14 DAY TRIAL // 
The strategist is one of the most honored jobs in the whole history of time. The human race was all so? well, let's call it competitive. Ever since we got the means to defend ourselves against beasts (and then began to hunt them down for food and clothing) we started using our physical strength to turn the surroundings to our own liking. A countless number of wars has been fought and leading these military assignments were some of the greatest characters in history. Of course nowadays the notion of strategy spreads on a very wide range and much less wars are there for you to prove your cunning. Luckily the game industry comes to your rescue. Continuously there's another title out that gives you the possibility of changing the face of the Earth and most of them are strategy games so you got yourself your perfect task.
While the great Civilizations series concentrates exclusively on turn based strategy and enables you to create your great nation from scratch while offering little use of your tactics skills on the battlefield, real time strategy games only focus on these exact qualities and you only get to fight without actually enjoying the outcome. The Total War series changed all that by combining the two strategy genres. The idea behind this was to put the player in charge of managing an entire nation while also being the driving hand (the spark of genius in the general's mind) behind that faction's commanders on the battlefield. The series had a tremendous success with all titles (Shogun, Medieval and Rome - Creative Assembly experimented in the console field with Spartan: Total Warrior, but we can't count that as strategy, it's pure action). The fall of 2006 brought the fans a greatly expected follower of Medieval. The newest addition to the series was named Medieval II: Total War and seems to be bound to carry on further the great legacy.
Story If Medieval: Total War was set in the four centuries from the First Crusade (1095) to the Fall of Constantinople (1453), Medieval II takes us back to this period and extends it a little (1080 - 1530) to enable us to take part in all the major events of the medieval times. Well, the tutorial (if you decide to play it) will take you even further back in time, to the 1066 as William the Conqueror takes the lead of the British.
No matter what faction you choose world events are bound to occur. Evolution waits for no one. Along your five hundred years of guidance breakthrough researches are conducted and astonishing discoveries are made. Gunpowder will be of utter most need if you decide to rule the world and the discovery of The New World is an opportunity of expansion that cannot be overlooked. It is only fair to state out that Medieval II is a game enjoying a historical setting and not a historical game, as there may be some inadequacies to the real facts. After all, your task is to change the face of the world, not to get it to be just the same as today.
Concept The basics from Medieval were preserved. A good deal of improvements was added though. Well, maybe you didn't have the pleasure of enjoying that, so let me present it from scratch. First of all you have to make a choice out of an impressive number of 17 (seventeen) factions that include nations from Europe, North Africa and Middle East. Each one of them has different specific units and will come with its pros and cons. As the world map is rather accurate, you're big adventure will start off from the location of your chosen nation.
The world map is the setting for the TBS component of the game. Inspired by the Risk tabletop game, this map will show you a great number of provinces as well as lots of resources scattered all over. Unlike in the Civilizations series where the lands are not inhabited and you are free to place your settlements as you please, in Medieval every province already belongs to a faction (Rebels also count as a faction) and you need to send your military to get it if you're eager to control it. This is where you'll spend a great deal of your time, but we'll talk more about it a little later.
The battlefields are the setting for the RTS component. Here is the place to make good use of the varied terrain types, coordinate the attack (or defense) so that you achieve victory with the least casualties and put those specific units' skills to good use. The army is roughly composed of infantry, archery and cavalry. Yet again there is a good diversity of units in all these categories depending from the nation you choose.
Leading a faction to everlasting glory through the (standard) Campaign is about getting 45 provinces under your control, but getting on battle after battle is not the only way to achieve this. Put your agents to good use and your task may prove a little easier. Get a favorable deal done with an experienced diplomat, conquer enemy hearts by sending your princess to action, send merchants to gather resources, use the spies to gather info, spread your religion through priests and even send in assassins.
Gameplay Aside from the usual get all the provinces around freely (as fast as your military strength allows it) there will be some missions in store for you in the Campaign. These are provided by your very own Council of Nobles or the Pope (if you play a catholic nation). As your cities are eligible to construct guilds later in game these will also come up with a few ideas for missions. The missions are intended to keep you on a certain trail and pretty much offer you a good guidance of what you should accomplish to get the craved honor of Ruler of the World. At first you are commissioned to conquer nearby settlements or block hostile ports. The Pope asks you to widen the borders of Catholicism by creating Priests in most of the newly conquered cities or by engaging on holy Crusades. Great rewards await for you if the mission succeeds. You can get money out of it or even military units, not to mention a brand new province in case you were to subjugate a nearby settlement. If you do a good job you can even get presents from time to time and if you please His Eminence he might even bow his ears to your desire of setting off on a new target for a Crusade.
Agents are one of the greatest assets on the world map. The most basic such characters are the Priests (that spread the word of your God in the heretic lands thus giving your relation with the Pope a boost), the Merchants (that engage in resource trading that gives a bonus to the income - trading a further away resource gets more money and if it's on a territory that you already established trading rights with you'll be rich very soon - and can even buy off the business of a foreign Merchant) and the Spies (that gather all the dirty info on other characters and can infiltrate a foreign settlement to give you accurate details about troops and buildings there as well as be able to open the city gates for you in case you decide on ordering a siege on that town). There is a certain probability that any of your agents succeed in their tasks and that is always shown to you as a percentage. This figure minds the agent's skill (that may increase with each successful mission) and the nature and difficulty of his task (of course it's not the same to send an Assassin on an unskilled diplomat or send him to kill the heir of a nation).
An extremely interesting agent is the Princess. She has two awesome abilities - she can act as a diplomat or she can use her charms to attract a foreign general or prince to your faction by marring him. The downside to this is that once the Princess gets married she stops doing any more jobs for you and let me tell you, Princesses come hard. The Royal Family however gets bigger and bigger all the time. Princes get married with suitable noble ladies and every now and than you are offered to adopt a noble child that proved to posses some leader qualities. These army commanders come with traits that guarantee you their loyalty or give different boosts to their tactics on the battlefields.
Although an important aspect of the game is managing resources and placing all sorts of units to strategic locations while also growing your cities to offer you the means to boost up the military, the settlements management can be set to automatic and just choose what that city should concentrate on: cultural expansion, rich income or military production. Feel free to turn the settlement to a castle and focus on military or allow the city to grow and focus on trading and the happiness of your people. Or just leave that to your advisors and march on with the armies on the numerous battlefields.
Over the world map sort of a fog-of-war reigns. This lifts up as you exchange map information or you send out your own units scouting for new cities. Although the view is very exciting and the great number of agents and armies here give it a lively feeling, as you get further in the Campaign more and more time is spent just waiting around for the rest of the factions to make their move and see their agents do all their bows as they hand out new proposals. I found it a little annoying that despite having a list of all the agents (and of all commanders and settlements), there is no option to automatically be appointed to the units that sit around doing nothing (and than they bug me about not using it correctly - well, I must have forgotten about it, there are so many and spread all over the map).
The battlefield is where your tactical skills are best put to work, but if you don't wish to engage in battles you can just let the computer play for you (turns up he does a pretty good job and succeeds in not wasting your forces, sometimes it's even more efficient to let him do the fighting than recklessly loose more troops than necessary). Your battalions will need to be retrained to compensate for any casualties and that will cost you money, but retraining can be useful if you happened to add any new buildings to your city that improves your units' armor or weapon proficiency.
The battles are of epic proportions as the game engine can sustain confrontations of up to 10.000 units. Each of your army has 20 spaces that can be filled with battalions (the commander comes with its own guards so it counts as a battalion too). Different types of battalions have different number of units. You'll have 75 archers in a battalion in example, but you'll only have 45 mounted cavaliers. Reinforcement is also an option so you can have several armies defending a city and these will all engage any careless attacker. Well, let me just say that it will be a pleasure to engage the city gates with your hand made siege units and as the world advances and more intricate war machines are developed you'll have your chance of mocking any enemy not up to date with technology.
So everything goes smoothly, keep in mind that infantry is most vulnerable to archery attacks (especially if your archers happened to have the ability of shooting fire arrows) and if you hit them in the flanks with your mounted knight than victory is bound to be yours. Archers are the most vulnerable units (except for the later researched mounted archers) and will easily fall under either infantry or cavalry attacks so be sure to keep an infantry battalion around to defend them. The cavalry is easily hit by archers and may loose to a well positioned infantry battalion, though they do have the greatest ace up their sleeves - their movement speed. Do be careful when attacking with archers as they will inflict friendly damage if the target is also engaged in melee combat.
The fate of a battle also relies on the experience of the commander in charge and killing the enemy leader (or Heavens forbid loose your own) has a huge impact on the troops' morale. Once the battle is won and the enemy acknowledges his defeat you have the option of hunting down as many of the remaining units as you wish or just let them flee which in turns will earn you a good number of captives that you can release, execute or ask for ransom in exchange for their freedom. All your actions can get your characters different retinues. A commander that liberated some captives will get a boost of piety while executing them will add to his dread. No matter, as his authority increases either way. However, if your agents fail at their tasks it will be their end so once a spy is caught he will be executed immediately and the relations with that faction will degrade. The only thing I can really complain about was not being able to lead any naval battles myself and unfortunately lost a great amount of vessels to pirates and enemy forces. What if I could have done it better than the computer? I guess I'll have to take his word on doing the best he could.
Do not take foreign relations easily 'cause getting along with neighbors is essential in case you wish to get a good deal out of them. Besides, if you're both catholic nations than the relations with the Papal State may deteriorate if you inflict too much damage or attack too many cities. Such actions can even get you excommunicated, not just get a chill in the relations panel. Also mind that time passes by even if you notice it or not (there is no date indicator anywhere unfortunately) and kings grow old and eventually die, Popes die, new discoveries mess your perfect world up and there's always a very good chance that things are a lot different now than five turns ago. The bottom line is that Medieval II: Total War managed to get the best out of the two strategy genres and raised the stakes for such games a little bit higher.
Video After seven years in production it was only obvious that the game engine would come a long way from its predecessor. It all looks very polished and friendly. Everything is amazing in terms of visuals. The world map is nicely detailed and everything in the game comes with explicit information. Every building or unit has its own file in the Total War encyclopedia (there isn't such a thing, but it could sure be). Although every turn has an exact length of two years, seasons will change and you will be able to admire not just the green forests on the map but also snow covered hills. If your general is skillful enough you'll also be happy to know that you can take your chances on a night attack.
On the battlefield the visuals keep the stakes just as high. The weather can even change in a matter of hours and clouds will travel the blue skies. Units are highly detailed as well as buildings are. Each time a crucial event takes place you'll be noted and most of the times you'll also be able to view a short movie on that subject. On the battlefield however there are only four major events: kill the enemy general, get your own general killed, loose or win the battle. The videos for the world map are more interesting and numerous however. I particularly enjoyed the spies' movies as they sneak into trouble. Assassin missions videos also proved of good value.
Sound Composer Jeff van Dyck did his job marvelously again. After getting a BAFTA (British Academy Award) in 2001 for the Japanese themed soundtrack of Shogun: Total War he's collaboration with Creative Assembly studios proved to be an undoubtedly success. Once again Jeff enchants the ears of Total War fans with custom made instrumental soundtracks for each of the factions in the game. There is music in the background for you when taking care of your ever growing empire, battle music, winning / loosing music and of course specific sounds for all the events in your people's lives. A high court marriage goes hand in hand with fatuous wedding bells while the funeral ceremonies of the ruling family members need a mourning theme.
Aside from music, voice acting plays a significant role (especially if you set your advisors to "Tell me everything"). While your informant's tone is not of the most engaging sort, you'll be very pleased with an eloquent briefing - a very serious one if I may add. Personally I enjoyed much more other leader's voice acting on trying to get a deal done. It's definitely a good addition to the overall great gaming atmosphere.
Multiplayer Seventeen factions weren't enough for you? Well, in multiplayer you can make your choice out of 21 (yeap, you read it right - twenty-one) factions, including the newly discovered American civilization of the great Aztec Empire, the Mongols representing the Golden Horde, the Papal States and the Timurids. Rebels will still act against everybody so you'll be able to get some provinces without starting a global war.
Up to 8 players can engage on the custom battles over the internet. Two modes are available: Last Man Standing and Castle Siege. The Last Man Standing is the very familiar mode of deathmatch or team deathmatch, while in Castle Siege is all about laying siege on the opponent's settlement. A good value PvP, still the single player Campaign offered a more natural gaming experience (meaning it offered me what I was hoping for and even some extra).
Conclusion No matter if you are a TBS or RTS fan, this game will be your new favorite title. Even if you enjoy RPGs you may be attracted to it as there are tons of characters to turn them into national heroes, unfortunately as you tend to get closer to your goals they tend to? well, die - usually of old age and less in combat 'cause a strategist that dies in battle can't really be called a strategist. In a few words Creative Assembly did once again a great job in carrying on the legacy of the Total War series and SEGA can proudly distribute another addictive title to strategy fans all over the world. I wonder when the first expansion is due and what amazing campaigns will it bring. Oh, I'll just head back to my new world order until then.
