| Title | Total War developer Creative Assembly fiddles while Rome II loads |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Game reviews |
| When | September 6, 2013 |
I hate how glib this sounds, but there's really no other way to put it: playing Rome II feels like playing a beta. It's as if someone sent me an early build, but forgot the caveat sheet.Okay, this is a work in progress, so you're going to see some bugs..
Read the full articleI thought you didn't do ratings?
Thank you for reviewing this game after release in a critical fashion. I don't know what all the pre-release critics were praising, but it wasn't the game I downloaded. I think you are spot on in every point you've made. To answer your question about whether CA would think we'd notice, I think they thought YOU (and me and long time lovers of TW) would be drowned out by the millions of new fans that would throw their money at the game based on the slick advertising campaign. That's the only campaign in this disaster were the AI wasn't bad; just evil, and their name is EA. Welcome CA, to the dustbin, Maxis and Bioware will be happy to show you around.
...since when?
We know one thing. In a month or two it will be a great game! :P
Were the load times really that bad? I found the turn times really long, at least after the first few, but the load times were the one thing I found really improved from Shogun 2.
I must be confused. I could have sworn there was some issue about this site not doing ratings. Maybe it was because it wasn't the traditional 1-100 system.
I hate to be another one of those guys, because I don't want to be one to encourage negativity, but thank you, Tom. The fact that most reviewers were only willing to damn such a mess of a game with faint praise has been really frustrating.
The game is completely and totally broken. It puts on a brave face, so if you're new to Total War games, strategy games, or just games, it plays pretty for baby. Most people take it all in good faith and assume that the depth is there if they just start digging. Well, I've put in thirty hours of digging and the depth is nowhere to be found. Creative Assembly obviously had some cool design ideas about limited resources with the agents, provinces, and armies, but it's all lost in an empty game that scrambles at every turn to assure you that nothing's of any real consequence. Don't worry, those stats don't matter. They all give similar bonuses and your general will soon be dead of old age anyway. Don't worry, that defeat doesn't matter. You can resurrect the army with all its upgrades intact back home. Don't worry, the diplomatic AI doesn't matter. You have no real control over what it thinks, it's just there to be conquered. It's impossible to make a mistake in this game because nothing really matters.
The list goes on and on. Things like Gravitas, Influence, and Ambition, which should be at the core of the design, make zero sense in execution. I started out with 93% influence in Macedon. Now I have 43%, which worried me for a while, but I couldn't really do anything to change it, no matter how many promotions, adoptions, or bribes I performed, so I ignored it for the past fifty turns and am better for it. Nothing connects and you don't know why because the game won't tell you. I don't think it even knows itself. In those respects, Europa Universalis IV blows this out of the water. The only things that Paradox's latest might be said to lack are Total War's increasingly frantic and floaty tactical battles, which should shame CA to no end. But no worries, they're already hard at work on DLC packs for the Seleucids and the steppe nomads. That's what the game's missing, more factions.
Tom tells it like it is. Absolutely fearless - got to love him for that.
Thanks for being honest.
The issue comes from Publishers who like to punish Tom for it, because it hurts their precious shiny Metacritic scores.
On this one, I was worried exactly about the very thing Tom blasted this game for, so I'm glad I made the right decision for once.
Not this time. The core is broken they ripped the heart out of TW there is no fixing this soulless game.
sigh, thats really too bad. I had my hopes up for Rome 2, but glad i did some research before forking over $60.
it's been a while since i played Shogun 2. maybe i should check it out again. there are still factions in that game i never played.
Great review. Such a shame to see the franchise drop the ball again after the stellar Shogun 2.
I knew you didn't like Civ5, but I didn't realize you hated it so much. I guess a 1up 'C' is a Qt3 1 star.
Where’d that guy go who I had four turns ago? Did he die? Defect? Was
he adopted by a loving family who’s given him a good home? What is
this adoption system? Are all these characters orphans? Wait, was it
his gravitas rating? I knew I should have figured that out! Is a 10
not good enough? Should it have been 20? Ah, well. I’m pretty sure he
had two extra points of cunning, which never really mattered anyway,
and now I’ve got a dude whose cunning is back to three. At least this
new guy is ambitious. I think. It’s a higher number than my other
general. Oh, wait, that guy went missing, too. Wait, is a high
ambition bad?
learn to play before you review a game you egotistical trashbag :P
That's one terrible review you have there. I played every single Total War and Paradox game for a combined thousands of hours and EU4 is the lowest point in its series while Rome 2 is quite easily at the top two, if not the best. You don't really know what you're talking about, Total War games never had a robust character system anywhere close to Crusader Kings. Whole family tree was just a collection of characters that were merely linked together on one screen, meant nothing.
Civ5 is hilariously bad, worst in its franchise with expansions or not and you mention that? Oh and let us remember: You're comparing pure TBS games with a TBS/RTS hybrid as if the hybrid needs to be better without a doubt. Why would anyone buy a Paradox or Firaxis game then? Rather logical expectations there.
Shogun 2's stately elegance? Really? It's not even a quarter of Rome 2, you have the exact same units with merely this and that clan's name and a small stat buff. What's mind-boggling is that much of the gameplay is precisely brought on from Shogun 2. So you essentially give a 20/100 to what you claim a beta. Yes, the game needs some patching, fair enough. But what's up with this review and score? You practically shoot it down with blown out expectations, ignoring parallel gameplay from a favorite of yours and overstating bugs that aren't even there for quite a many people. Heck, even a beta wouldn't warrant such a score.
Oh and, you can also finish up Game of Thrones books while waiting for Civ4 & Civ5 turns.
I get the impression that each expansion has made Tom dislike Civ V more.
Tom, would you mind elaborating on this statement a bit: " A single player game with disappointing multiplayer compared to the clever multiplayer in their last release?"
What did they change?
If Tom doesn't mind me answering for him, Shogun 2 had your own individual general and units gain experience and abilities as you fought your way across an abstracted map of Japan. By the time you'd put ten hours into the Avatar Conquest mode, you had a general that specialized in one type of combat, but that was able to be tweaked in a few different ways to surprise whomever you fought, with different units having been given different specialties by you. It was a bit overwhelming at times, but still an ambitious and fun RPG twist.
Rome II is just the one-off point-buy system you're probably used to already, no different than the singleplayer custom battle mode, but with a human instead of an AI. My assumption is that it was just too difficult to add the faction decision layer to the existing Avatar Conquest mode, especially with the short cycle they seem to have been on, but it still represents a huge step back for the series.
