I've played a few hours of M2TW, running through a couple of dozen turns of a VH/VH English campaign.
The good:
1) The battles do seem more challenging than RTW and in a good, fair, way, not because the stats are skewed. So far, I am always getting significant casualties in battles - as I did in MTW and STW - not the minimal ones I tend to get even in RTR. I'm not quite sure what's caused this - a combination of the higher morale, the vulnerable cav, slow firing missiles and the AI not doing dumb things, I guess.
2) So far, I like the battlefield AI. I've heard about the passive AI bug, but I've not experienced it. So far, the AI comes on seriously, as if it means business.
A highlight so far was my abortive attempt to storm Caernarvon. First, the Welsh set fire to my ram and siege tower; then they rushed reinforcements from the ground to break my spears climbing the ladders; all the time, raining bodkin arrows down on me. A very active, effective defense and an ignominious defeat. Yay!
But more generally, the AI seems to use it missiles and cavalry cannily; and to go for good unit match ups. It is almost as if I am fighting an equal opponent. The only time I felt I outsmarted the AI was when I recklessly besieged some Flemish rebels, only to find they had a strong garrison that promptly sortied against me. Their armoured spears and pikes outclassed my spears and billmen, so I had to rely on cavalry and missile tactics to best them. It was fun giving pikemen the run around with cav, while shooting them down. But not particularly unrealistic and even then, I only won by a whisker (a general + 2 archers were all that was left of a half stack army).
3) The campaign also seems more challenging. That old feeling of threat that was so present in the STW/MTW risk maps may be back. I feel as if moving a defending army away from a frontier may induce the Scots or the French to strike.
4) The missions are decent - I like the Nobles telling me to boost border defences and the Pope telling me to build churches.
5) Graphically, the game is of course gorgeous on the battlemap - we've seen that in the demo. And with an upgraded video card, I can enjoy it.
The bad:
1) I still find the move speeds a little frenetic, as I did in the demo. I don't feel I am in control as much as I am in the RTW realism mods, let along STW/MTW.
2) The kill rates are sometimes very high: a unit of Flemish knights charging a unit of English spear militia led to the destruction of almost all the latter in a few seconds. I guess I goofed - the spears were not braced. Used properly, spears can mess up knights (e.g. if they catch them at rest).
3) Maybe I am dumb, but I hate the building browser - I can't get it to tell me anything I want to know (e.g. what to build to get assassins). RTWs was perfect - why change it?
4) I like the unit caps, but they seem so generous, they are not really binding. Gold is the constraint, not the caps.
5) Move speeds on the campaign map seem a little low - it's hard to get much done in a turn. It starts resembling Civ - endlessly clicking end-turn after a lot of little micromanagement.
The ugly:
1) I don't find the campaign map that great to look at. For some reason, I prefer that in RTR PE. Maybe I'm too zoomed in or something.
2) Some of the stats seem strange: the differences seem extremely large. Why is a billman attack 13 and total defence 3; a spear militia attack 5 and total defence 7; an armoured swordsman attack 13 and defence 22? Why does a crossbow have twice the missile attack of a longbow? I preferred the small range of stats in STW/MTW. But I guess the formula for kill rates has changed, as the units don't seem as extremely differentiated as the stats would suggest.
3) Archers shoot really slowly and cavalry die really easily. It seems a slight overcorrection for RTW. Archers often seem to get off only one volley before melee. A unit of hobilars lost half its men during a pursuit of some routers in a town (maybe they rallied, I don't know - that's the fast paced thing again). Knights seem to have paper armour, unless they are the general's (presumably 2HP) bodyguards, in which case they perform in a way I feel about right.
4) I've noticed the apparent bug whereby opposing units don't quickly connect, perhaps because they are trying to maintain some kind of unit cohesion. It can be frustrating, as it means a charge may not strike home with full impact.
5) Not really ugly, but M2TW does not blow me away in the way that RTW initially did (the one campaign I finished, before I got disillusioned and put it away until I found RTR). I guess that's a personal thing - I've played an awful lot of RTW mods and M2TW feels like more of the same. Plus I found the ancient setting more exotic (I had never even heard of Seleucia, for example.)
Bottomline: M2TW is a game that plays well out of the box. It probably is like MTW with RTW graphics. But somehow I feel a little underwhelmed - perhaps because I've experienced MTW and I've experienced RTW graphics. Perhaps because I've been spoilt by RTW mods such as RTR PE, EB and Goth's All factions BI mod.
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