His reviews use a star rating system, 1 to 5 stars, and he uses the whole scale.
Great review and dead on. Creative Assembly has a stillborn game here. I doubt that it can be revived, there are too many fundamental flaws. A minor tragedy.
I've never read a review at this site prior to this one. I don't normally hang out at Metacritic, but like many players, my dander was up shortly after starting to play what was crowned by the gaming press as a second coming. Nine best something awards that were clearly not earned. I was merely happy to see that this writer articulated what I was feeling about the substandard product that is Rome II. If there is an assault on the landed elites, then it is because they have ignored their constituents. They have taken them for granted. They have asked for their currency while giving them snake oil. There are countless examples of how this sorta of thing goes over in the gaming world, what made CA think they could get away with it?
Are you talking about Civ 5 or Shogun 2 there? I really can't tell.
I can promise you that 100-level courses in the Humanities at Mizzou frequently have a median of 50. You hit an 80, you're at the head of the class. J-school. They're not fooling around.
Clever.
Shogun 2 ofc...
(CIV=Civilization IV ; CiV=Civilization V)
Haha yes didn't saw it that way.If that was his intent really clever,but somehow I doubt it.
Too bad, the original was brilliant at the time and it's the historical period I'm most interested in out of all the Total War games.
20%? What a joke. The game has some issues but then again so did Empire and Shogun2 at release. In fact I had more issues with shogun2 at launch than I have with Rome II
The AI is not very good, that is the only big complaint I can agree with. It is running well for me and fun as hell. Sure the interface,etc.. is different but that doesn't mean its bad, you just have to learn it as with alot of games. The game will only get better with updates to (remember how many empire and shogun2 had?).
People seem to have a bad memory these days, shogun2 and especially empire got TRASHED on the TW and steam forums when they both first came out. Then after 4-5 months of patches the same people hailing they are two of there favorites now. This is not the only TW game that has had some issues on launch, in fact most of the TW games have had issues on launch.
Not surprised by the score though, it will bring in views and many more views, as is the case when you give the lowest scores for alot of games on metacritic.
Besides long turns in copo and AI that needs some work, the game is brilliant imo. I honestly cant remember the last TW game that had good AI on release? All of them have had to have a good amount of patches. Seems like alot of people are new to the TW series or something. For me this is up there with my favorite games in the series since Rome, Medieval II and Shogun2.
Then again we all have our own opinions, I just don't agree with yours this time. I would say about 60% of the time I agree with the reviews here but some of them are so far from my opinion it cracks me up how I can agree so much on some games but so extremely different on others.
so what you would say then is that it's like playing a beta, and after they get around to fixing the AI it might be good, but it should never have been released in this state? funny, that sounds kind of familiar...
If you're upset, be upset at CA that rushed the release out in this condition instead of waiting the 4-5 months that it clearly took on their previous games to make the AI/performance not terrible. The game in its current state is disappointingly bad. Maybe he could add a line in the review noting that previous games have also been bad at release and became good, but it's unreasonable to expect the review to be of the game it might be sometime in 2014 instead of what it is today. Yes, it sucks that this score is going to be what sticks with the game because games don't tend to get re-reviewed after all the patches are finally done, but again... your beef is with CA for putting all of the reviewers in this position.
Nope, the game is already great but needs some patching. As does any other game with such complexity.
Compare that to a very polished, yet poor game that would never be good no matter how much the company supports.
...I was right there with you until the moronic comment about Civilization 5.
There are roughly 4 categories of people who have the nerve to defend this sorry excuse of a Total War series game:
1. CA's fanboys.
2. CA and SEGA community managers and their cohorts of "useful idiots" (see fanboys)
3. Casual gamers who actually look forward to this - now dumbed-down - series being ported to consoles
4. Hopeless romantics who desperately cling to the hope that somehow CA will wave a magic wand that transforms this turd into a gold nugget. Or that hope this release has been an elaborate sociology experiment on how to alienate a loyal fan base, and the real game has yet to be announced.
Beside all the technical issues, or even the very broken AI (both will be fixed eventually), the very core of the game has been changed. SEGA plans to port the series to PS4 and XBox One, therefore the whole thing had to be dumbed down considerably. One can only hope that this move will turn out to be a financial disaster of such a magnitude that will force SEGA to sell/ let go CA. Only way to "save" the franchise, IMO.
BI Studios had the guts to tell Codemasters where to stuff it, and the relative success of the Arma series compared to what Codemansters did with the franchise proved them right. Learn from that, Creative Assemby.
So you think the core of having Victory points in the middle of open fields that remove any tactical chose you have of winning a battle facing a overwhelming enemy, is great.
The core of having magic abilities that make your horses immortal, being able to charge into spearmen without dying is great.
The core of the senate and its political aspect is almost non existent and even WORSE than in Rome 1
The core of having magical boats appear when moving your units into the sea, that are strong enough to crush Real boats that you have invested time and money in building.
The core of being able to torch metal doors during a sieg without any sieg weapons.
Yes indeed, you cant argue about the fact that the core of this game is brilliant. It really brings out the tactical prowess of the gamers
game sucks what can you do... if you start spartan campaign and stay allied with athens (well they ARE your staunch allies) then you can only trade with athens for the rest of the game cos your town size is locked at 3 even if you own half the map LOL (tip take athens)
NO PORT FOR YOU
I've been waiting for this review :)
I'm going to be honest, I haven't even read it yet. I'm brewing up a nice cup of tea right now so I can sit down and enjoy. Having sunk 20 hours or so into this game already, I already know what's coming. Hopefully it's a flaying!
Typo:
"Were the beta testers were [sic] using the same file name"
It's not irresponsible to call a bad game bad. The implication that reviewers should take a developer's future business into account is nuts. If Rome 2 doesn't work out for Creative Assembly, that's on Creative Assembly.
Epic's "change" wasn't sudden. Epic made a bundle selling UE2.x to companies for console games and decided to go all-in on that with UE3. On the PC side you had a rapidly shrinking group of neckbeards that weren't buying as many games as other groups.