Verdicts on Medieval II

[Quickening]

Now that CA are working on the next Total War game Im wondering what everyones take on Medieval 2 is.
We've been through quite a bit since it's release (the shield bug, no more real patches after 1.2 etc) but now it seems the game is definately in its final official state. I was away for a few months and missed the whole Securicom thing with Kingdoms (which Im getting for Christmas) so I don't know what that's about and Im aware there is another update planned for Kingdoms. But this is just about vanilla Medieval 2.

This isn't meant to be about the games technical issues but about how much enjoyment (if any) you get or used to from Med 2. This is about where it stands with you in the present day.

You know in a way I kind of wish I had never read this forum up to and after Med 2's release because then I would have been blissfully unaware of the games problems Because knowing that there was some invisible mechanic screwing up ruined my enjoyment up until patch 1.2.

But I love this game, I think the biggest problem for me with it is its repetitive nature. I mean Im on turn 141 of my Spanish campaign just now and all Im doing is going through the boring process of taking castle after castle. I mean those multi layered bastions are a nice idea but in practise they are just so boring for me to take again and again.

The highlights of this game for me are in the little incidents. For example I just had a powerful witch wondering around Iberia who succeeded in killing two of my priests and an assassin before mysteriously disappearing.
Or like my assassin Sebastian the Killer who lived in the lands around Rome, killing any Pope who wasn't going along with the Spanish agenda. Things like that make the game fun for me. In fact, I have more fun on the campaign map than on the battle map.

I tend to have periods of playing this game intensely before taking a few months off. To date Ive played this game for two weeks of my life in total according to X-Fire and I know I'll play it much more to come. I think Medieval 2, despite it's buggy flaws, is an awesome game.


So what are your thoughts on it?


P.S: Oh yeah I will say however that Rome had a real spirit and feel to it which I find Med 2 sadly lacking in. It's hard to explain.

[DVX BELLORVM]

Overall, it's a great game. I don't regret a single hour spent playing it. And I've spent many.

[Sebastian Seth]

If I would start writing down things that medieval total war 2 lacks...

I remember I liked "shogun total war", "medieval total war: viking invasion" and "rome total war: barbarian invasion".

The graphics are great but it seems that the playability have taken deep dive to archive that.

I would wish they would make more improvements and consentrate on making the game fun to play instead of fun to watch.

[Hellenic_Hoplite]

It's a Great Game and I have spent countless hours playing it.

It would however be evan better if they could:

1. Improve both the battle AI and the Campaign map AI

2. Add Provincial Troops at least on some sort of small scale (like they had in the original Medieval)

3. Make all factions playable from the start or at least unlockable.


Overall the total war series have been some of the best (if not the best) strategy games of all time.

[Goaswerfraiejen]

I gave up on Medieval II about half a year ago and started Rome up again. I've been very disappointed overall--and not just by bugs (although I was incapable of commanding battles myself for the first week or so--1 frame every 6 minutes suxorz). Really, it's just that Medieval II isn't different enough from Rome, and it really lacks the same feeling (as you said). Really, it just felt like the first Medieval had been adapted to the Rome engine--which is essentially what happened, it seems. I couldn't even enjoy the apparently majestic graphics, so it was a real downer.

[Whacker]

In hindsight, I would not have bought the game new at all, it's worth maybe $10, 20 if I'm in a really good mood. Kingdoms is infested with facist DRM, so it's a no-go period. In terms of the 4 TW games, I can honestly say I derived the least amount of enjoyment from this one. It's not a bad game, but it fails in many, many, many respects to live up to the bar set by it's predecessors, and it's nowhere near the same calibur or quality of my favorite games of all time.

To each his or her own...

[Csargo]

Mods are the only thing that makes it playable for me

[Galain_Ironhide]

If it wasnt for me having a wife and 2 kids, I think I would be playing this game everyday. Instead I have resorted to roughly every 2nd or 3rd day.

I love the game and LTC (playing a Turks GC at the moment) has made it more appealing recently. I think the next GC I try might be under the Darth Mod or even EB.

I know the game has its flaws but that has never made me want to stop playing it. Now that I have done my homework on Kingdoms (its issues and how to get around them) I am going to buy that as well, after the patch of course.

Happy days!

[PseRamesses]

Mods are the only thing that makes it playable for me

Exactly my opinion too. I´ve always stated that CA should work on the engine and stop this hardcoded s_t and leave the rest to the modding community. They don´t have the resources or project time to commit to an era or decent scenario.

[Henry707]

I think it's a great game. We do seem to have a lot of "what's the verdict" style posts - no game is perfect - but hey, it's supplied me some great game play over the last few months.....

The mods just make even better - I love LTC.

Henri

[_Tristan_]

I must admit that the eye-candy put aside, the game has a short lifespan...

Mostly if you played other TW titles...

Even if you set limits to yourself, the AI get steamrolled easily...

What saves this game in my opinion is the Hotseat possibility, it shunts out the AI and put players at the controls of every factions and devious minds they are...

There is the real challenge... Even better would have been possibility to play the battles online but it would require too much coordination and would bog down the game...

Hotseat is the lifesaver of M2TW to me...

[crpcarrot]

wihtout mods i wouldnt have played more than one campaign.

battles were not interesting enough it was too easy to win.

i go cought up in the hype and bought this game on release but it hink i'll go back to buying games a year after release when its patched mostly :)

[Subedei]

I was not as fascinated as with MTW or RTW, but I had some great campaigns in M2TW & Kingdoms....I was playing some mods [e.g. Deus lo vult!] which gave me somem ore hours of fun.

So it is a good game in my eyes...and while playing I keep on thinking "Look at the possibilities all those gifted & hard-working modding wizards will have now!"

As I mentioned before: I am exclusively playing TW games on my PC, so I really don´t know exactly what people expect from games nowadays, e.g. I never played online so this may be a definite flaw I really can´t judge on.

[TheLastPrivate]

Objectively speaking it may lack in the consumer support department and so forth, but...

I've almost failed a semester at UoM playing this (I hope I can graduate). Only thing that even came close to the replayability and immersiveness was WoW, but thats a whole different category...MMO's are supposed to be superaddictive with communities, as M2TW is a singleplayer.. (i didn't like mp cuz of ppl sitting in corners with mass pavise xbows and pikes and no what rule yada yada...)

But seriously, Ive played countless hours and played same factions over and over and its never the same. I use the same tactics with same armies and its never the same. I think thats the best a game plays for me.

[icek]

what is m2tw? i dont remember it already. the only thing really noticable is the music.

[anders]

its flawed and fantastic, and Im gonna play it tonight.

in many ways better than rtw( better feel/immersion and less silly battle movement speed) in fact, if pikes werent so mistreated( how could they mess that up?) I would say it were better all-over.

of course there are

[marrow]

It's a love-hate realtionship for me.
I know deep down it will let me down every time but I still play it a lot.
In fact it's the only PC game I still play, funny seeing as it annoys the hell out of me.

[Omisan]

My first TW game. I like it, but the AI sucks once you know how it "thinks". The diplomacy is also messed up.

Only the first couple of rounds of the grand campaign are challenging. Once you control a decent territory and start to make money, you totally dominate the game.

[lancelot]

I see why people consider this game as 'great' but lets face it- technically speaking it is far from great.

It was clearly a rush job and anyone who say this game doesnt have game-breaking bugs is a bold faced liar- or at least quite blinkard. I see pikemen who dont use their pikes as pretty game breaking to me. Granted this does not equate to unplayable by any strech but I consider game-breaking to be things that the game is supposed to do and doesnt.

The laundry list of unresolved issues on this game quite clearly proves that this game is way way way off anything that could be called 1st class.

Furthermore this topic should make no mention of mods. This is about the vanilla game, if you really need mods to make a game great then the vanilla is sadly lacking...I derive untold amount of enjoyment from games with no mods because chances are they are pretty decent to begin with.

[Forward Observer]

In spite of it flaws (most of which just don't bother me like some here) I have played this game more than any other since it came out.

At least several hours almost every weeknight night and a lot more on the weekends for a year adds up to a lot of game time. I don't know if it equal as much time as I spent playing either Shogun or Medieval 1 yet, but it may be close--plus I retired two weeks ago and been playing even more.

I have the Kingdoms expansion, but have hardly touched it yet, so I guess i need to start a campaign with it just to justify buying the thing--lol

Anyway, for a $50 game IMHO-- M2TW add has given me a heck of a lot of gaming bang for the buck.

In fact I am on the verge of a PC upgrade, which of course I am justifying to be able to play all the new stuff coming out, but secretly I think my real reason is really just to able crank M2TW up to all its graphic glory with more armies on the screen plus record my battles using FRAPS.

The bottom line for me is that just like all the TW games--I have gotten more than my money's worth out of M2TW and that translates to a big thumbs up in my book.


Cheers

[Midnight]

I'd rather play the original, for one simple reason - variety. In M2, the same things happen nearly every time - there's minimal change in the map, say 100 turns in, in several games (except what the player does). The Mongols are also singularly useless at doing anything, and in fact the AI factions simply cannot mobilise to fight each other at all.

Contrast this with M1, where factions can and do fight one another, and often things will be shaken up (faction re-emergences, civil wars, and effectively fought wars). I've seen the Byz, Turkey and Egypt take the entire Holy Land in different games (as well as various stalemates), I've seen Egypt travel up to Russia while losing all their home territories, I've seen central Europe dissolve into a bloody mess of fighting as Italy, France, England and the HRE all grab and lose lands. All of this happened when my faction was elsewhere, and led to interesting, varied games. None of this in M2.

When Kingdoms didn't change anything for the Grand Campaign (I was desperately hoping for a vast campaign AI improvement), I pretty much gave up. I'd only come back if the latest Kingdoms patch does something major for the main campaign.

That said, I've installed the Stainless Steel mod but haven't played it beyond about 10 turns. Anybody know if it's likely to provide the variety I'm hoping for?

[Old Geezer]

Kingdoms is superb! The game has flaws, but not nearly as many as I do.

[econ21]

...anyone who say this game doesnt have game-breaking bugs is a bold faced liar- or at least quite blinkard. I see pikemen who dont use their pikes as pretty game breaking to me. Granted this does not equate to unplayable by any strech but I consider game-breaking to be things that the game is supposed to do and doesnt.

That's a curious definition of game-breaking. I would have thought game breaking meant something so broke you did not want to play it. Pikemen not working would not bother me too much as they are rather a minor combat arm in the Medieval period. I've tended to play English in SP and HRE in PBMs, neither of which uses or fights pikemen in any numbers. It was a frustration in the Scottish PBM though, I admit.

I can't give a verdict on M2TW at the moment. Like the French revolution, it's too early to tell. I enjoy the battles in PBMs - if the AI has a decent army, you can have a good fight. The campaigns in SP seem a little dull, but I even find that now with excellent RTW mods like EB. I am not sure if I need a break from the series or I need more time to play it seriously.

[Quickening]

Kingdoms is superb! The game has flaws, but not nearly as many as I do.

Got Kingdoms yesterday and I must concur, it's awesome! Only trouble is deciding which campaign to work on first

[rezizter]

Midnight, I have been playing Stainless Steel, and enjoying it immensely. Playing as England and about 40 turns in, I have seen some pretty interesting activity in the campaign. However after only recently getting a pc capable of playing M2TW, I didn’t spend much time on Vanilla, so its difficult to compare. I did play Medieval a lot though, and I think this version is a big improvement (I actually hated the faction re-spawning!!!). Anyways, in my current campaign, I have whittled the French down to 2 provinces (about to be 0!!!). They were very competitive to start with, but couldn’t match my tactics in battle. Things have also been interesting on the Italian peninsula, with the Papacy engaging in long fight against Sicily, and about to come out on top. The Milanese have also been grabbing land in Northern Italy. The Moors have been particularly aggressive and are fighting the three catholic factions in Iberia. They will be my next target as I’m sick of the Pope’s interference! Things are also interesting up north with continued fighting between HRE, the Danes, and Kievan Rus. Oh, one thing that happened in my campaign that I loved...a full French stack was sieging one of my undermanned cities and was promptly bribed by my allies , Crown of Aragon. Magic!

[Midnight]

rezizter - That sounds encouraging. I've just begun a French campaign in SS - fingers crossed!

[Seabourch]

Good game, more realistic in gameplay. Gone are the days where a single unit of cavalry could vanquish an army of peasents with minimal casualties. Gone are the days when you could take out several provinces at the time by simply moving an army into an enemy province. Although it was easier, its just not accurate.

Although , I'm pissed generals can die of old age. No more 200 year old geezers charging into the enemy.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Being the son of two software engineers and the stepson to a third software engineer, I have to say you cannot blame the game designers or programmers for the small "game breaking" (lol) errors in Medieval 2 Total War. Often a product gets rushed before all the bugs can be fixed. I'm sorry but a game this complex with a whole lot of new features and graphics is bound to have a lot of errors that need to be fixed. Sometimes a decision is made by a company like Sega to ship a playable version of a game before every bug is fixed.

It is easy, during game testing, to completely miss something like the pikes not deploying properly. Honestly, I understand your frustration as pikes played a pretty decent role in the period, but anyone who has so harsh a criticism for the game designers for a bug of that 'magnitude' obviously has 6 years of their own free time to bug test and completely (there is no such thing, by the way) eliminate bugs.

Often time the decision is made to ship a product by a certain date, or else the whole project risks becoming unprofitable or risky to spend so much in development. They hope they can pacify anyone who is upset by the minor bugs (sorry, they are minor... and "we need a better AI" isn't actually a BUG) with patches and so forth.

Having played the game with all of the official patches, I say it works a lot better. And the modder community (Hi Lusted...) with mods like LTC made the game even more enjoyable.

I seem to recall that I played star trek armada II and was disappointed that the battles in space took so little time that you could barely even push the buttons fast enough to do real-time strategy with your weaponry. Someone made an extensive mod which allowed the user to select the power and speed of the weapons and ships. This way you could slow things down and even your basic, basic ships could take damage and still escape to be repaired (if you were quick).

Honestly, this game is awesome. There's always room for improvement. Everyone I know of said Rome Total War was a "much better game"... what utter garbage. All you ever had to do with Rome was line up a full stack of cavalry and charge directly forward, and you won every battle, even against phalanxes. That's how broken that game was. This includes even the Roman basic first mounted unit which was weak and pathetic.

Don't tell me Rome was a superior game. Take away the graphical superiority of Medieval 2 and you still have a game that is ten times better gameplay and AI-wise. Rome didn't have a competent battle AI and the battles were very unrealistic. Everything would insta-rout with a cavalry charge from the flanks, no matter what unit it was.

This is not meant to kiss anyone's butt, but I know with a large degree of certainty that CA was not 'lazy' for not getting around to fixing some fair amount of bugs for this game, because they were likely pushed into launching it too soon by whomever was paying the development crew. And you still got a fine, playable game for your money that a lot of people on here loved. Many of you weren't even AWARE of the pike bug until someone told you and the magical mystique of the game was revealed to you. Like a person who finds out how a magic trick works, you were disappointed your big flashy new game wasnt absolutely perfect. Boo hoo.

Listen, I'm a guy who deliberately tries to break the game by exploiting every single tactical exploit there is. Anyone who reads my threads/posts knows that I snoop every single "broken" aspect of the game and exploit it to it's fullest potential and then I put it on display in big fat full color photos all over this forum to demonstrate exactly how broken/unrealistic the game is.

Much like those who play Super Mario Bros. on the NES and purposefully get hit by enemies at exactly the right frame (without taking damage) and walk through walls simply because they want to showcase what is possible at the extremes of the game, I try to display all the loopholes and tricks. So I am not ignorant of the bugs and weaknesses in this game, more like an encyclopedia thereof.

My verdict is, this game is not only playable and fun, but patched up, even better, and modded to almost it's fullest potential, and still being supported by a new game, Kingdoms. No matter how you slice it, you have to like this game, and if you don't, as a virtual insider to this industry and a hardcore gamer myself, I say you are a whiny, insufferable complainy-pants.

Like those critics who might give Star Wars Episode III a C+ rating, you dwell on what is bad so much that you completely ignore a new classic which is very well done and thoroughly enjoyable. I hope you are miserable and disappointed every single time a new game comes out, because some of you seem to criticize for the sake of hearing yourselves complain. Compiling lists of errors and game weaknesses while never offering any positive comment... I hate to say it, but somebody needs a break from complaining. Why not try something to take your mind off of things. Why not try playing a game to help you relax? I recommend Medieval 2: Total War. It's a fine game, and if you spend so much time complaining about it, you obviously haven't played it with very much of an open mind.

If the game were truly that broken, I would not have played it and I would not have contributed over 500 posts, at least half of them relevant to the game, in this forum.

And if you still don't like it, it's a free country and you have every right to be miserable if you choose to be. So I say good day to you!

[Jason X]

wonderful post pizzaguy

[Askthepizzaguy]

wonderful post pizzaguy
__________________
"Patriotism is the belief that your country is better than any other because you were born there"

Interesting quote. Might you be referring to flag-wavers in the USA who likely have never even been to Canada, much less another country?

(Yes, Canada is a province of the United States. Every Canadian knows this. It's a fact known by even the primitive peoples of Durkadurkistan)

And Mexico wishes it were part of the United States. I think if you held a vote... oh wait. They already voted with their feet and MOVED here!

I think it's ok to love and be proud of your country. But blind patriotism, I agree, is rather pointless.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Let's completely overlook the trillions in war debt, the budget deficit, the trade deficit, the collapse of our industry, our school system which keeps sliding down the international totem pole, a healthcare system which works only if you are filthy stinking rich, the filthy effect we have on the environment, the blatant corruption and ever-more embarrassing scandals in our Congress, our idiot President, a deadlocked and largely irrelevant Supreme Court, an ignorant and blindly partisan electorate, an overwhelming Bible-thumping community which seems to regard every non-evangelical as being Satan incarnate, our bloated and overfunded federal highway system which is a barrel of pork and pork and more pork, bridges to nowhere, Big Digs, grasshopper research in alaska with federal tax dollars (after all, the Alaskan ice-eating grasshopper might be endangered due to global warming... you'd think warmer weather would help a grasshopper... ), bridges funded with federal tax dollars being built ON a Congressman's property, the billions and billions being spent overseas for people who just use that money to kill each other (hello Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan) while people in this country can't even get a LOAN for college to better themselves and maybe, just maybe, be able to support themselves in their own home and pay taxes on it and have kids which will also one day own a home and pay for my retirement and healthcare costs (it's called INVESTING, look it up in the dictionary sometime, you snakes in Washington!) the complete abandonment of our border security in favor of cheap and exploitative labor, while claiming that foreigners are our biggest national security threat (and removing our civil liberties to prove it), nevermind all the partisan rancor and the talking heads who so consistently contribute nothing intellectual to the national discourse, and idiots like Al Franken and Ann Coulter rallying people who don't have the intelligence to drive let alone vote and get them out to the polling booths so that Joey Six-Pack who beats his wife can vote for Bush (good lord no) or Kerry (see previous reaction).

I love my country, but sometimes I just... wish we weren't totally asleep at the wheel.

Uh guys... not that it matters or anything, but the international community used to respect us, and now they don't. I know it's un-American to point that out, but I only love my country and want it to get better. And how about bringing our troops home, please.

Rant disguised with spoilers for your protection.
Yes, back to topic. I believe the original thread was "verdicts on Medieval II".

For more of my worthless opinions and pithy commentary, you can always drag me into the back room for a fine off-topic debate. I do more than just play games and not deliver pizza anymore.