First impressions thread

[Lemur]

Managed to play a few turns this morning. Runs smooth on my Core2Duo machine, so apparently two cores are enough to make it happy. Only real gripe so far: hard to see the range of your armies. It's all shaded and strange, and I have a hard time telling when my units will run out of movement in a turn. Maybe I just need to get used to the new graphics or something like that ...

[Furunculus]

gah! my disk hasn't arrived in the work post today.

[Daveybaby]

Disk? Post? How... quaint.

A few turns in.

So far: quite impressed.
* The game as a 'mood piece' is absolutely fantastic, great art and audio - it really feels like a coherent whole. Much more so than any other of the TW series since the original shogun.
* AI seems competent so far (on hard), both in campaign and battle. Quickly exploits opportunities such as unprotected archers or empty castles. Hasnt done anything noticably stupid yet.
* Pretty responsive. Seems less of a machine killer than ETW was (although this may be partly due to it not letting me use AA).
* Really liking the province upgrade paths, and the general/daimyo skill trees etc.

A few annoyances:
* Enormous load times! Just been playing medieval 2, and in comparison i keep thinking S2 has crashed. In reality it's probably similar to ETW, but even so, it's a pretty long wait.
* Mouse scrolling on the campaign map feels very... clunky and unresponsive. There's a significant delay between your mouse hitting the edge of the screen and it starting to scroll, that wasnt there in any previous TW games. Can't initiate mouse scrolling where there's a UI element at the edge of the screen, i.e. most of the way along the bottom - *very* annoying.
* Cant zoom out nearly far enough (IMO) on the campaign map. Can barely see more than 1 province at a time, not ideal for grand strategic planning.
* Dont like the mist effect that occurs when you zoom out.
* Anti-aliasing disabled? Uh?

[GeneralHankerchief]

After about an hour of gameplay, I quite like it. Easily the most beautiful game I've ever played. My laptop can run it pretty well, as long as things aren't on the highest settings, and so far the campaign seems fine. My only gripe is that the battles go far too fast, and this is even coming from a guy whose introduction to the series was Rome. My archers are lucky if they can get three volleys off before I have to send them scurrying behind the lines.

All in all though, looking forward to my GPA steadily dropping over the rest of the semester as I keep diving into the game.

[knoddy]

well off to a good start when i went to pickup my game today. the fire alarm was going off at the shopping center so i cudnt get in and pickup my game!!!! the gaming gods were hating me this morning :P got it eventaully tho and really enjoying it :D

Played a little bit in my Date campaign, really liking it so far. on hard difficulty i smashed the rebels and took a province from my nearbye enemies. the battle AI does seem improved. i tried to lure the rebel general into charging my yari spears in spearwall but at teh last minute they veered off and smashed my other unit of yari in the back :S my suprieror swordsmen won the day tho.

i do feel the battle was over quickly but it was quite a mismatch with rebel yari vs katana samurai. the second battle i fought was a seige and again pitted yari vs katana, but the unit of retainer samurai put up quite a fight despite being severly outnumbered.

im enjoying the campaign i like the fact that u have a limited number of buildings per town. this makes u choose wether to have towns be troop builders, or econimic/agent builders. similar to empire but better design.

really pleased so far!

[Doug-Thompson]

My first impression? That it's rather frustrating to go through a quite long installation only to be told that Steam is updating the game I just installed -- and taking it's sweet time doing it.

[ByzantineKnight]

It took me forever to get my copy as well. But here's my initial impressions.

I was very unimpressed with the AI in smaller battles (my first 3 or so were fought with a few units of Yari Ashigaru, an archer, and a cavalry unit on each side. During all three battles I managed to lure their general from behind his lines with my flanking cavalry and as soon as he started charging I beat a hasty retreat behind my lines where I was able to swamp him with spearmen before he could get away. Suicidal generals appear to be back.

A few hours later I was quite impressed with a large battle in a mostly forested area where the AI managed to pull some stealthy attacks to weak points in my line. I managed to drive them off but just barely and my archers were a little worse for the wear.

Multiplayer was fun though. I managed to get a few games in before real life took me away from my bliss. So far everyone seems quite friendly and it looks like this will be quite an enjoyable experience for at least several months to come!

As for the campaign itself, once I installed it on my desktop (my laptop's graphics card is awful) I was quite impressed with the atmosphere, simplicity and beauty of the game. Hands down, the best preorder I've ever made.

[knoddy]

updates! load times are epicly long lol might just be my crappy pc
- for some reason the auto detect for graphics settings (if there is one) put everything on ultra which suprisingly my core duo can handle BUT it was choppy as hell so i put everything back to high and battles run much smoother.
- sieges are fun and can be quite hard to defend. the ai splits its troops and attacks from multiple sides
- im really liking the customisation of generals, towns and agents. quite cool!

question - to put a general in charge of a fleet do u just put him on the ships as if for transport? and he automatically takes charge?

[Samurai Waki]

Maybe I just need to get used to the new graphics or something like that ...

I've been having a hard time adjusting my eyes to the graphics as well... lack of AA stains my eyes

Other than that, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Finally a return to something resembling Total War!

[Monk]

Impressive...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://i54.tinypic.com/2rqyts6.jpg

[Jack Lusted]

- no separate difficulty for battles and campaign

You can change the battle difficulty once in a campaign through the game settings menu.

[IRONxMortlock]

You can change the battle difficulty once in a campaign through the game settings menu.

Thanks for that. So if I wanted a normal campaign and hard battles I would start a campaign on normal and then adjust battle difficulty in game settings?

[Jambo]

You can change the battle difficulty once in a campaign through the game settings menu.

Hmm, wow, that's interesting! So it is possible to get a VH campaign and normal battle difficulty after all? Although perhaps from my initial failings with Oda at H I should be rethinking where I start.

[antisocialmunky]

You can change the battle difficulty once in a campaign through the game settings menu.

You sir are awesome.

Also, make it more obvious. I've seen tons of people complaining about wanting easier campaign and even that one reviewer didn't know it.

[gollum]

...and even that one reviewer didn't know it.

No surprises there ;)

[Risasi]

It sounds as if I should give it a look for the single player experience, but I think for multiplayer I will Stick to RTW.