German magazine review

[Lusted]

Taken from this thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...93#post1273593

This info was posted by Kor Khan who is part of the Chivalry TW mod team.

A bit of info for you regarding reviews: Two German magazines came out today for subscribers (to whom I don't belong in either case). Both of them reviewed Medieval 2. GameStar Germany gave it 91%, which might (but not necessarily) put it at the very top of their list for strategy games. Rome got 89% btw.
I haven't read the review and noone's given me the gist of it, so I don't know what the stated pros and cons are.

The other magazine, PC Games, gave it 88% (Rome got 84% there). The stated Pros and cons are:

+ A perfect mix of turn-based strategy and real-time tactics
+ The so far best-looking epic battles of all time
+ Great immersion, length and replayability.

-Rare AI bugs in the battles (more below)
-Little variation during long campaigns.

About the AI: According to this thread (which is where I got all this info from) the AI in Medieval 2 is significantly better than in Rome and uses a range of tricks, but can sometimes cop-out completely during the real-time battles. One example: The AI (playing Milan) besieged the player's city. After taking the walls, the men just hung around indefinately and the player reloaded after ten minutes of absolutely nothing happening.

If you want to read more (and understand German), you can always look at this link

http://www.gamestar.de/community/gs...ad.php?t=236214

[Furious Mental]

Glad to hear about the AI generally improving, weird bug though. I guess I can live with it but really, I expect this to be picked up and fixed before the game is released.

[shifty157]

Yeah its definitly good to hear that the AI is significantly better from someone other than CA. AI bugs can always be addressed in a patch so im not too worried about those. CA is generally pretty good about fixing up issues like that in patches.

[Quid]

I am a subscriber of Gamestar and I have not yet seen any new article on the game yet (only some new screenshots). They are saying, however, that they will be testing the game thouroughly over the weekend. I am sure that the article will appear within the next few days.

I don't know where the 91% comes from. Some dude in the fora there has thrown that into the round. Perhaps he is a writer for the mag and has had a part in the discussion of the game. Could be about right, though.

Quid

[hoom]

Unfortunately AI sitting around doing nothing is an RTW bug that I'd have hoped would have been entirely expunged by now

& I'd gotten all excited about the AI from the podcast where they were talking about much smarter unit matchups, multi-ring castle defense, improved pathfinding & stuff like closing the range if they AI is losing a shooting match/hanging back if winning etc

[A.Saturnus]

I am a subscriber of Gamestar and I have not yet seen any new article on the game yet (only some new screenshots). They are saying, however, that they will be testing the game thouroughly over the weekend. I am sure that the article will appear within the next few days.

I don't know where the 91% comes from. Some dude in the fora there has thrown that into the round. Perhaps he is a writer for the mag and has had a part in the discussion of the game. Could be about right, though.

Quid

I got it yesterday. The 91% are correct. That's the second best score strategy games got in the mag (best was WIII - Frozen Throne with 93%).
Unfortunately, I don't have the time now to summerize the article (it's half three here).
They are overall quite pleased but report some bugs:
- none of the numerous children of the family was a princess
- factions refuse to accept cease fire even when in hopeless position
- units get stuck at bottle neck pathways
- cav sometimes refuses to charge runaways

Some of that sounds quite familiar

[Polemists]

well some of that seems quite easily fixed with a patch so i'm not to worried. I don't view those as major issues personally.

[Quid]

I got it yesterday. The 91% are correct. That's the second best score strategy games got in the mag (best was WIII - Frozen Throne with 93%).
Unfortunately, I don't have the time now to summerize the article (it's half three here).
They are overall quite pleased but report some bugs:
- none of the numerous children of the family was a princess
- factions refuse to accept cease fire even when in hopeless position
- units get stuck at bottle neck pathways
- cav sometimes refuses to charge runaways

Some of that sounds quite familiar

As stated above, it sounds about right. I gather they didn't have the final version yet but one that is being used for testing. With a bit of luck some of the issues will be resolved once the game goes gold.

However, some of the issues do sound familiar and that gives me a little to think about, to be honest. Clearly some of the problems are NOT as easily patched as they seem. Hopefully, though, they are being addressed and sorted out. Perhaps then the score will rise another notch...

How did you get the mag so early? I thought it was only coming out on 25th...

Quid

[anders]

ai factions failing to see their own best interest, and refusig ceasefire when about to be mauled was the most infuriating fault in the strategic game of rtw. whats the use of getting " a lot more information about how the other part feels towards you" in a negotiation when the other part is totally incapable of making rational decisions?

[Mount Suribachi]

Yep, exactly. That was what many of us said when we first learnt about the new diplomacy screen *sighs*

As for units getting stuck in city battles, I had that the other night in RTW, but I thought it was cos I had the enemy stick between 2 sets of forces and they couldn't decide which way to go - advance and they get hit in the rear, retreat and they get hit in the rear. So they just shuffled around till the timer ran out. But thats the only time I've ever seen it.

[Ringeck]

- factions refuse to accept cease fire even when in hopeless position

That's the good old RTW classic. Sad that it hasn't been fixed.

[Polemists]

Maybe so but once again I am still of opinion that they can patch it. If not i'm sure someone in the mod community will develop countless mods where this won't be a issue for those of you who prefer mods. Personally I never had a issue with ceasefires, maybe because i never offered them once I was at war only my enemies did

[*Ringo*]

-Little variation during long campaigns.

This is quite worrying, seems as though 80% of your single player time is spent in campaign! It seems bishops, princesses, merchants and the like; fail to make up for the lack of titles, depth of diplomacy and other role playing elements that kept me so addicted to MTW!

[Stig]

I can tell from what I heard from someone who is a CA staffmember that they only worked for 3 months on the AI, and all other months on making it eye-candy. Furthermore you can still see the AI just attacking something, using 1 unit armies, not attacking over sea and the mongol invasion is unstoppable.

[alpaca]

Well the thing about cease-fires is that some factions might be too proud to accept one. Anyways, in R:TW it always happened, so I hope it's not the same in M2TW.

[Ituralde]

How did you get the mag so early? I thought it was only coming out on 25th...

Quid

I guess he has subscribed to the magazine, that way you get it earlier, while the retail version hits the stores on Wednesday subscribers can get it as early as Saturday. However, since you mention that you are a subscriber there can sometimes be trouble with the mail, hope you got it by now!
I had the magazine in the mail on Saturday and read the article and watched a video about it. There wasn't anything too terribly new in it, which is why I won't bother to summarize the report.

Only important thing I can think of is that there's not going to be HotSeat campaign, as there has been speculation regardging this. Unfortunately the information on AI is pretty scarce. They just don't mention it, but say at the end that it's overall good but on rare occasions lacks completely.
The video is pretty short too, as I said they don't go into much detail, Muslim and Orthodox factions are not covered in their reports. Seems to me they just had time to play one large campaign with the HRE and probably did some Custom battles and some Multiplayer testing.

Nothing bad in the review, but nothing excitingly new either.

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Stig]

I read the Dutch Power Unlimited magazine last weekend when I was at my parents (my little brother gets it). It said that units will rout on their own now. No longer the entire group, but man by man, sounded cool and I haven't heard that before.

[Darth Nihilus]

The AI failing to accept a ceasefire was a very annoyong bug. I really hope its eliminated.

[A.Saturnus]

ai factions failing to see their own best interest, and refusig ceasefire when about to be mauled was the most infuriating fault in the strategic game of rtw. whats the use of getting " a lot more information about how the other part feels towards you" in a negotiation when the other part is totally incapable of making rational decisions?

Well, read my sig. What I find worrying about some of these bugs is precisely that they should be fixable. Because that means they haven't been fixed yet! Since they are well known from older games this leads us to the absurd but given the facts plausible suspicion that they may be intentional. Or at least intentionally not removed.

This is quite worrying, seems as though 80% of your single player time is spent in campaign! It seems bishops, princesses, merchants and the like; fail to make up for the lack of titles, depth of diplomacy and other role playing elements that kept me so addicted to MTW!

I would be to worried about that. I'm pretty sure that they don't mean little variation in comparison to Medieval I. Note that they gave higher scores for MIITW. Campaigns in all TW games could get a little unexcited over time.

[Maizel]

Lol, i don't think any REAL staffmember would say anything in the lines of:

"So yea, we done practically zipp work on the AI, but we did spent most of our time, trying to amke it look pretty, so people will buy it''

[DensterNY]

This is quite worrying, seems as though 80% of your single player time is spent in campaign! It seems bishops, princesses, merchants and the like; fail to make up for the lack of titles, depth of diplomacy and other role playing elements that kept me so addicted to MTW!

I agree because in MTW the campaign aspect of the game was just as fun as the battles.

One evil tactic I use is to take over an already conquered land by a rival nation, build up the city and let it go to rebellion. Sometimes there would be a resurgence of those conquered people and they'd be a strong threat and nuisance to my rival. How about provoking a Catholic ally to attack a weakened region so that they get excommunicated and you get a free pass to grab land. Or launching a Crusade just to walk through your allies' region to strip them of their troops.

... there are so many little things in MTW that made it fun, I hope they've kept some of it intact.

[edyzmedieval]

- factions refuse to accept cease fire even when in hopeless position

THat gets on my nerves. I can't stand that bug, it's soooo annoying....

[Stig]

Nah I bet it's the same FEATURE as the Save/Load bug

[Mount Suribachi]

I don't think its a bug though. I think its related to the "gang-up-on-the-human" way they designed the AI (and I've seen that from CA in plenty of interviews for RTW & MTW2)

[Martok]

I don't think its a bug though. I think its related to the "gang-up-on-the-human" way they designed the AI (and I've seen that from CA in plenty of interviews for RTW & MTW2)

I concur. My impression has always been that the AI's refusal to make peace when cornered is more of (as Stig put it) a "feature", and has nothing to do with faulty programming.

What's particularly annoying is that this has been a problem in every Total War game, not just Rome. Granted that while it made a certain amount of sense in Shogun (that the AI-controlled clans often refused ceasefires), it certainly didn't make sense in either of the other games.

[*Ringo*]

I don't think its a bug though. I think its related to the "gang-up-on-the-human" way they designed the AI (and I've seen that from CA in plenty of interviews for RTW & MTW2)

I agree, it's not a bug; in-fact it's common practice to use the "gang-up" (as you so eloquently put it) or cheat technique in AI development, it would just be nicer if it wasn't so transparent!

A little role-play never hurt anyone! *says packing away Spiderman outfit*

[Quid]

I guess he has subscribed to the magazine, that way you get it earlier, while the retail version hits the stores on Wednesday subscribers can get it as early as Saturday. However, since you mention that you are a subscriber there can sometimes be trouble with the mail, hope you got it by now!
I had the magazine in the mail on Saturday and read the article and watched a video about it. There wasn't anything too terribly new in it, which is why I won't bother to summarize the report.

Only important thing I can think of is that there's not going to be HotSeat campaign, as there has been speculation regardging this. Unfortunately the information on AI is pretty scarce. They just don't mention it, but say at the end that it's overall good but on rare occasions lacks completely.
The video is pretty short too, as I said they don't go into much detail, Muslim and Orthodox factions are not covered in their reports. Seems to me they just had time to play one large campaign with the HRE and probably did some Custom battles and some Multiplayer testing.

Nothing bad in the review, but nothing excitingly new either.

Cheers!

Ituralde

Yeah, got it today but the DVD is broken (in two parts) so I wasn't able to have a look at the vids.

As you stated above, there isn't really anything new in the review. They seem pretty impressed with the game.

Graphics: 9/10
- boring battlefields

Sound: 10/10

Balance: 8/10
- already fairly hard on easy (but then, they thought that Rome was hard too)

Atmosphere: 9/10
- historic occurances - only in text form and at times difficult to comprehend? (nothing new there, then)

Game Handling: 7/10
- cumbersome handling of the camera in battle mode
- awkward menus

Amplitude: 10/10

Starting positions: 10/10

AI: 8/10
- some bugs

Specific bugs mentioned:

• In the test not a single princess appeared in the entire campaign

• Opposing factions would not accept a non-attack pact despite being hopelessly outnumbered and about to be crushed

• Soldiers and horsemen sometimes got caught and were unable to be moved any further (bottlenecks and walls)

• Cavalry at times ignored the attack order and just rode next to the fleeing enemies

Units: 10/10

Campaign: 10/10

Technical data:

Minimum requirements:
2.0 GHz Intel
XP 1800+ AMD
512 MB RAM
7.2 GB HD

Standard requirements:
2.8 GHz Intel
XP 2600+ AMD
1.0 GB RAM
7.2 GB HD

Optimum requirements:
3.6 GHz Intel
64/3500+ AMD
2.0 GB RAM
7.2 GB HD

Info taken from Gamestar Magazine.

[Ituralde]

Another thing to mention while reading their requirements:

No mention was made of SSE2 being required or Athlon XP not being able to handle the game and GameStar usually tests with a wide range of processor types and have up until Core 2 Duo always favoured AMD processors over Intel ones. This should be a major heads-up for people that were worried about their AMD CPU not handling the game.

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Lusted]

Its been known for a while now that SSE2 will not be required for the full game. CA Oz made a statement relaitng to that after the demo was released, saying that SSE2 will not be requiree for the full game.

[Ituralde]

It's always good to have independent evidence.