Minor flaws aside, M2:TW stands with the very best PC strategy games. Also, you cannot manage naval battles at all, perhaps understandable given M2:TW's fanatical focus on land-based battles. The game does a magnificent job dropping you into the thick of battle, and it's easy to get chills from these conflicts, especially when you're trying to form up your pikemen as gothic knights bear down on you and trebuchets in the distance rain numinous fire down on you.Ī potential downside with M2:TW is that you'll need a hefty computer to get the most out of it - all of those mud-spattered helmets and grimacing men come at a steep computing cost.

Unlike 'unit-based' RTS games, such as Age of Empires III, your units won't necessarily stay and fight to the death, but will break and run, spreading panic to others and turning a close battle into a rout. By skillfully maneuvering your troops, it's often possible to defeat a numerically superior force. On the battlefield, it's possible to see an astonishing level of detail, right down to the faces of your men. Long the hallmark of Total War games, these conflicts pit armies of hundreds and sometimes thousands against each other in medieval battles that would make William Wallace proud. While it's possible to spend many happy hours on the Campaign Map, it serves another purpose - to build mighty armies to crush other nations.

As you upgrade cities, it's possible to see the countryside around them change from empty grassland to farmland and see the roads fill up with wagons trading goods to and from your ports. Strategic decisions, such as managing settlements, moving units about, or keeping tabs your neighbors, take place on the Campaign Map, which has the look and feel of a Civilization game. In the game's 'Grand Campaign,' you will lead of one of Europe's fledgling nations to total domination of Europe, Asia, and the New World.

Moreover, the game's combat system, with its truly epic-feeling battles, may be the best RTS battle system seen in PC gaming to date. Sporting a real-time strategy combat engine hidden inside a sedate, turn-based strategy shell, M2:TW does both genres well enough to be good games in their own right, making the combination of the two all-but-irresistible. Brilliant, bloody, deep, and engaging, Medieval II: Total War simply has no equal among strategy games in terms of sheer variety of play.

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