Empire: Total War Comments by Kieron Gillen

It would.

brilliant

Sweden!

Once you dig hard into Medievel 2 (20+ hours) you will soon find gaping holes and bugs and pretty much constantly second guess the AI.

The best moment for me that summed up Medievel 2 for me was when I placed one of my armies amongst a bunch of enourmous enemy armies, was attacked twice in one turn with 4:1 against me but I still won both encounters with a heroic victory. And this was the hardest mode.

I was attacked a third time then the game threw up hands and gave up.... and crashed.

It was then that I realised, there's basically nothing more for me in this game.

Medievel 2 is simply not very robust and sometimes frustrating experience (armies in the streets god no id rather autoresolve and take massive losses then wrestle with that), hopefully this will a more satisfying experience, which will evolve the series as much as Rome did.

"I will probably buy this when the price drops. I'm a big fan of the series.
Don't think I've finished with Med 2 yet."

I'm not even finished with Rome yet... Just like I'm still playing Civ III. There's just so much to those games and playing through a single campaign takes so much time that in general I'm not done with them when the new version ships. :)

"Medievel 2 is simply not very robust and sometimes frustrating experience (armies in the streets god no id rather autoresolve and take massive losses then wrestle with that), hopefully this will a more satisfying experience, which will evolve the series as much as Rome did."

Very much agree; it really does take the fun out of the game. For me, the worst aspect has to be the campaign diplomacy though. I understand in a vague way why the AI would betray you, but sometimes it would do bizarre things like make a cease-fire pact in one turn, then attack you in the next - usaully with a small army against two of your large ones packed together.

In passing, it's worth noting that the team who made Empire: Total War are a different team from the one who made Medieval II. The last game this team made was Rome. The Medieval team were CA's Australian wing.

KG

Is that true for both Medieval games or just the second one?
Just curious - the first Medieval is the only one in the series I've played. (Meant to get Rome, but never got around to it - like some many games I mean to get...).

Intending to get this - though given what a time-sink it'll be, I'm not sure how far I'll get in it.

Great game. Hope the diplomacy gets better this time. Got tired of it medieval2.

The only problem with buying this game on steam is that I won't be able to spoon with the box for a good month after I buy it *sobs*

The demo was pretty poor in my opinion; nothing was very fluid like in the previous games and the animations and sound were terrible. I can't believe noone seems to have noticed how utterly awful the audio was.

I noticed the loaaaaaaaaaaaaaading. M2TW was quite zippy when I went back to it. It felt like a Ferrari in fact.

@warzin

Yeah, and it looks pretty good too.

This one doesn't look that much better as to warrant the extreme loading times. Hopefully CA works out a patch or something.

The demo was pretty poor in my opinion; nothing was very fluid like in the previous games and the animations and sound were terrible. I can't believe noone seems to have noticed how utterly awful the audio was.

Not sure what you mean with "not very fluid" - as for the rest, I never found the Total War demos very polished. I expect some of the glitches will be gone in the full game. As for the audio - what do you mean? I noticed the battle cries/voices repeated themselves all the time, but I'd suspect this will be different in the full game. Not noticed much else being wrong with the audio.

I think I read somewhere, maybe on the dev blog or TWCenter.net, that the demo version is at least 3 builds old - there are lots of bugs fixed, and there will also be a steam release day patch for the long loading times.

A better translation of 'War and Peace' is 'War and Society'. War and Society got mixed up when the powers that be decided to drop the 'i' from the Russian alphabet.

Oooh I feel so smug now I don't think I will need to post again for a month!

A better translation of 'War and Peace' is 'War and Society'. War and Society got mixed up when the powers that be decided to drop the 'i' from the Russian alphabet.

Wait, that doesn't make sense. Because it would have to be "Society and Peace" then. Not quite the catchy title. ;)

Interesting how Halo Wars gets more than double the comments than this. Says a bit about the amount of PC gamers on this website.

LoveFilm has got a good offer at the moment and if bought with the promotion code MARCH10 and Quidco you only end up paying something like 21 quid.

Interesting how Halo Wars gets more than double the comments than this. Says a bit about the amount of PC gamers on this website.


Not much left though if you subtract the usual console fanboys posts from that thread.

True about the fanbois... most people posting on a console games thread are simply trying to pimp their system. We PC players are united ;)

Bugger.... 1st time Ive been envious of not being a PC owner.......... My G5 aint Intel - So no Windows games for me :(. Shame... this looks awesome.... Love the period.

Guess I'll continue hammering SFIV - Still a thinking mans game yet a tad faster methinks!!! LOL

Ergates_Antius: I believe just Medieval 2 was made by the Australian team. All others were by the UK one.

KG

My favourite historical error is that they've put Glasgow on the west coast of Scotland. It's for game balance reasons, apparently

i know someone's probably already said this but Glasgow is on the west coast....

@UncleLou - quite right, I thought I was being smug, but not very successfully. Peace and Society got mixed up as you point out. Oh how hollow my smugness now seems.

Sounds very awesome - too bad I don't have a PC. :(

Its still very buggy, for example ctd when pressing end turn, also it has awful load times still and the is very slow and laggy even on newer hardware, once again this seems to be have missed completely by the reviewer.

The game is a buggy mess - particularly the game-breaking "CTD on Enemy AI Turn" bug which, 40 turns in, has destroyed my campaign. Surely Eurogamer experienced these problems?

Hey, so does the game actually place Glasgow properly on the coast?? That is a big shame cos I know I'd love to ransack the place, lol. I'm from Ayr, properly on the west coast, and it was the first royal burgh in Scotland and was a major shipping and fishing port for several hundred years.. hope it's in the game!l :p

Perhaps worth 9/10 for the actual gameplay, but yeah, hardly for quality. The performance is so much worse for so little more you get over eg. Rome, and it's buggy as hell. So 9/10 it's not. And sadly, the RTS part is as unintuitive (like grouping etc) as it's always been, if not worse even.

No, I think I rather play a Civ game for the campaign part, and WiC for the excellent RTS...

I'm rather amazed you actually gave this game a 9/10.

I bought it and have been nothing but disappointed. Bugs are rampant. The patches are coming, but they break as many things as they fix, and there is no way the publisher is going to continue patching as long as they need to in this situation. There are still major issues: AI in battle mode is still completely broken with fortifications, cannons will target your own side and blow them up, trade zone issues will break your game so hope you backed it up recently.

There is no right or reason for the majority of the campaign part of the game. Medieval: Total War, the first one, was amazing. Empire: Total War is the worst game I have played in years. Just because of how bug ridden it is. I don't know, I usually trust Eurogamer over all other game sites I go to, though I read all of those as well, and I have to say that I'm not going to anymore after you gave this game such a high score when it is so bad. Sometimes a country will hate you after you invade, sometimes they'll love you, and there is zero correlation. The new government system is incredibly clunky and can destroy you based on luck. The action part of the game isn't too bad, but the campaign map is honestly just bad.

Maybe you didn't spend as much time with the game as I did. I've played about 40 hours of the campaign map. The first 20 were great and I thought I'd figure things out. The last 20, where I've come to realize that there is nothing to figure out, the game is just broken, have been bad.

This game does not deserve 9/10. Check out the USER reviews on Metacritic, or amazon, its in the SIX area, and there are thousands of reviews. I can only assume, that press reviewers were shipped some sort of mini-sandbox version of the game.

Bugs are not just limited to the long tedious install (requiring command line input to get my DVD to work), but also game-breaking errors where game scripts don't "trigger" in scenarios. Corrupted game saves, crashes to desktop abound. Many people simply give up on completing the campaign.

However, worse than this is just how *average* it is. The campaign map graphics are slow and clunky, irrespective of what graphics card you have. The graphics on the fights, while sharper than the older games have terrible, stilted animations, even some "Ice Skating" as units slide across without moving their legs. Even with the latest patch, unit pathing is terrible forcing you to micro manage each unit, thats assuming they don't get stuck or refuse to shoot, amongst the many things that can go wrong.

These issues remain after many months of release; I doubt they will ever be fixed, perhaps they will fixed if you shell out for the inevitable "expansion". Please note, this is a Steam release so you will not be able to sell this game if you don't like it. I'd stay away from this one.

This game cannot be returned because you are required to open an account, log in and register the code key with Steam to even complete the installation. The code key is linked to your account. Unbelievable that they make you give up your e-mail address just to finish the install! So I think it's impossible to re-sell. It's going for $20 factory wrapped on Ebay with free shipping, anyways. I know Medieval 2 didn't depreciate that fast. Apparently, you're immediately stuck with Empire Total War whether you like it or not. I'm keeping an open mind, but I almost decided to stop the install at the command to register and open an account. I don't like to be forced to do stuff like that just to play a game. I spent the $50; I should have ownership with out complications. I found the battle play unresponsive and stiff. My cannons wouldn't move; they would blow up my own people, my infantry wouldn't move properly or take position and my musketeers wouldn't fire. I couldn't inflict hardly any casualties-there is clearly a bug. My larger and more powerful army was beaten by Cherokees with bows and arrows on the first try to capture Savannah. I quit that game. On the second try, I just decided to use auto battle and I captured Savannah. But most alarming was the lack of mobility of the troops and their inability to fire. I kept ordering them to maneuver and move and they either refused to move at all or moved at a snail's pace. The troops in Medieval usually followed orders in timely fashion. The Cherokee circled around me and kicked my butt becaues my formations wouldn't move. And where was the gunfire? I perked my ears to hear it and never did. I didn't hear it because my guys wouldn't fire their guns! The Cherokee just advanced and chopped up my lines until they routed. During the time my cannons were in position to fire at the enemy, it was inefective. The cannon fire wouldn't kill anybody! There were no Cherokee casualties on the battlefield where cannon balls ripped through. One of the things I loved about Medieval 1 and 2 (I liked Rome, too; but it won't play on VISTA! I had to sell that one before I was through with it) was the mobility of the troops on the battlefield. The movement of troops in Empire Total War is as if their legs are stuck in mud. Unless it's the enemy; they practically fly along like they're skating on ice. The troop movement in Medieval 2 was much more life like. And what's with the 'skating'? Enemy troops quickly float along like they're being whisked through the air. Why did the Hurons declare war on me with out provocation? Why, after hitting the Next Turn button, do we need to wait for all the many faction flags to display slowly one after another and really, really delay the game play? I have a very fast computer, an XPS, and it takes way too long to show all the flags. After all, the way limited building options and troop creation are, I think all players spend a lot of turns quickly hitting the Next Turn option because it takes forever to make progress on any strategy. So everybody spends a lot of time waiting for those flags to parade by. The only positive thing compared to Medieval is that money seems to be some what easier to produce in Empire. At least early in the game; I only have a few hours invested and I'll invest more but I'm not hopeful for a good game experience or a good final opinion. I question whether there are enough years to complete anything. Do they exit you out as a loser if you don't complete the campaign by said year? Why is the naval action so slow? I"ll give the game a chance (if I can stay awake), because I paid the money and am stuck with it, but so far I say Empire Total War is inferior to Medieval 2. Clearly inferior. It looks like something they had in the can, knew was inferior, but had too much invested to just pitch it. Thus the feature that makes sure you can't sell it or take it back!. If you're putting out a flawed game, make sure you can keep the money! What Creative Assembly has done is to make people afraid to buy PC games any more. I know I'm certainly deterred after this. I think I'll buy Godfather 2 for my XBox 360 and start playing that rather than struggle with this bug-riden fiasco very long. But I'll play with it a little longer before putting it on the shelf forever. Because I paid that $50 I can never get back.