150 Turns in, A Critical Review. (Warmonger)

[Pepe]

This is a repost of what Warmonger stated on the TWCenter forums. Enjoy.






I don't often post here, but I've been around this community for quite some time. Anyways like you all I was very excited to get this game, waited for midnight as I'm sure most of you did and played it. Well, to be honest with you as a long time total war fan the criticism on this game is very much warranted, however with that said let us start with 1 positive about this game.

Positive: Even though the graphic is horrendous (lack of optimization, just doesn't look great (I'm on extreme BTW)), what I found most intriguing about Rome 2 is the scope of the battle map. There are just so many scenarios and maps that can be found in this game. Add that with the 144 factions and it would get you drooling...

Unfortunately what I found after 150 turns into my Roman Campaign is that this game is an utter mess.

Let me start with the AI as a whole. In all honesty, I've never had a problem with the AI in past total war games.. mainly because I grew up during the time where Pacman was considered real time strategy (Johnny you gotta make sure you get the left side first). My main complaint with the AI is that battles only last a mere 3-5 minute. Hey my longest battle was 7 MINUTES and this was a battle when the AI had 3 STACKS and I had 2 stacks. What happened was the AI charged my men, a mosh pit ensued and everyone was running around all of a sudden. Not only that, I won practically all my engagement for the first 50 turns (On Very Hard). At first I thought I was the Divine Julius Caesar reincarnated... but no I realize that I won every single battle in my 150 turns... all battles lasting an average of 3-5 minute where the enemy is either routed or utterly crushed. This in itself is game breaking, you end up being in the campaign map most of the time waiting for a turn to end.

But hey, I'm an old guy and I tend to enjoy the campaign map aspect of things.. and as advertised the politics are going to blow my mind. What did I get? No family tree (So I guess I couldn't murder my brother, marry off my sister to some old Frenchmen, and all that nice stuff). No matter lets see this new political system. So I started with Julii and got Julius Libo. At first I thought this was going to be great, but all of a sudden I realize that new generals were generated from the pool and to makes matters worst...NONE OF THEM HAD THE JULIUS in the middle of their names! It was just random generals, HECK my next faction leader in house Julli had the Gens name of CORNELIUS which was the family faction name. I feel that Family was an important aspect in past games, I ended up not caring about my generals at all, Hey Great you died of old age.. lets just hire this Metellus Paullus dude who is apparently related to house Julii. The politics is an utter mess, you get no connection with your characters, no emotional attachment whatsoever.

Events, remember those good old events coming on once in a while to add flavor to the game... In Rome II? Had a couple things happening like sacrificing a fawn, adopting some long lost child, but after a while I faced no such events. All that was shown in my screen was recruitment reports... The campaign map became SO BORING that I began to lose interest in it... its' just dull a dumbed down version of the game we all loved. In 150 turns this was what I did.... End turn, Wait 1 or so minute for 144 factions to process, invade a settlement fight for 3-5 minutes and end turn again. This is so repetitive that I am in boredom, like I've said before the battles last way to fast.

Now lets talk about Army Traditions, one of the features CA talked up so much. I thought this would be epic at first when Legio III Liberatrix got its' first tradition... Cool so this army has better melee damage, COOL I can upgrade this generals traits. Then as the game progressed I realized that all the upgrades are the same, being Rome I do not like to upgrade skirmishers and Navy So guess what... My LEGIONS Ended up having the SAME TRADITIONS. What happen to making each of these legions different? I came under the impression from the advertisement that when a legion loses a battle they would earn traits maybe like cowardly... nope its' all dumbed down to a single tree where it ends up being the same. So No You can't find Edward the Conqueror like in Medieval 2, what you find is the same generic armies and generals only with different name and faces.

So my conclusion after 150 turns? This game is broken and it's far from being finished. When all your battles only last a mere 5 minutes you know that there is a problem, I don't understand if they didn't test this earlier or something, but even ME just one man could see that something was wrong in the combat and that strategy is absolutely thrown out the door when armies clash. Graphic wise? I don't even want to talk about it here, you seen the complaints and I feel they are all justified. Like I've said I'm old and I've got plenty of money to spend on extreme rigs... doesn't run great at all on my rig and the graphics in extreme looks horrendous (blocky, BLURRY and laggy when you zoom).

Well guys this is my thoughts, I have shelved the game for now and will see what fixes and updates they will do to it. I have no ill-will towards CA for they have made the past 12 years of my gaming experience great (I still remember opening that Shogun I box on my crappy windows 98), but they blew it on this one... they blew it.

Reading fan critiques over the years in these forums, what they made here is the exact opposite of what we wanted. This is a dumbed down total war game... (I forgot to add no population numbers, building management all the same, etc but you'll see when you play it. Having been in the corporate field during my career one lesson that I learn the hardest was that the Customer is always right, always sell what the customer wants, and most importantly customer loyalty gets you more business.

I feel that all the time we took commenting, advising, modding, etc in these fan forums have been utterly ignored... what do we get? A game that is unfinished, horrendous and not Total War.

- Warmonger.


PS. I know some of you love this game but this is my opinion and not yours feel free to disagree but this is what I found after being in the game for more then 20 hours. Also I know we don't like that "Elitist" mentality.. but yeah I've played Total War since the beginning, I'm a veteran Feel free to ask me questions on how the Roman Campaign is.

[luckymarine]

29 hours logged, Im guessing about 15 hours of actual gameplay with 14 hours of waiting for my next turn.....

[Kalvix]

Sadly I'd have to agree with most of it, he missed out a LOT of the cool features in the game and seemed to just focus on the negative (which I don't agree with).

The army customisation is a joke really, the problem is theres a fair numbers of upgrades but very few of them are useful and the bonus is so tiny you don't notice it properly. The best one I've found so far is the seige warefare one as when you upgrade that perk you get heavy siege weaponry so you can have a properly dedicated siege army. Perhaps other perks get more unique and cool as you level them up but early levels are all +3% this and +3% that. Boring.

And aye it would be nice to have more cool events happening now and then, that was always fun but now its only really political intrigues that happen.

Still despite the issues I'd still say its a awesome game, but they definitely need to fix it and finish it off

[Velimirius]

Great review, im gonna wait with buy till they land few GBs of patches (if they land them, considering this is a beta version for consoles) and 75% sale.

[Scotty Cosmos]

I hated rome 2 on the first day, played it yesterday for longer and got into it a bit more, the game was rushed to a release date, look at empire and napoleon, napoleon was released nearly exactly 1 yr from the release of empire, these are all good games including rome 2 but if they took longer and more time to make them they could all have been rome 1 games, the problem is the games are being rushed to a release date, simple as, look at bethesda, i am sure they could have got fallout 4 to us this yr in some shape or form, but nothing, not even conformation, it is all hush hush and there taking there time over fallout 4, C.A. need to do the same from this point on, this game rome 2 as it stands at the moment with what i have seen should have been droped to spring next year and with all the pre sales crap i am sure C.A. are under extreme presure, there is an update for it tomoz but i think its is a general patch, not a massive overhaul which this game needs, its an unfinished game-i think-, i have no doubt this will be a top game but the main point i want to make is i would like to hear something from C.A. not abt updates because that will come but a promise so to say that they will not release games half finished again, they really need to explain themselves to the fans that buy all these games as to what we are actually playing, is it finished or what or did they screw up, i dont actually know what i am playing, am just wondering around, lol, it's still ok ish to play, you can deffo see the quality embeded in there somewhere, anyway. all the videos on you tube and stuff and all the lolly gaging says 1 thing really, C.A. put more effort into promoating the game that making it, night shift for that lot !, lol

[KingCoward]

Yeah it also apears to me that most of your time will be spend waiting for the turn to be resolved, now this wouldnt have been a problem IF the battles where more enjoyable and would last at least 20 minutes to a hour, but as it stands the real time battles (lets be honest thats what was unique about total war series, for the outside-battle management there are way better games out there civilizations series.. paradox games etc) take very little time to finish and it seems to be mostly blob-vs-blob in rome 2, on the contrary in shogun 2 i really found the battles highly enjoyable zooming in close and watching the soldiers fight 1v1 was very epic.

[NJSFC]

This is a console arcade game aimed for a 6+ audience, and a preorder money trap.

[Jonboy]

Much comes down to expectation. I have played all the TW games, starting with Shogun. I expected the AI to CONTINUE to be very poor. The other bugs are acceptable for a game of this magnitude. I dont have an issue with it.

What really gets me is why they tampered to such an extent. The victory points, the political background, the clunky menu system, all smacks of decisons made by non TW players. They would not alter the series's DNA.

So whose to blame? Look no further than the kids at CA. I am all for evolution but this is regression. Too much acne cream and not enough grey hair.

[Relnor]

So.. anyone excited for EB2 for MTW2 ? ~

[anthur]

Thanks for posting the review. I actually feared that it would be that way.
In the past TW were good games, but mods made them great. Is there any hope that this might happen to RTW2 ? Unfortunately they were already restricting the moddability with past releases more and more , so I guess it got even worse.

And one of the best TW modders also resigned, too bad.

I will keep RTW2 on my radar and wait till the price drops and/or good mods are avaiable. Might never happen or take a long time though.

Do games really have to be dumbed down more and more ? The gaming community gets older too. It doesn't any longer only consist of teenagers anymore like in the eighties. And why do modding communities get punished instead of supported by developers. They are a big chance for a game and not a drawback ...

[Scotty Cosmos]

Agreed Jonboy - the kids at C.A. hahaha, the producer needs to take that silly hat off and pull his sleves up !

[Relnor]

İlk olarak anthur tarafından gönderildi:

Do games really have to be dumbed down more and more ? The gaming community gets older too. It doesn't any longer only consist of teenagers anymore like in the eighties. And why do modding communities get punished instead of supported by developers. They are a big chance for a game and not a drawback ...

This is the part that puzzles me, games were more complex (it's not always true ofc but if you look at gaming overall it is ) in the past, but their average audience was much younger - the people that played all those older, more complex games were teenagers themselves.

I wasn't even in High School yet when I first played Rome I , and I had a great time with it, I remember conquering the whole map as the Julii - and now I can't imagine someone of the age I was then playing a game like that today.. why ? Hard to tell /shrug

[Scotty Cosmos]

http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/04/creative-assembly-to-release-patch-to-improve-performance-of-total-war-rome-ii/ the patch !

[Relnor]

İlk olarak ***scotty1cosmos*** tarafından gönderildi:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/04/creative-assembly-to-release-patch-to-improve-performance-of-total-war-rome-ii/ the patch !

Hope it will help the people that paid money for this get something out of it, but as far as I'm concerned the game is broken design-wise, which I don't think even mods can properly fix.

İlk olarak Teclisen tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Relnor tarafından gönderildi:

So.. anyone excited for EB2 for MTW2 ? ~

I'm hoping for a Roma Surrectum myself but EB2 would be sweeeet

*edit* Roma Surr3ctum

Are they working on a new version for another TW game ? I haven't heard of anything past 2.5 for RTW 1

EB2 has been worked on for years, it should be out "soon".

[Scotty Cosmos]

it is a mess but i still need to stress you can deffo see quality in there somewhere just confussed as to where it is, lol- i also agree that it is broken and can it even be fixed as it has solid foundations now that are all wrong and if they change to much it will end up worse i feel ! I think C.A. are blaging it with words, i think the whole team are confussed and dumbstuck and lost right now, intresting times for that lot, one thing is for sure, the producer with the funny hat will never make another total war game again, he will be the scapegoat in the end !

[josephmcmullin]

Its a sad day when a veteran TW gamer is confidet in the knowledge that it will take Darth Mod and other mods to make this an enjoyable and immersive game