late, but as I don't get to play as much as I want to, this is my first impression of the province system and I love it!

In my Suebi campaign I own 4 to 5 provinces and finally have the money and technology to build the third to fourth tier buildings. I've never had this much fun just tinkering around with my buildings in any previous Total War title. I'm trying out different specializations trying to get as close as possible to my happy cap and reducing my food surplus, which was around 30 at one time, to get more money. Now I've raised my income by 3000 to 4000 just by shuffling buildings around. It's really fun to discover all the synergies between the different kind of buildings, find the right shrine to go with it and not have food or happiness problems. There's just so many buildings to choose from and this has added a whole new scope to the game for me.

Also the Unique Ability of the Suebi to get happiness from war declarations plays into this very nicely as well. I declared several wars and declared on enemies where I don't intend to attack just to retain the happiness level back home. Gotta love those blood-thirsty Barbarians!