If it makes you feel better, it's a 6 out of 30. Myself, I like rating scales in the millions, and I think Tom's 400,000 for Rome II is fair, if a bit unforgiving.
of course an ai who couldn't even charge is a brilliant ai... ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... )
and a game in which turns took 4 minutes (turn off following ai turns makes it 2-3 mins) is a good game
an ai which attacks with armies composed of 1 general and 1 slingers all the time... yeah best dude!
if you would have "played every single total war game" you would have played shogun 1 and medieval 1, in which at the hardest difficulty, they hand you your own butt in a plate in battles, unlike this rome 2 ai which totally eats every cavalry bait you send to them and splits his army to pieces by running after them...
enjoy your 4 min battles
Great write-up and review I know I can always count on you with honesty and it's clear your agreement with metacritic user scores and not those lies the paid for reviewers posted.
Completely agree with you on this one, quarter to three.
Agree with this review, and I'm glad someone had the balls to say it.
But don't compare Civ V to Rome II. That's highly unfair to Civ V, which was at least playable at launch and introduced changes that were ultimately beneficial to the series (i.e. 1upt, hexagonal tiles, unique abilities, etc.) and has morphed into a rock solid title through expansions.
My college physics class was set up so the means on exams were around 40.
I think it is a very well written critique and Tom is right about many if not all of the points he makes. But, I think that his writing skills are all that protect what seems to be an assault on the landed elite of the gaming world or simply crafting the dissenting opinion for games much loved by the critics. I love his reviews, but I take them all with a grain of salt or a bag in some cases, especially coming from someone who would have me think that pinball games are some of the best in the business.
AI is bugged, it should and most probably will be fixed. No real reason why they wouldn't bring it up to far with previous games in time.
Yeah I played Shogun1 & MTW1 lots with their "I'll simul-bomb you with doomstacks from three different neighbouring regions" AI and design, I still destroyed Mongol Horde tens of thousands doomstack in a single turn. This game has better design overall across the board, just needs polish which should be delivered in time.
Only a shooter fan who buys games at launch week and sells them on E-bay after a week would complain about such a game to the point of giving it 20/100.
How low must a person's expectations be that this colorless, badly programmed drudgery exceeded them. Nothing about this title is good. Maybe it is good compared to an amateur making a game with Adventure Game Studio, but it is definitely not good in comparison to even their last title, let alone the much beloved TW:Rome. We don't compare Olympians with how well they compete with the kids at fat camp. This game is well below not only of modest expectations for a title of its supposed quality, but of what was advertised by the developers. The latter point is why the negative reviews have been so harsh. It's probably a 5/10 in real terms, but pre-alpha product sold with phony demos has caused a justified backlash.
I can sympathize with that, I had battles like that as well but there's no way they'll leave it like this. They told they it'll be getting patches weekly, which CA never did before no matter how bugged their games were. I waited for a patch for 6 months at a time for Empire and MTW2. Anybody recall Empire AI line infantry who shot just once and then charged in to their doom? Why didn't anyone give that a 20/100? It was a pathetic game in which whole France was just ONE region. And I still hear some people saying it was the best TW game, how come?
There's an incredible scope and immense attention to detail in Rome 2, even RTW1 which I hail as the best RTS of last 15 years was quite silly with its 'the Mummy' Egyptians, three Roman factions and stuff like that.
There's a decent game here that needs to be given some time, bombing with 0/10 doesn't achieve anything here. It's not like Diablo 3 and Sim City 2012 that couldn't even be played.
The idea that a developer like CA is going to abandon the genre they do very well in because of one bad review showing up on Metacritic is absurd.
Oh see that I actually disagree with. The core of the game is fantastic and I love it =) But hey different opinions!
Collective Metacritic bombing supported by such 'critic' reviews could very well hurt a company financially enough to make them explore alternative genres with much less work, hassle and as much revenue. CA is already on that way, makes much more sense from a Koticky business standpoint.
Epic used to be a PC exclusive company that made the best shooters and they suddenly dropped all that, whole speedy online shooter genre disappeared from the platform overnight, something that nobody would believe if told in 2005. And nobody picked it up. Now imagine Total War series gone away and nobody even trying to emulate it.
Yeah, it can happen.
And you have the Roman legion automatically throwing pilla into the backs of your own men while charging like a pack of wild men into the enemy, or maybe they're just trying to escape their masters at CA
The initial reviews for this game hinted there might be a few flaws, 5 days in the reviewers are becoming more brave it seems now that they know the fan base is totally upset!
It's called disillusioned
Math and physics are the exception then. In the vast majority of high school and college liberal arts courses, this is not at all the case.
Side note: a civil war finally erupted in my Macedon game.
Well, that's not strictly true. Before and after the revolt, my influence was still at 43%, with no change in the gravitas or ambition of any general, whether part of my family or not. In fact, none of my generals actually took part in the revolt, so it's not quite fair to call it a civil war. It's more that the game just decided that 164 BC was time for a civil war, so eight full-stack armies and four full-stack navies materialized out of thin air on top of my capital city. My loyal armies (that is, all my armies) have set up ambushes on all the outgoing roads, so I don't foresee much of a fight. Still, I'm glad to know just how much the game respects my time and input.
N-n-n-not a shooter fan!!??
zoinks!!!
Yep, this is the Civ V of the total war series. But nobody's defending it, because it's so half-baked on even a visual level. At least Civ V appeared to be polished, even if the game mechanics were ultimately broken.