Medieval 2: Total War Once more into the breach
Movies that promise big battle scenes are always a crowd-drawer. There’s nothing quite like the excitement of watching hundreds of combatants squaring off against each other in a battle to the death.
Game developers knew it would only be a matter of time before the public will want to have the same bloody chaos onscreen to invade the PC screens.
While hundreds of RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games have delivered glory and gore to the small screen, Medieval 2: Total War gives you that…plus much more.
The latest in the Total War series, M2:TW is probably the closest you can get to commanding an army of hundreds in hand-to-hand medieval combat —and at the same time building an empire that spans the four corners of the medieval world
M2:TW is not all warfare, the Grand Campaign lets you try your hand at ruling a faction and bringing it to domination over the rest of the known world.
The game map of the known world is divided into different regions, each one with a settlement. For the game, these regions are distributed in
You rule the region once you gain control of the settlement. All factions start with the regions they had in the early medieval era. You have free reign over what regions to try and grab, but restrictions like alliances, religious difference, geographic locations and even seasons are in full play.
All known tools of diplomacy will be at your disposal. You can send emissaries to establish trade rights and alliances with other factions (not to mention issue threats and even pay bribes), traders to improve your wealth, priests and imams to convert populations to your religion and —yes— even assassins to take out strategic targets.
Keep in mind that other factions also have their own ambitions and all factions are afforded the same number of moves they can make within a two-year in-game period on the known world map (referred to as a turn).
Just because you are surrounded by rival factions does not mean you can run roughshod all over the map at will. If you attack one too many Christian factions the Pope can call a crusade on your lands. If you play a Muslim faction other nations can also request a jihad against you.
How do you gain provinces? You fight for them, of course.
This is where the game gets interesting. M2:TW spared no expense to make their battles the closest thing to the real deal. Soldiers fidget where as they stand in formation, they taunt the enemy, their uniforms will have bloodstains and mud the longer the battles drags on. They will even turn tail and break off if they lose morale during battle.
Zoom in on the action and you can see soldiers execute combination moves, finishing moves and even parries with their weapons. They will stagger back when struck hard enough, double over in pain from a hit and even cheer if they have the foes on the run.
In this game there are no perfect warriors, every unit has a weakness and every strong attack has a counter.
If the Grand Campaign is too much for you to handle you can always opt to play against human opponents online or the CPU (which can be brutally savage at the Hard level), all you have to do is select your army and units, the opponents army and units (the game can also calculate it’s own roster), the battlefield and load the scenario.
You can pause the game anytime you like and issue orders or switch views of the battlefield but there is no save option in the battle scenario (something Total War has to remedy in their coming game Empire: Total War).
Playing this game will give you a better appreciation of the foot soldier during the times when battles were mostly fought hand-to-hand. It will also make you critical and appreciative of blunders and brilliant maneuvers of history’s most famous generals as portrayed on the big screen.
If you prefer to forego historical and tactical appreciation then play game this game because it delivers a kick-ass RTS experience quite unlike any other game.
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