Is RTW really that bad

[Puzz3D]

The way to enjoy RTW is to use your imagination. Imagine being some Macedonian general, and attempt to recreate the Macedonian empire to its fullest. Once you star using your imagination and stop playing the game for the sake of completing it in the smallest time, it will become a fun and enjoyable game.

I agree, but there's a problem because my suspension of disbief is shattered as soon as the battlelines meet. I'm immediately thrown back in front of a keyboard looking at an unbelievable sequence of events as the battle unfolds. At this point, RTW screems at me from the screen, "I'm only a silly game!". The goofball antics happening on the screen seem out of place because I don't play the game to get comedy relief. I've read interviews given by CA where they joke about the comical, unrealistic elements in the game as though they are great features.

[LittleRaven]

Rome: Total War is easily one of the best games to hit the market in the last two years. A little perspective is in order here.

No, it will not make you coffee and massage your feet. Obviously there is room for improvement. But to call it anything less than a fantastic achievement is simply ludicrous.

It's not the best game of all time. Whether it's the best game of the TW series probably depends on your taste. In many ways, it completely blows its predecessors away. However, it's also much more complex than Shogun or Medieval, and that does make the shortcomings of the AI, which has always been the weakest part of the TW series, even more obvious. It has it's share of bugs and quirks, though that was true of all the old ones as well. It's also pushed the TW series into really cool territory that's never been seen before. After Shogun, I thought the castle sieges in Medieval were great. Rome has made all that obsolete in a moment. I can't wait to see where things go from here.

All things considered, you'd have to be crazy to miss out on this game. Not only do you get the vanilla game, which is a pretty phenomenal value for $50, but you get access to more mods and skins and units than you can shake a stick at. CA deserves massive kudos and money for the bang up job they did on this game, and polite reminders of the things they still need to fix. After all, we all want them to make more.

[Crusader4thepeople]

Rome: Total War is easily one of the best games to hit the market in the last two years. A little perspective is in order here.

No, it will not make you coffee and massage your feet. Obviously there is room for improvement. But to call it anything less than a fantastic achievement is simply ludicrous.

It's not the best game of all time. Whether it's the best game of the TW series probably depends on your taste. In many ways, it completely blows its predecessors away. However, it's also much more complex than Shogun or Medieval, and that does make the shortcomings of the AI, which has always been the weakest part of the TW series, even more obvious. It has it's share of bugs and quirks, though that was true of all the old ones as well. It's also pushed the TW series into really cool territory that's never been seen before. After Shogun, I thought the castle sieges in Medieval were great. Rome has made all that obsolete in a moment. I can't wait to see where things go from here.

All things considered, you'd have to be crazy to miss out on this game. Not only do you get the vanilla game, which is a pretty phenomenal value for $50, but you get access to more mods and skins and units than you can shake a stick at. CA deserves massive kudos and money for the bang up job they did on this game, and polite reminders of the things they still need to fix. After all, we all want them to make more.

I agree completely. Id played Medieval for a long time and was considering getting rome but was reading so much bad stuff about it. but i gave it ago and it blew me away. Seriously dudes put everything into perspective, rome is a brilliant game, and the variation of mods just blew me away. Ok the AI is worse than in Medieval Total War but so what. The beuty of the game blew me away and the shere effort put in by creative assembly is awesome. I mean you can look at your settlement on the map, your army is placed where it would be on the campaign map, the campaign map is in sync with the battle map ( i.e forests, bridges) and you can use the campaign map to your advantage. The sieges are awesome, you can use ladders rams and siege towers without a special unit for it. I dont care if one unit ever existed, the TW series has taught me more about history then most of my complete book collection.

So please put it into perspective dudes it might not be perfect, but its an awesome game

[Red Harvest]

Rome: Total War is easily one of the best games to hit the market in the last two years. A little perspective is in order here.

I disagree. It's not the sort of game that I will go back and play for kicks/immersion. It is not a game that hooks most of us (historical/strategy gamers--NOT RTS.) It isn't a challenge on the battlefield. The other TW series games are better.

[LittleRaven]

I disagree. It's not the sort of game that I will go back and play for kicks/immersion. It is not a game that hooks most of us (historical/strategy gamers--NOT RTS.) It isn't a challenge on the battlefield. The other TW series games are better.

Maybe. But even if you believe that, Medieval was released in 2002. Shogun in 2000. What games were released in the past two years that were better than Rome? Are you seriously going to maintain that it's not one of the best games since 2003?

I can appreciate that you don't like it as much as its predecessors. I agree that in some ways it is weaker. (I don't think the AI is actually worse, but the system is more complex, so it seems worse.) But the game has its strengths as well. It's a very promising start for a new engine and I'm very hopeful about where the series could go from here. And at $50, it's still a heck of good entertainment value.

[Red Harvest]

Maybe. But even if you believe that, Medieval was released in 2002. Shogun in 2000. What games were released in the past two years that were better than Rome? Are you seriously going to maintain that it's not one of the best games since 2003?

I can appreciate that you don't like it as much as its predecessors. I agree that in some ways it is weaker. (I don't think the AI is actually worse, but the system is more complex, so it seems worse.) But the game has its strengths as well. It's a very promising start for a new engine and I'm very hopeful about where the series could go from here. And at $50, it's still a heck of good entertainment value.

Lower the bar enough and squeeze the range enough and you can claim anything you want about it or any other game. I compare RTW to similar style games that I have and its own siblings. As for better games, Civil War Bull Run is much more interesting on the battlefield and at about $20 IIRC when I bought it, soon after release. It is actually an opponent worth playing. Haven't bought many others lately, I wasted a bunch of time on RTW, can't say that the game itself was satisfying. I did expand my knowlege of period warfare and history greatly trying to figure out why the game didn't give the right feel. That's hardly a ringing endorsement of a game...it made me want to acquire more history books instead of playing. In that regards it has been an extremely expensive purchase.

[LittleRaven]

Lower the bar enough and squeeze the range enough and you can claim anything you want about it or any other game. I compare RTW to similar style games that I have and its own siblings.

I'm lowering the bar by saying Rome is one of the best games in the last two years?

Holy cow. That's one heck of a standard you have. A game can't be a success unless it's what, the best game of all time?

Rome blows away it's siblings in lots of ways. The strategic map opens up options that never existed under the old games. The expanded family tree and traits system is a huge step over the Medieval system. The new engine allows battles on walls and in towns, something we could never do before.

I appreciate that you don't particularly enjoy these advancements, or at least that other problems overshadow your enjoyment of them, and that overall you prefer the old system. That's fine. I quite understand how someone could prefer Shogun or Medieval or Bull Run to Rome. What I can't understand is people saying Rome is a terrible game. It isn't. Not by any reasonable standard whatsoever. And I should know, because I spend entirely too much of my life playing computer games. (and hanging out with people who spent even MORE of their lives playing computer games) MOO 3, now there was a terrible game, and a disappointing sequel to boot. Age of Sail II, yeesh. Or heck, even Black and White, which was a technical marvel and a complete dud as a game. Trust me, in the wide world of computer gaming, Rome is a masterpiece, even considering the footsteps in which it must follow.

[Veresov]

My unhapiness with RTW is that it is not challenging. The AI in battle is very easy to beat even with mods! It also has the very bad save/load bug that breaks its strategic game.

At this time I am not sure I want to buy expansion after reading that very little of the game is going to change. I am not talking about added features but instead CA fixing the problems with this engine. I can get a very good mod - Darth mod or RTR for free.

[Red Harvest]

I'm lowering the bar by saying Rome is one of the best games in the last two years?

Holy cow. That's one heck of a standard you have. A game can't be a success unless it's what, the best game of all time?

It doesn't make my list unless it is something I want to play again; RTW isn't, unlike its siblings. I have many old games that can't hold a candle to RTW based on looks, but they are ones I still like to play (and I'm still doing scenario development on one from 1998.)

Rome blows away it's siblings in lots of ways. The strategic map opens up options that never existed under the old games. The expanded family tree and traits system is a huge step over the Medieval system. The new engine allows battles on walls and in towns, something we could never do before.

It has the *potential* to blow them away, but it fails due to sloppy execution. That potential was why I spent time on RTW in the first place. The gameplay isn't as satsifying in RTW for me.

The strategic map looks great, and has potential, but the AI is so weak strategically that it doesn't really carry over into gameplay. The AI doesn't employ its armies well, so it adds an extra dimension of weakness to gameplay. It also results in some weak tactical maps. I could go into some detail here as to why this is so...I'm working on something related at the moment, concept development trying to figure out how to work around this, just back burner project I've been thinking about. MTW handled it by making detailed maps that used the border crossing to determine which ones in a pool could be generated. RTW is using a sort of smoothed surface of the entire strat map as a starting point, and this does not allow as much of a realistic countour/vegetation effect as is really needed. The RTW battlefield terrain doesn't come into play sufficiently when compared to STW or MTW.

Unfortunately, the traits system is so badly bugged that it is a hindrance to the game. It gives you 10 star generals in no time by double counting, etc. It could have been a step forward, but a badly bugged implementation made it a step backward gameplay wise. I would prefer to play without the current RTW traits.