Problem is that yes, they do have a small advantage compared to 1 state starting position of numerous others, however the AI is not able to capitalize on this, resulting in dead Rome, dead most other powerhouses early on as they get picked apart. This may be fun to watch, but eventually you’ll wonder, how would it be to fight against a major Rome that does what its historically ment to do, instead of finding a limited civ like Libya there instead.
It’s a huge letdown on my part…however this could have been solved with a simple Option 'More powerful Rome? Yes/no"
I think realistically Rome would have come to be despite even worse odds, they did defeat the Greek and their location is prime for becoming a powerhouse.
Go to the 14 minute mark. That’s a big chunk of the missing political system there. Later on during the battle of the Nile they play with Loose formation which CA claimed (at release) was never slated for the game.
What happened? I don’t know if they ran out of time and gutted the game for release, or if this was the Tim Heaton curse of “cut features I don’t think will guarantee us a 90% metacritic score”. Normally I’d think it was gutting features due to lack of time for release, but the surprise they had that people wanted the family tree of the original game shows a vast disconnect with their playerbase. Not seen such lopsided poll results in a long time: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/82802-Poll-For-Family-Tree-to-be-added-to-the-game?highlight=family+tree
I think the user review score on metacritic is more realistic of how the game actually is. A reskinned Shogun 2 would have been 10x better :P I don’t think that with all the patching in the world Rome 2 will ever achieve what it should have been. Modders are really the only hope.
I have high hopes for Patch 7. But sadly as of right now, modders are the best hope for the gameplay side of this title until CA announces a dedicated effort to revamp politics and add functions everyone wants. I don’t even care if we have to pay for it at this point… I just want to see this game hit the potential it had.
Thanks for that post jpinard. I love the irony of a developer providing insights into their product to get people excited by the game, but then getting bit in the ass when they remove it and get called out later on. And thank you Youtube!
Recent games like Rome 2 show i think the limitations of complexity in the entertainment world; it’s just too much, too complex, too requiring of actual sophisticated design rather than simply throwing more boots in the dev studio to make all the bits and pieces that they wanted to make and aspired to make in extremely large, complex games actually work. There are probably parallels in the business and government worlds but those spheres have all but unlimited cash and the best talent pool to choose from.
A reason iOS and board games are having a resurgence is partly this unfulfilled desire for sophisticated complexity that paradoxically can only be created in small scale, precise, low budget affairs with tight and limited design.
Good point. And yet another reason a good strategy game does not need cutting edge graphics.
When I play the TW games, the awesome battle graphics are lost on me because I’m usually too busy fighting the battle to watch heads getting lopped off. And with the accelerated battles in most of the recent games means combat is even more frantic (and my ability enjoy the eye candy is very limited.
My question would be “Is this worth buying right now if it hits 50% off on one of the holiday sales?”. From this thread and many many others on the internet, it sounds an awful lot like Rome 2 may be the biggest disappointment in the Total War series since Empire was released. Is the game as it stands today, patches and all, enjoyable for fans of the series, or will I just be frustrated the entire time? I’m not going to drop $25 on this if I can wait another 6-12 months for a “GOTY” or “Gold” edition that containes expansions and patches that make the game the experience it was supposed to be at launch.
I feel the same way. The only way to properly conduct a battle is zoomed out where you might as well be commanding dust mites. I’d love for them to go more abstract in their tactical battle design. The tactical battles and sieges have become a boring business of fast-shuffling fleas around mazes and under tree canopies that take 45 minutes, now longer with boats and shit. They need to decide, are they a strategic or a tactical game, and design accordingly. Right now the game is a behemoth of mass tedium. I honestly feel they’ve lost sight of what makes these games fun and playable. Maybe the the rush of conquering the world shouldn’t take 50 hours per campaign and 15 minutes to load the title screen.
Rome 2 did seem like a schizophrenic collision between design philosophies; a tight, curated and narrated small scale campaign, and a massive, world spanning, generic universal campaign, which you can clearly see between the tutorial and the full campaign. And while the tutorial campaign feels (mostly) finished, the generic full campaign is obviously undercooked and overspecked. They simply aimed too high and ran out of time to balance and polish all the spinning plates in the full campaign, and just did enough to keep the plates spinning and shoved it out the door. Doubtless being part of a flagging SEGA did not help things, but they were obviously unfocused and badly led from above, as you can see by the seemingly innumerable historic Youtube videos they made that have lots to do with history but nothing to do with the game.
I’ll support it if they make massive strides on the campaign, battle AI and continue to optimize performance. Otherwise I am really unhappy they’re diverting resources this soon to a sideline as the AI is still super dumb.
This is what I was hoping for (it’s still weird it’s standalone, though). My main problems with the game where about the absurd scope. It felt repetitive 5-10 hours in, and hopefully that would be the target length of the expansion.
