First Impressions

[Spoonska]

From the perspective of a nub

I played my very first multiplayer match yesterday. I used Sparta because the 60 hours I have invested in this game so far has all come from my Sparta Campaign. I rolled with 5 Spartan Pikemen, 1 Citizen Cav, and the rest Royal Spartans. Played a guy who used Arverni, and won all of our engagements pretty handily. Unfortunately, that resulted in me getting called every name in the book, and the guy running to all 4 corners of the map with his remaining units with 3 min left to force a draw.

I only played a few matches after that, but my review would be:

The chat is quite possibly the ugliest thing I've ever seen. I would love to have a "Recent Players" list. Some people were cool, and I would have liked to pair up or discuss what went on afterwards.But unless you add them to your friends list during the fight they're gone. The whole process really feels like there's no community, and it's just solo anonymous queuing.

Pacing of the battles seems nice. Never felt too slow or too quick. The quality of opponents I faced also felt right. I never got anyone that blew me out of the water and vice versa.Overall I thought the gameplay itself was pretty solid. Balance wise I won't comment, but I would like to see hoplites changed. They're very similar to Yari Samurai IMO. I wish we had victory points again like in Shogun 2 for people that can't handle the traumatizing humiliation of negative internet points.

All and all like the rest of the game it feels kinda rushed. I'm not going to get into a rant about things not working that's not what I meant. What I'm trying to say is that, it's a very simple barebones multiplayer system. If you were to look at Shogun 2's multiplayer versus Rome 2's multiplayer you'd think Rome 2 came before Shogun 2. Veteran system aside hopefully we'll get things like profiles, stats and a little bit of customization back. A little fluff is good.