Total War: Rome II Reviews

Trying to compare with Rome 1 is unfair . I think that CA rushed to release it. At least 3-4 months earlier. We have to wait for the bugs(guard mode for the plalanx is unexeptable)to be fixed or mods to be released ( darthmod i hope although he has retired from total war). Please return !!!

This game has so many drawbacks that cast the shadow over everything that's good. Starting from the campaign map, they removed road improvements and mining, public order and food supllies are impossible to keep in balance (temples use up more food per turn than rest of the city), no wall improvements or construction, few construction options and many other things that bring this game down. The AI almost doesn't exist, both on and off the battlefield, on the map it's passive, and doesn't prove any sort of challenge. On the battlefield, it is also predictable, and those victory points in open field battles are making any strategy unsable coz players must defend a stupid flagpole on a pasture. Infantry speed is unrealistically high, cavalry speed is very low, light cavalry doesn't kill or take prisoners when chasing after fleeing oponents, units break formations in combar too fast, combat itself is too fast, and battles often last under 5 minutes. Bugs are crippling this game, end turns take forever, and that is really getting on my nerves. Charachter skill tree and traits are very badly done, there's no family tree (yes, all characters are generic) and politics options have no meaning or influence on the game itself 8especially in case of non-Roman and non-Carthaginian factions). Siege battles almost don't exist, and for those that exist, AI makes them very dull, since they don't defend victory points, or defend just 1 in cases where there are more than 1 per city).
Good part are those hybrid and ambush battles, wich are awsome, more cities per province (although Greece and some other provinces are left barren in this case, while it's good for huge provinces in former game, like Lybia), unit cap of 40 in battles (but still those anicent 20 on the map).
This game looks more like pre-BETA version that a full release of the game, and it's horrible problems won't be solved with patches I'm afraid.
So, all it's gonna get is 6,3 from me, CA and SEGA really screwed it up this time :( And I was so looking forward to this game :(

I'm fed up with Total War's lack of AI. The company is not capable of providing barely any CAI. It's just that typical thing, throw all the money on games looks and get somebody cheap to do the AI. That was obviously the plan (even if it got layed out unintentionally) and the plan worked out exactly like it should. CAI is an insult to a few billions of years of evolution of organisms on this planet. We developed a certain intelligence level and we usually want to put it to use. We could easily be in our early monkey stages and beat the game.

CAI is just as horrible as it always was. And then somewhat worse.

BAI is ok but buggy. Though even though people submitted all sorts of issues in BAI, I really found only rare problems. But they are also sufficent. No, I can't really at least make BAI sound positive cause it is trashy too. Less trashy then CAI, but ... trashy. AI needs x3 army to beat you. Mixes with a problem on CAI that he's just lacking too many parts of its brains to produce a well packed effective army. So when he brings his mediocre army to the field, it's just lame fights over and over.

The worst problem is that I'm not sure they can fix this. Patch would need to bring a whole new segment to the game to make it fun. AI engine is obviously something that does not work with TW. So they would need something new. And they wont do that. So this game will prolly suck in 6 months as well.

Cool graphics! But the game is not usable for any half veteran of PC strategy gaming. I think my granma can beat this game on Legendary + Iron man mode after 1 week of learning how to use computers, + an hour or two for RTW.

All hopes for a good RTW2 are shattered.