MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : The Creative Assembly

Publisher : Sega

Engine : Not Revealed

Genre : Historic Real-Time Tactics And Turn-Based Strategy

Release Date : November 13 , 2006

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows XP / Windows Vista

CPU : Intel Pentium 4 Processor / AMD Athlon64 3000+

Memory (RAM) : 1 GB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 9.0c Compatible Video Card with Memory 128 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 6600 Series
ATI : Radeon X1600 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 9 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

Medieval 2 is to try to conquer the known world. And as a ruler of a medieval kingdom, this means you have to rely on knights, men-at-arms, archers, catapults, cannons, and everything else you'd expect out of a movie such as Braveheart or Kingdom of Heaven. That's not all, though; you also have a small array of agents to call upon. Diplomats can negotiate cease-fires (useful when you need some time to rebuild your strength) or alliances; princesses can shore up the loyalty of a general or a neighboring faction through marriage. Since it's a Total War game, Medieval 2 sports two layers. The "big picture" is covered in the turn-based strategic layer, where you can examine a map of Europe and manage your empire. From here, you have command of all your settlements, armies, navies, and agents. You can also construct improvements to enhance the economy or allow you to build the latest in 15th-century military technology. Medieval 2 introduces a few new twists to the established formula of the original game. Settlements come in two flavors now, towns and castles. Basically, towns and cities generate a lot more cash, but castles generate a wider variety of military units and are much harder to capture. All of this costs cash, of course, and it's safe to say that you'll be scrimping for every spare gold piece possible, especially early on in the game. The economic game has been bulked up a bit with the addition of merchants and resources. Basically, there are resources such as wheat and wine that are located on the map, and by enlisting a merchant and placing one on a resource, you can tap that resource for gold. You must construct churches or mosques to support the faith, and if you're a Catholic nation you can even get involved in some popery by getting your man elected pope. The more effective a priest, the more likely he'll be promoted by the church to become a bishop and then a cardinal. Every time a pope dies, the three most senior cardinals are put up for election--and here's where you can engage in diplomacy to buy votes for your man. However, if you fail and you vote for the losing side, the incoming pope will have a grudge against you.

The sheer variety of units that you can call upon is impressive, and each faction has its own distinct units, such as the English longbowmen or the Holy Roman Empire's gothic knights. As you'd expect, it's combined arms that wins the battles, so you can create armies consisting of spearmen, men-at-arms, mounted knights, bowmen, siege weapons, and much more. And after a battle, you'll be sending these units back to a castle or a town to replace losses, so there's a lot of army management throughout the game. The game restricts you to only about five major players at first (England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and so on), but after you win a campaign game you can unlock 12 other factions covering Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. You can even send armies to the New World and battle the Aztecs, though you'll likely find yourself with more than you can handle back in the Old World. Campaigns will last even longer if you choose to fight out each battle in real time, and while you can usually skip over the minor skirmishes by letting the computer instantly generate the results, you'll most likely want to dive into the larger scrums--not only because you don't want to risk losing a major battle with roughly even odds due to a flip of the computer's coin, but because there are plenty of jaw-dropping moments in Medieval 2's combat. The visuals are also aided by the addition of cool cinematic movies that show the results of various actions, like assassination attempts gone comically awry, royal weddings, and papal elections. Medieval 2 also has excellent audio. The music ranges from pleasing and subtle throughout the campaign map to bombastic and pompous during battle, though the musical cue that we liked the most was the haunting defeat chorus after losing a battle. There's plenty of voice work, too, as most emissaries will talk to you in appropriately accented English depending on their nationality.

Aside from the single-player campaign, there are a few extra modes in Medieval 2. A single-player skirmish mode lets you create custom battles, so you can pit the Mongols against the Aztecs, for instance, while there are seven historical battles that revisit great moments in world history, such as Agincourt, where Henry V overcame all odds and crushed the French. The multiplayer portion of the game is restricted to battles. Indeed, given the scope and scale of the single-player campaign, we imagine that resolving a multiplayer game would be all but impossible save for the most dedicated of players. Multiplayer itself features only two modes, last man standing and scored resolution, but the basic idea remains the same in that you want to kill as many of the other guys as possible. Battles support up to eight players, so you can really get a big scrum going on, but the meat of the game is certainly in the single-player campaign. Still, Medieval 2 is an excellent strategy game--there's just so much here to occupy you for hours. At the same time, you'll need to be committed to get through the campaign, as it can take up a lot of time. If you're a strategy fan looking for an epic experience, though, you'll be hard-pressed to pass up Medieval 2's rich historical texture, popular setting, beautiful visuals, and deep gameplay. "Epic" doesn't quite begin to describe the scope and scale of the latest Total War game--there's a lot of strategic depth, with plenty of amazing combat to enjoy.

GAME REVIEW :-

8.5/10

Medieval II: Total War Trailer :-