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.
