Games

Medieval 2: Total War Gold Edition

Publisher: Sega

Platform: Reviewed on PC

Price: From £24.99

Certifacate: N/A

Let slip, the dogs of war!

For those amongst you who have played previous games in the Total War franchise, you know what the score is here. Medieval II: Total War is a strategy game split into two parts.

One half of the game is played on a turn based Risk-style world map which encompasses the whole of Europe and vast tracts of Russia, Africa and the Middle-East. Later in the game the New World opens up allowing you numerous opportunities to murder vast hordes of naked tribesmen armed with sharp sticks, if that's your thing.

The grand campaign map starts in the year 1080, when most of Europe was divided into bickering principalities and kingdoms. It is on this map where most of the game takes place, from the building of your armies and navies to the management of your economy.

Much like the senate in Rome: Total War, missions and directives are issued by the Papacy. Appeasing the pope becomes a major factor as the game progresses and this aspect adds another layer of strategy to the campaign.

Failure to take part in crusades or attacking your fellow Christians can lead to your faction being excommunicated. Likewise, completing Papal objectives and converting pagan populations will gain your faction favour with the Pope and will improve its position in the medieval pecking order.

The player can choose their level of input on the campaign map and there is an option to allow the AI to auto-manage all of your settlements, leaving you free to duke it out with the superpowers of the medieval age on muddy battlefields across the world.

However, if you are anything like us, you will become hopelessly addicted to this SimCity styled aspect of the game, as your success on the battlefield depends on the strength of your settlements.

The second half of the game comes into play when opposing armies meet on the campaign map and you are transported into the 3D real-time battle map. This is where the serious action occurs.

Almost every aspect of this part of Medieval II is an improvement on previous instalments of the Total War series. Visually, it is more spectacular than ever. The armies of clones moving in perfect unison as seen in Rome: Total War are no more.

When you zoom in, each soldier is now individually animated and wears different armour to the man next to him. Also the battle animations have been tweaked so now you can watch each soldier locked in mortal combat with his foe, rather than clumps of men blindly hacking at each other.

The units themselves are finely balanced against each other, spearmen proving effective against cavalry, cavalry being devastatingly effective against archers and so on with no one unit type emerging as dominant.

Each faction also has certain strengths and weaknesses based on the units they can manufacture. For example, the English can produce powerful archery units like longbow men, but has a limited selection of cavalry, whilst the Moors have a powerful missile cavalry but are lacking in the infantry department. This fine balance ensures that no single nation comes out as being militarily superior.

The map itself has also been improved upon, with everything from the vegetation under your army's feet to the buildings within besieged cities looking substantially more detailed than before.

However, there are still some flaws apparent in the enemy's AI. For example, when being besieged, we found that by retreating to your citadel, the enemy will use all of its siege equipment in taking your outer walls and will often simply march up to you citadel walls with no clue as to what to do next.

However, these flaws do not take away from what is one of the finest historical strategy games available on the PC. With Medieval II: Total War now available on budget, you'd be an ignorant serf not to grab yourself a copy of this excellent and epic game.