Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms Review


GAME INFO publisher: Sega developer: Creative Assembly genre: Strategy MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS PIV 1500, 512MB RAM, 5GB HDD, 128MB video card	ESRB rating: T homepage: www.totalwar.com/ release date: Aug 28, 07 (released)

» All About Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms on ActionTrip

SCREENSHOTS

VIDEOS

COMMENTS

Another cool thing about this add-on is the variety of new music tracks to go with each of the new factions. It also appears that the designers went all-out to create every single new unit. Formations of knights, cavalry, tribal warriors and other unit types, with each unit model featuring a variety of skins to make them appear unique on the battlefield (a welcomed addition introduced in the previous game).

Spanish colonies were always confusing to me.

You may have horses and armor, but feel the fabric on these leather panties!

If you're worried about numbers, you should be happy to know that Kingdoms includes over 100 new units, 13 new factions, nine new agents, 50 new structures to build and more. There are also 15 new multiplayer maps and scenarios on offer.

Even with all its positive points, Medieval II: Total War - Kingdoms didn't quite turn out as I hoped. What's more, I expected the developers would do away with some of the annoying AI and pathfinding issues, which I've complained about in our review of the original. Unfortunately, these AI flaws made their way into the add-on as well. The cavalry tends to go its own way or sometimes simply refuses to obey orders. Fair enough, installing the game applies all the released patches so far, which irons out some technical aspects, but, obviously not all of them.

On the whole, instead of messing with the familiar basic gameplay mechanics, Creative Assembly decided to deliver as much fresh content as possible, which means you'll be busy with the game for quite some time. Each campaign provides a unique experience and we fully recommend the game to fans of the series. Some of the drawbacks mentioned earlier, thankfully, haven't spoiled the overall experience.

START «

PAGE 1 2

4 post(s)

Reader Comments

	Zolneirz	[mail] Sep 06 2007, 04:12 pm EDT
	Reply Still without multiplayer AI the game isn't fun to play with friends, and I feel ripped off to be honest. It was advertised there would be a "Brand new 1v1 multiplayer campaign". Instead, we got hotseat, a feature thats been there since RTW 1.0, all you gotta do is enable it in the .txt files. I'm not paying for any more products from creative assembly.

	Jayh	[mail] Sep 07 2007, 01:16 am EDT
	Reply I guess the AI issues are something that should have been fixed but I like the fact that every campaign has something like 50 provinces + theres a limited amount of factions to fight in each so theres A LOT to play around with. If you destroyed every faction in the original, theres was little point in starting a full campaign with another faction.. as you would be going thru the same spots at some point, but with 4 campaigns, its always a new experience.

	UK_John	[mail] Sep 08 2007, 02:49 am EDT
	Reply Give this expansion the credit it deserves, it has changed what expansions are going to have to give us now! A glorified patch as an expansion is not enough now. Although I don't blame publishers for going the expansion route instead of patching, because what's the benefit of a patch that improves the game 1000%? Nothing, that's what. The review score doesn't change, and there is barely any mention editorially in the news section, certainly there is no re-review of the game.. So why would a publisher spend time and money on making a fantastic patch with added content? Nothing. But put that patch and content in an 'expansion' and you get it reviewed, you get a review score, you get the original title mentioned and you get product on the shelves in stores to make money. Until we have reviews that are based around game reviews and not movie reviews we are going to continue to go down the road of expansions and stand alone expansions/add-ons that cost us money, because there will no longer be added content in patches like there used to be, there will just be bug fixes, with all the extra content now going into these expansions. Given all this, Creative Assembly are to be commended for putting so much content into this expansion, although not to fix the well known bugs is a bit of a crime in my book. Eventually, gameplay will come into the review scores along with graphics, sound, etc.because it seems crazy to me that a simple to produce 15 hour rail shooter is scored with the same rules as an open world, free form, 100 hour plus game. The shooter will tend to not have bugs but will not be downscored for lack of gameplay, equally the open-ended free-form game that usually will have bugs (they all do!) gets downscored for bugs but then does not get a higher score for having 5 times the gameplay of the rail shooter!

	Vader	[STAFF] [mail] Sep 13 2007, 12:30 am EDT
	Reply Boy, UK_John... errr... that's one, err, long comment you got there.

COMMENTS PAGE 1


Star Trek Online vs. KotOR MMOG:
	Star Trek Online will live long and prosper.
	KotOR is gonna Force-Choke the competition.
	They are made of fail, WoW would pwn both.

» view results » view poll archives

	Last month's 8.8 08/22/2008 30236 views
	Last month's 8.4 08/23/2008 19389 views
	Last week's 8.9 08/25/2008 17280 views
	Last week's 7.8 08/26/2008 12849 views
	Last week's 8.8 08/27/2008 11061 views

	Need for Speed Undercover Trailer 1:04
	Need for Speed Undercover Teaser 1:19
	Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 GC 2008 Trailer 2:57
	Tomb Raider Underworld 'Becoming Lara Croft' Trailer 3:59
	The Witcher Enhanced Edition Trailer 1:36

	"E3 2009" 07/28/2008 Jojic/Grabovic 21081 views
	"Gaming is An Illness" 08/19/2008 Jojic/Grabovic 20148 views
	"A Worthy Sacrifice" 07/09/2008 Jojic/Grabovic 8110 views

USER PASSWORD
	Forgot username or password? Click here.

TOP COMICS

TOP BABES

TOP VIDEOS