14 DAY TRIAL // 
This is the year of downloadable extras for bestseller games, no question about it. It looks like the fashion started by Valve's Steam distribution service has reached new heights after the recent Oblivion pony-textures (called armor, in the Bethesdian taxonomy).
To the astonishment of some, the latest Creative Assembly release swims in the same "downloadable-extras" soup. God knows what sneaky mind came up with the idea, and I guess it will be better if we never know. Anyway, whereas the Steam service has a friendly interface and allows unlimited downloads and CD/DVD back-ups (I guess everyone is familiar with the system), to have a back-up for Alexander one will need to search deeper in his pockets for a couple more fees.
Besides the "basic" RTW: Alexander download, the distribution system will allow him to choose for one or both of the two seemingly useful rip-offs: a CD or a digital back up option. Maybe someone is looking to revive the "[dot] com" fashion of the past as the whole layout feels like nothing else but that.
Concept In terms of new, the expansion is a collection of "all new" additions only in those areas that matter least: a new campaign, new unit models and several new historical battles. Instead, a thing of vital importance, the original RTW game engine, hasn't been adapted to fit into what this historical setting requires.
Actually, many of the RTW game-elements should have been redesigned not only to fit the player needs to adopt appropriate strategies adequate to the armies of the 4th century BC.
First of all, the backbone of the army isn't composed of the exploitable Horse Archer or the Heavy Cavalry detachments anymore, but of infantry armed with spears in most cases (like the Macedonian phalanx, the hypaspists or the lighter peltasts and the psiloi). The Macedonian Cavalry (including the elite Companions, Alexander's personal guards) is far too weak to smash hundreds of infantrymen and other cavalry alike in reckless charges. Their valuable asset is their speed and good charge bonuses (opposed to the slow moving phalanx formations that were also used by the Persians) which - if properly used from the rear of your opponent - will wreak havoc in your enemy lines.
However, if maneuvering cumbersome and stubborn Total War detachments on the battlefield was a fashion a couple of years ago, this recipe would pretty much fail "on all fronts" now. Considering the Epaminondas tactic that helps him crush the Spartans at Leuctra, I have realized that Creative Assembly forgot to improve on their games mechanics.
The Theban tactic I am referring to consists in fighting only with your strongest flank, refusing confrontation with your weaker one, until your foe exposes enough his flanks in its attempt to close in and fully engage. In short, while your strong wing advances, your weak one retreats. In practice, one could throw his cavalry through the newly created gap. In Alexander, as in all other Rome Total War games, such things are impossible, because as soon as one unit is caught in the heat, the whole regiment gets stuck there rendering impossible any delicate maneuvering of this kind.
Last, but not least, the Macedonians of Total War lack ranged support for their troops. Recruiting quality missile troops like Archers (as skirmishers for some unknown reason are more useless than back in the day) becomes a viable option only late in the game, when their usefulness is rendered null by the long distances they have to cover to rally with your core force.
Why so? At the "strategic/logistic/administrative" level, the game blatantly preserves the core design. However, whereas in Rome you began with either a strong force and a consistent economical back-up thanks to a strong network of cities, or with both a hand of villages and a small task force, in Alexander, your army - otherwise, worthy of an emperor - requires an upkeep that your three small villages simply can't cope with. You won't have any difficulties grasping the whole picture: by the end of the third turn, you will come to a complete halt in your quest for Achilles' glory, as your treasury will flash its emptiness like a freshly gutted chicken.
For things to get even worse, with your seat of power being so remote in the West, you'll have to raze to the ground most - if not all - of your conquered settlements in order to prevent mass civil unrest (and replenish your dried chests). That Alexander only fought a hand of battles - let alone raid anything but some exceptions with political perfume like Thebes, Halicarnassus, Milet or Mylasa - and had most of the cities in his path surrender peacefully is no secret for any of you. What is a secret is that, without the diplomats (!?), things like these will have to be dealt with the old fashioned way: rape and pillage in the old whatever worst-case TW Invasion scenario.
Gameplay If there is a gameplay value in this hunk Oliverstonian-inspired junk, is the utter lack of historical adaptation, as if not even when hell freezes over would players with such passions (as in history interests) play anything for the Total War franchise. Maybe historical accuracy would ruin the delicate balance of a game's elements. Jolly bad show, I can't believe it would have further and wider get worse than this pile of mumbo-jumbo.
As the motion picture taught us, mixing two major names: Creative Assembly with Alexander (as with Oliver Stone with the latter) isn't necessarily a guarantee for success. Actually, it doesn't make you a rocket scientist realizing that with the whole development of Medieval 2, there was a great chance this expansion developed itself while someone tried without success to sober up after a night in some "rock me Mr. football player" disco-club. How bally tiresome can one get?
The whole game experience is like marching in the mists of good wine towards the end of a God-forsaken road, the end of the map in this case, when suddenly, you pass out, the game finishes. You won. Cough, I mean: lost a couple of buck loser! March, burn, march, burn. Well, at least it is interesting, if not headache free, that razing everything in sight is worth more gold than enslaving, whereas the "proficient" customs of the time were the latter.
And be the time Alexander will be on his cozy bed ready to meet his ancestors, you will realize that well, you never used the Macedonian army to begin with, only a bunch of rugged Greek and Persian mercenaries, dudes you aren't allowed to play with if you're such appetites arise.
Two things don't cope with this hoax ex-pension. One is made up from a hand of Historical Battles. Themselves with their own flaws, they are organized in a soothly told by Brian Blessed six mini-series about Alexander's Campaign against the Thebes and Persians. Clearly conceived with veteran players in mind, these will keep you burnin' for a hefty amount of time to figure them out like back in the day with the Historical Campaigns of Medieval Total War.
Multiplayer The other thing isn't exactly another thing, but these six missions rebalanced to meet the requirements of PvP play one at a time, or five of them rounded up in a tournament, with the winning chaps being announced at the end.
As well as this one, one of the four in-game factions may be placed under your command in any of the available custom games (which in truth, there are only two, the Persians and the Macedonians as the other two are lazy copies after different units of the aforementioned, generically called Indians and Barbarians). Therefore, allow me to rephrase my last assertion: you may also play either of the sides in the historical battles through the usual series of PvP custom battles.
Video/Sounds To be honest, aside from the narrator's voice, the only thing that kept me going were the other changes: some new skins for units, most of them variations of the original game. And that is all.
Conclusion In this sense, this Total War game engine is dead and buried thanks to the developers or their marketing dept. that have chosen to give it the final blow and leave us with either of the better two (Barbarian invasion or Rome Total Realism Mod?) and to try and save it as it gives its last breath before the mighty Medieval sequel.
And what do we learn from this? Never try to use old game engines for new applications especially after they made it to the hall of fame and were deposed by their communities, but improve on them to cope better with their original purpose. Or better - leave them as they were, to prevent the revival of their memory and mirror it to the game titles of today. Before Alexander, I was convinced RTW was an exceptional game, now I am left only with the opinion that it was just an exceptional idea... for a game that waits yet to be developed.
