Rome 2 - A casualty of the casual? [Best review ever]

[Paddy Irishman]

This is a repost of a very popular review from Raye on totalwar.com. I thought I'd post it here too as it's the best review I've seen so far for the game and it strongly represents my own [and others] opinons, especially in relation to the boring, unstrategic arcade-like battles.
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I've played Total War for over 10 years now and I can honestly say that this release is just as bad as Empire, if not worse. They have slowly taken the winning formula for Total War and dumbed it down for the masses. 'Casual gamers', the console and phone game generation have been the downfall of many a great PC game series. From top to bottom this game is purely sacrilegious to any Total War fan who values depth and tactical battles. They have taken away all of our control and implemented gimmicks to please the casual gamer. I will provide some insight into the fundamental flaws at the core of the games design rather than elaborate on the myriad of optimization problems and bugs the game suffers from at this time. Just to clarify, I want the game to be a success! I am a rabid fan. I built a $3,000 Xfire machine just for the game early this year.

GAMEPLAY:

A huge number of features that were available even in Total War: Rome are missing or broken both conceptually and mechanically. I will try and break down the problems point by point as they relate to gameplay.

-No family tree.

-No 'Loose' or 'Tight' generic formation commands. Can't spread to avoid enemy fire?!

-No 'Guard' command, your units cannot be instructed to maintain their position and formation at all costs.Even the most disciplined melee troops devolve into a blob during melee combat.

-You cannot toggle fire at will on infantry with javelins, they only fire when they charge. Some unfortunate tactical consequences are that they cannot throw javelins to break an enemy charge and then receive the broken charge, they cannot fire on skirmishers and cavalry harassing them, and if you move reserves to reinforce a battle line they will AUTOMATICALLY throw their javelins into the backs of your own men who are already engaged. WTF CA?

-Troops have inappropriate context based behavior or a complete lack thereof. IE. They will stand in position and take arrows to the face from archers ten feet away (as if instructed to guard, but still lose unit cohesion in melee) and will not chase routing enemies. During a melee blob if a unit of men destroy their immediate foe (target) they will not engage nearby enemies. They will stand there watching their comrades get hacked apart five feet away.

-Auto run breaks unit cohesion.

-BATTLES ARE WAY TOO FAST! The battles last a few minutes generally. You spend three minutes walking to the enemy force. Your lines meet and devolve into a chaotic blob and the melee is typically over in about 30-50 seconds as one side routes. If you were inclined to flank the blob you typically don't even have time to move a single flanking unit around into position before the melee is decided. You're far better served simply committing the unit into the blob of doom right away and spamming the 'magic' combat buffs/abilities your men have. Speaking of..

-MAGIC COMBAT ABILITIES! You can hit a button and suddenly your men charge with more force than usual or you can magically remove all fatigue? Get your voodoo out of my Total War. Abilities should have a justifiable function that makes sense.

-Units run entirely too fast, especially with tactical map speed buffs on roads for certain units and while charging. I would seriously estimate that your men can charge at nearly 30mph.. Again, wtf?

-Victory Flags. What is strategic or tactical about standing next to a flag in a location that is strategically irrelevant? Nothing. Artificial victory devices and logical strategy are mutually exclusive. Are we aiming for an arcade style console port or a deep, tactical, and engaging strategy game that rewards intelligent play?

-Diplomacy has improved so far as the campaign AI actually interacting with you in ways beyond declaring war but it is almost always on their terms. If you prefer passive diplomacy you wont notice the problem but if you want to proactively cultivate an environment of success with your neighbors you will fail. The AI refuses to accept logical treaties of any kind without bribes, very unfortunate.

-Magic boats appear when you move an army into the ocean... Magic.... Boats.... These transport ships are free and can be used to great effect in naval battles. Building and maintaining an incredibly expensive navy is rendered void of strategic value and ineffective. You can recruit a bunch of militia and march them into the sea and ram your enemies navy to death without much difficulty. Horrid.

-The campaign AI is atrocious even on the highest difficulty setting. The AI nations will maintain small armies and play passively. If they do field large armies the majority of the time they will consist of almost all slingers or other skirmishers. This causes most battles to involve a 10 second melee blob of doom then 10 minutes of you chasing down skirmishers at random. Epic disciplined and mechanized meat grinding battles? I bought the wrong game.

-Unit multiplier is locked. Why am I limited to smaller unit sizes than the original decade old game?

-One turn per year. Good luck utilizing the fresh general development ideas cause all your generals will die of old age very quickly, assuming they survive even one blob of death thanks to the extremely high kill rates.

-The UI is beyond inconvenient. It is a mess of sub menus and obscure iconography. You play the game through a figurative maze, not a streamlined UI for 2013.

-The awesome in game encyclopedia of information that the legacy Total War games featured? Still gone. Sure, a cohesive encyclopedia is a great idea, if it is navigable and intuitive enough to provide information in a timely manner.

Edit: I may expand on this as I discover more about the game, both good and bad.

[clairbear_ski]

This is a bad game what were they thinking I have enjoyed every other TW game including Empire This one is a 60 buck ripoff Note to UNCreative Assemly I want my money back
Oh BTW another bullet point for you over looked there seems to be a limit of only 3 land armies,2 navies and one agent I wish I had read you review before my purchase
Well back to Shogun 2 and my PS3 games

[Spud]

they broke Rome : (

[juiceman]

would this be bad if it was my first total war game?

[Spud]

unbelievably bad

if they just upgraded the first game, optimized it, debugged it, added a few units, made armies bigger etc i would have been happy

[ADLER]

Well amen from me, you have articulated my thoughts without the swear words. Thanks.

On the diplomacy thing.. what I have found is that if you wait for them to come to you, then delete all their requests & make that simple trade offer, they take it. despite the fact in y turn just gone they would take a trade deal with a $158 yeild even when I offered them $140,000 to take it!

[Paddy Irishman]

Escrito originalmente por juiceman:

would this be bad if it was my first total war game?

Not at all man, but if you possibly can pick up Medieval II or Empire on the cheap and you'll immediately notice the difference between them and Rome 2. The older games had a sheer depth that seems to have been replaced with little else but bells and whistles. Rome 2 is prettier but there's less on offer.

Welcome to TW, but I remain very disappointed with this release. I'm not entirely sure it can be corrected either, as many flaws appear to be conceptual.

If it's your cup of tea, who am I to interfere? I remain annoyed and dismayed though :(

[floyd ryan]

impossible!

[Spud]

there have been a few games that disappointed, but nothing like this.

it's hollow and empty and ... broken.

agreed , the conceptual stuff is here for keeps ie arcade battles and magic flags.

there is no way to patch that, it's a dead duck, they have managed to ruin a genre defining classic

[Rumpullpus]

maybe you would like to play the game first before making a rant.

unit multiplier is easily changed in your preferences script.

[Jon Snow]

Nice sort of sums it up i will add Campagn map lag and everytime you start the game up it runs differently i reckon its possessed it either runs very nicely and then crashes or runs badly and doesn't crash hehe...its a unpredictable beast.

[Renzen]

Escrito originalmente por juiceman:

would this be bad if it was my first total war game?

Well, the game has been dumbed down with stupid features and removal of essential ones...
If it was your first TW i would say it could be good but the other major issue of the game is the really bad optimisation (to the point it's almost game breaking for someones and cause many random CTDs), so, do yourself a favour and buy Shogun 2 TW or Medieval 2 Total War, which are much deeper games, cost way less and will entertain you much more than this BETA.
Of course you need to like strategic games, and you must be willing to learn the games tactics!
Those two i cited will play similar to Rome 2, have great graphic and animations, true and tested TW campaigns and are full of mods, expansions, cool and useful features Rome II TW currently has not.
I suggest you to buy this game after the bugs are resolved and optimisaton has been done (hopefully), which means, buying it not before 5/6 months after the release.
Doing this the game will cost less too.
It's a win-win solution for the rookies of TW which got attracted to the series thanks to the Rome II TW hype.
And maybe, doing so, you'll understand how those missing features are important to the gameplay, and you'll too contribute to the good fanbase which does not want this game to be turned into the choppy, unfinished and console-like game Rome II TW is.

[Rex Bellator]

Rome 2 is not without its issues, but Raye is just another reticent, aging codger who has 20/20 hindsight and a bad case of blinding nostalgia.

Family trees?

Completely useless in Rome Total War. Most of the time you ended up with 20-30 extra generals all sitting around in cities doing nothing. Many of them collecting bad traits and retainers which, after the list become long enough, became indecipherable as to how good or bad they were.

Loose/Tight formation: This feature was relatively underused and really is ahistorical in its implementation. Rome 2 is about maintaining group cohesion and loose/tight formation would break that. Missile troops are already in a loose formation but melee units, particularly Roman/Greek ones require staying in formation. It would be totally ahistorical for them to fall out of line with one another.

Same with Guard. This looks like it might have been folded into general unit behavior.

So far, this is not akin to "dumbing down" this is merely eliminating superfluous or redundant mechanics.

Troop Behavior will likely be tweaked in the updates and patches ahead. They seem fine to me.

Javelins not autofiring? But wait... isn't autofiring DUMBING DOWN? Stop being lazy and manage them yourself you gangrenous lazy oaf.

"Battles are way too fast"

This is a matter of taste not an objective fact. Battles seem fine to me, about 5-10 minutes per engagement, give or take. If anything I hated the 30 minute grinds of RTW, especially sieges. This is a welcome improvement.

"-MAGIC COMBAT ABILITIES"

This is no different than the abilities that exited in Rome and other total war games. Having a better general made your troops better, generally. They simply expanded upon it.

If you want a dull, lifeless stat-based spreadsheets-turned-games I suggest you go over to Matrix games and find yourself something that will appeal to 50 and 60 year old grognards who find such stultifying "games" stimulating.

"Victory Flags"

This is no different than controlling the square in Rome Total War. If the enemy ceded the sequare they had a countdown in which to reacquire it. This was further expanded in Medieval 2 in which you needed sufficient number of men otherwise you'd lose control.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy has never been Rome's strong suit. IT was worse in the first one. Again, rose-colored old man glasses of nostalgia.


Everything else is mindless complaining. The game's mechanics are a welcome change to the redundant mechanics of earlier games. Anyone who is familiar with the series, not to mention newcomers, should enjoy Rome 2 without a problem (technical issues that need to be fixed, aside).

If you wanted Rome 1 version 2.0 just go back to Rome Total War and install a mod. Otherwise find yourself something else to complain about.

[Drahazar]

"Victory Flags"

Are stupid here is why. Why would any general put there flag in the open near the enemy. Why would you put your flag at the base of the hill when any general with a brain would put it on top of the hill.

Really I would be ok with the Victory Flag if you could place it down in your own deployment zone. As it is currently its crap I had plenty of games where I would have won with the few troops I had against his greater force but cause It was not strategically viable to stay in open terrian to guard a flag I lost.

[malphilos]

"If you want a dull, lifeless stat-based spreadsheets-turned-games..."

I've never seen a more passionate appeal for the acceptance of the eye-candy arcade game.

I'll bet you're hoping for secret button combo powerups in the next patch. :(

[Relnor]

Escrito originalmente por Rex Skeletor:

"Victory Flags"

This is no different than controlling the square in Rome Total War. If the enemy ceded the sequare they had a countdown in which to reacquire it. This was further expanded in Medieval 2 in which you needed sufficient number of men otherwise you'd lose control.

Could chalk up some of the other stuff to just your own taste, but this is where you're completely delusional and obviously just defending the game cause you feel some sort of emotional attachment for some reason.

You.. do know that the victory flags are in open field battles too.. right ? We're not talking about sieges. We're talking about battles. In the open. .. how.. the hell.. is that.. ok ?