Home Games Medieval II: Total War Gold Edition

Medieval 2:TW

Strategy
Releases: 11.14.06
Sega of America
Sega of America
ESRB: Teen

Medieval II: Total War Gold Edition

Gold edition love.

by FickityTwists

This game includes the original 2006 Medieval II: Total War and the Kingdoms expansion pack. The Opening Screen for main gameplay gives you many choices for game play such as: Tutorial, single player, multiplayer, Custom Battle, Quick Battle, and Historical Battle. The tutorial will give you the standard breakdown of the controls and what each Icon stands for but unlike other tutorials, you will have multiple options for game play. You will get to choose between The Battle of Hastings or the Norman Conquest. You will also be given a screen shot of Duke William of the Norman Empire and the objective of the tutorial.
The game will always give you a cinematic that will try to portray, as closely as possible, the point in time in which you will be playing. It will give you a brief history of events that have lead up to that point and give you a goal. Most of the goals are similar.
You will also be given a choice of one of the five starting factions. These are: England, Holy Roman, Venice, France and Spain. ( which are usually the standard empires for any historically set game.)

Breakdown of Gameplay Options and their prospective Objectives.The quick game objective is to kill off two factions ( or countries/ provinces) that you wish to hold the provinces for, or that are trying to invade you. This is a couple hours of gameplay recommended for people with short attention spans, or just want a sample of what the game plays like. This will also be a great way to unlock other factions like the American provinces. In the Grand Campaign you must hold 50 provinces. 48 of them will be your choice but two will be necessary to the completion of your campaign. This will take days and even weeks to complete. It will span over 500 years in the game itself and be comprised of various tasks that will be necessary to get to the final stage of game play. There are 7 Historical Battles in total. In these battles, you will be required to play out a battle like “ The Battle Of Hastings” where the Saxon King Harold will go head to head with Duke William for the English throne. You will be given the troops that were recorded to have been actually part of the battle and you will then recreate the battle as you see fit, while trying to defeat the other army to claim the throne for yourself. Multiplayer Mode allows you to take your battles online to try your hand at defeating up to 8 other armies at once.

The point of the game is to strategically gain power by utilizing resources, controlling land and making money. To do this you must utilize the armies you have at your command. The constant struggle for power, money and land gives you a very interesting perspective on what the medieval times were like, while engaging you in a most captivating version of Cat and Mouse strategic moves. The phases of gameplay are Turn Based and Real Time. The Turn Based phase allows you to keep your kingdom and lands in order and creatively manage the training phase of armies you will need for the Real Time/battle phase. After you have beat the game playing the Faction of your choice, you will then notice that the other factions will open up for you to play. (I did not like playing as the French though. It was entirely odd to me.) For those of you who are familiar with Rome Total War, will note the difference in game play in this versions is nothing really huge aside from the division of the regions.

The gameplay and phases of the game are very similar to RTW. The differences in diplomacy are very small. You can trade, and take money from an opposing Faction. You can marry off your daughters to them as well. You can not marry your daughters off to your sons. You can, on the other hand, marry them to your generals ( as long as they are not closely related.) There is also an Economy difference as well. You can utilize more of your resources and make trade with the other factions in the game much easier, and there are resources scattered around the map to be exploited by merchants, a new type of agent. Battle play is different as well because of the power of the Pope on Catholic Factions. You see crusades powered by the pope.( Which depending on what Faction you are, can either make or break your loyalties as well with your troops.) The ability to have holy men in the battle field is new, but somewhat annoying during game play, because its an extra man to worry about. If he dies, your Faction will suffer moral issues. You will also see the inquisitor and his ability to execute Army leaders , family members and other people in order to gain influence and allegiance to the pope. If you control a Bishop that becomes Pope you will gain standing that will help you immensely. Also during battles, as time goes on you will see the sudden appearance of the Aztecs and other known historical peoples. You will trade with some of these people, and do battle with them as well.
Kingdom’s Total War lets you carry on a bit of the storyline from the original, but I find that it does not allow you to be very efficient in game play. You have to watch too many aspects of the game. Like the ports and the men on horseback. You also pick from 4 campaigns: Britannia ( set in the early 13th century and trying to keep England a huge power over the surrounding territories), The Teutonic( Where you try to bring Lithuania into the Catholic ways, and leave behind their Pagan ways), The Crusades ( the invasion of Jerusalem and the struggles with the surrounding nations), and The Americas ( The battle between the Aztecs and the Spanish Conquistadors, with the Mayan people making a brief Cameo for power. Watch out for the ambush!)

There are many aspects of the game that just really got my goat. Such as the Teutonic campaign and its inability to make a real KINGDOM, with cities, which limits your abilities in having a sizable army housed within the castle walls. On the flip side, the Lithuanian’s are unable to gather armies, until they do convert. Thus causing the loyal Pagan peoples to abandon them. So, it kind of evens the playing field there. The Hot seat option makes it kind of exciting to be good at this game. You don’t have access to all the maps, but it does give you a better playing position for Multiplayer.

Since I refuse to be a spoilsport and divulge any more of the secrets of these games, I will now wrap this up. Personal little annoyances are that the game can be slow playing, the point and click aspect of battles can get a tad bit mind numbing and the building aspects do tend to leave you bare in the wind if you are a port territory and the Mayans tend to run a muck for a bit to annoy you.

More structured for historical accuracy

Long-winded Cinematics

???????

can you be the aztecs inthis game ????

#1 - isai - 07/23/2008 - 11:30

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