Gamespy Review.

[Incongruous]

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/medieval-2-.../746647p3.html

Again these reviewers seem amazed that medieval total war includes aspects which have been known about for nearly a year.

Gamers who've played Rome: Total War, especially with the excellent Barbarian Invasion expansion, may sense some déjà vu on the Medieval II map. It may have more detail, but you're fighting over essentially the same Eurasian and North African terrain as the previous title, which takes away from the game's novelty.

I mean c'mon, how pathetic is that?

Again they seem to be putting too much stock on innovation.

For players new to the Total War games looking for a hardcore medieval warfare strategy game, Medieval II: Total War delivers. But for fans of the franchise, the new title may fall short of expectations, offering little in the way of substantial improvements over 2004's excellent Rome: Total War.

I am fairly sure that most vets were amazingly dissapointed with RTW myself included, I hav eheard that M2TW has refined the game as the second game on each engine does. So where's the surprise.

campaign plays slowly; new strategic units slow the game down without adding much.

Seems like an RTS fan to me

He does raise valued problems about the AI though

The game's AI on the big map is sometimes flawed. Large, lavish, wealthy coastal cities are often left undefended -- easy targets for anyone with a stack of units and a fleet. Within the real-time battles, the AI is a competent (if not brilliant) opponent, but will sometimes stand still and allow you to pelt it with arrows unopposed.

Undefended coastal cities are just one flaw that can be exploited. For example, during castle sieges, once the enemy has retreated to the inner keep of a castle, you can run your troops into the town walls and then cross over to the inner castle walls, usually unopposed, even going so far as to open the gate for yourself. None of these are major issues, but they pull down the campaign experience somewhat -- sometimes you feel like you're exploiting your way across the continent instead of winning it through grit and guile.

Overall a pretty shabby review, but after the reviews of RTW which made it seem like the messiah, I don't put much stock in it.

They gave it four stars out of five a "great"!

P.S not sure if this ahs already been posted, so my apalogies if it has.

[Brighdaasa]

Well, remember that this reviewer has been a huge fan of the series since STW (just check out his columns about mtw for example, and how mtw was the craze of the office for a long time), and i'd say his review is pretty accurate. Although i'm also sceptical for the minus points for not being as innovative as RTW.

I do agree with him that all the shuffling of agents makes turns much longer, more so viewing the ai agents makes the ai turns go much more slowly, and the campaign map part takes a lot of micromanaging if you want to use all the features properly, but then again this is nothing new.

[cannon_fodder]

I didn't read the entire review, but I agree with all his key points (except for the "innovation" one).

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

Not a bad review. Honestly though, if I hear one more reviewer say that campaign map is too slow for them, then I'm going to attack them with my feet. Seriously, the 'short campaign' option is there for a reason.

I'm not quite sure I get the whole thing on new unnecessary units that have been added to slow down battles. Is he referring to artillery? I can't imagine so, since arty does nothing but speed the battle up as each force tries to take out the other's cannons. Odd.

Other than that, a fair review. I would have given the game 4/5 stars too. Good game with some problems.

[Brighdaasa]

I'm not quite sure I get the whole thing on new unnecessary units that have been added to slow down battles. Is he referring to artillery? I can't imagine so, since arty does nothing but speed the battle up as each force tries to take out the other's cannons. Odd.

he's talking about the merchants, priests, princesses, diplomats, spies, assasins, who slow down the campaign flow with the micromanaging and that because of the shuffling it makes the ai turns take a long time if you take the option of watching those moves (you can turn that off, but you miss out on what the ai is doing)