I just thought I'd post to tell people my experience with Rome 2 Total War so far ( yes I've downloaded it already
) here are some pro's and con bullet points which I'm sure creative assembly will completely ignore next release and not fix for this game either like they always do.
The good:
. As far as I can tell so far victory conditions are now based on victory conditions, so they game only ends when you've been defeated or have accomplished your objectives, no more time limits like in previous games WOO!
. No distance to capital, it actually seems to be possible to make your settlements 100% happy so they don't rig the stats against you this means you won't be punished for having a large and well managed empire but you'll still be fucked if you don't keep an eye on settlements that are going downhill
. A.I is actually as transparent as they say though they still seem to be a bit cranky they're a lot more open to diplomacy than they used to be so the game doesn't force you to fight the whole world you actually get a list of statistics that probably explain why they hate you as opposed to wondering why the fuck they attacked you despite you having trade agreements with them etc. like in previous games
. The game does look good, though I place little stock in graphics with games but I do like to have some, even on low settings because of my poor processor it still look like an alright game
. Most things can be disabled that annoy you, for some reason Creative Assembly decided to add those horrid cartoon streaks to indicate projectile fire ( Seriously Creative wtf? ) but they can thankfully been turned off, same goes for hints etc. and you can have the classic total war camera back rather than the horrid new one they put in which I don't like
. When my processor doesn't fry the battles look fairly impressive but so far I've only been able to really use hit and run tactics mostly because I always seem to wind up against way more troops than I have or I just auto-assault because they just try to send swarms of skirmishers at me
The bad:
. Agent spam is still around folks, it seems some of the previous annoyances I had about Total War games are still there, it's almost like there's an intelligent person in the dev team who keeps constantly arguing with everyone else about the annoying features but they won't get rid of them because they're either too lazy or it's too difficult for them the good news is though that the A.I doesn't seem to resort to it so desperately as they used to which may be a half-assed attempt at fixing it on their part
. They aren't even trying to hide the fact that they're milking the fuck out of DLC content, the Greek states who I will tell people new to the Total War games are featured as pre-order only DLC content, you can play as Macedon in this game but Athens, Sparta and Epirus are off limits, I suspect they've got all these minor factions out there and so carefully balanced for the sake of DLC content which they're going to severely rip people off with they also don't seem to have very much blood going on so expect another shitty 99c/99p DLC you have to buy for enabling it.
. I'm still getting used to the interface which is a lot more like Empire Total War was than Shogun 2 or other previous games but I've found it very annoying to locate my characters to upgrade their skills, there's probably a shortcut somewhere or something I don't know about but I can't understand why they don't just give a 'zoom to location' option on the faction messages like they normally do with everything else
. I've only been able to really fight on plains but so far winning seems to be more about having the units with the best stats yet again than really being about your strategy and how you can use the terrain to your advantage
. The game is DRM infested like most big company releases, I can't in good faith ever recommend a game that forces people to connect to the internet to play it, if you have any dignity as a gamer don't get suckered into the anti-piracy propaganda, thankfully it seems the pirate groups are getting round even creative assemblies always on DRM properly now so it's not too much of a problem just yet, installing Rome 2 Total War was really easy this time
The catastrophic:
This game is clearly not designed for low spec computers, I'm going to be saving up for a new processor as some of you already know but the main problem with total war games as has always been the case is that they insist on constantly using these extremely high resource campaign maps, they are massive, they have lots and lots of A.I calculations that the computer has to do so it takes forever a lot of times to end a turn. They spit particles across the screen whenever a character accomplishes something or there are pre-rendered animations which pop up that can easily bugger up your computer. So I'll say it again just in case it wasn't clear, don't play this game if you're low spec, you need a damn good processor to play this game, on their demonstrations, I think I heard them say they had an i7 or something.
I've complained about this before on the official forums and was ignored but the easiest way to fix this would be to simply use sprites for the campaign which would be easy to implement and would solve problems for people who don't have powerful processors but of course all they've done is just lowered the polygon count for the main models and lowered the texture resolution without doing fuck all about the particle effects and the amount of shit the computer has to calculate to keep the game working.
Anyway if you have a good computer it's probably great most of the time but on a low spec computer, fucking frustrating to play, for the record, I don't believe this is a huge problem with my processor even though I will be upgrading because it's clearly being a bother. I run most games fine even stuff like Battlefield 3 ran comfortably on low settings and I can play Supreme Commander, played metro last light recently too and that's not running too badly though you have a problem with freezing on it at first with the main menu and I'm convinced that my processor doesn't seem to lots lighting, volumetric and particle effects happening all at once.
TLDR: Don't support games companies with shitty business practices, who support the anti-piracy lobby and don't optimise their games properly
