Best Game of the TW Series

[Fisherking]

The end state of both games is good. They are very playable. They both still have significant numbers of player on Steam.

Empire has almost world wide scope in the game and a strong naval game.

After the final patches it gained a resurgence in popularity. The Campaign of Empire is about as good as it gets. The downside is that when you become too successful the god of the game hates you. When you get to this point everything goes south at once and it is a struggle to maintain what you have, not to mention new expansion. It still has an issue or two but most can be overlooked.

Napoleon doesn’t have that world wide scope. The Grand Campaign is Europe and Africa, which after ETW seems a bit small but the play is fabulous. Everything stands head and shoulders above ETW.

Most of the things that frustrated players in ETW are fixed or reworked. Battles are great, campaigns are great and the Peninsular Campaign DLC is great. You have to look hard to find things you don’t like but the game is the Napoleonic Wars which limit’s the scope.


ETW was released to great industry reviews but players saw it as badly broken, which it was at the time. It took them a long time to get it all fixed. Napoleon was out before ETW was in its final form.

NTW got very mixed industry reviews because it was the daughter of ETW. This cut its exposure to players. But everyone who tried it loved it for the play. All said “This is what ETW should have been”.

It was a great game from day one and the Peninsular Campaign only made it better.

The small early campaigns are basically the tutorials moving you into the Grand Campaign. The Historic Battles are challenging. Multiplayer is also a strong point. I am usually just your died in the wool single player but in this game it is different.

This was a great game. S2 was built on top of the engine and was also a great release.

Both games are worth a try and at those prices you could hardly miss.