Rome 2, Totally worth it?

I have meant to write this article for quite a while. This game was released on the 3 of september 2013, almost two months ago. I had pre-ordered it almost a month earlier in my excitement. Let me just explain to you, I LOVED the Total War series. Beginning with Medieval, all the way to Empire, I had been a fan of this series. It just epitomised everything that a strategy game was supposed to be. Complex enough to keep me playing for hours, yet simple enough to pick it up and understand everything within 5 minutes. These games were exactly what I thought the perfect strategy game should be. All in all, for those 4 games I must have poured roughly 800 hours into this game over 6 years. In fact with the original Rome Total War I managed to conquer the entire map with three different factions. It was pretty much the only game I played in my school days. Before we get to the actual review of the game, let me just recap what this game is about. Basically you are dropped in ancient Europe and take control of one of the multitude of factions that were around at that time. You can use diplomacy, economy or outright warfare to dominate your neighbours and ultimately the entire world. On your way to world domination you will be faced with several objectives, choices and epic battles. However what makes the total war series unique is the mix between turn based strategy on the campaign map (you can see the entirety of Europe) and the real time strategy on the local battlefield. This gives you the ability to playing the emperor, controlling large swathes of the ancient world, as well as the general who has to motivate is tired and rain drenched soldiers. Now let us return from the ancient ages and fast forward to the 3rd of september of this year. After following the dev blog for several months, reading every piece of news I could get my hands on, the day had come. After having pre-loaded the game onto my computer, I was stoked and excited. I was ready to play. I fired up the game and got right into the tutorial. My first impression was that, while everything seemed quite similar to my old experiences there were still many quite significant new additions. Quickly my excitement turned to horror as I realised how much they had changed from my beloved sequel. Gone were the family trees that let you see all your faction characters, gone was the option of micromanaging a town, gone was the ability to friggin pause your battle with the space bar (trust me, for me that was the absolute worst. I cannot tell you the amount of times I have hit the space bar expecting to stop time and reorder my troops, and just see them obliviously marching to their doom). In fact, a lot had gone that I had loved about the Total war series. Instead, on my first impression, I saw a game that was trying to be what I enjoyed but couldn’t decide between being to difficult or to easy, too bloated or thin on material. In fact, after I had completed the tutorial and played some token rounds of the normal campaign. I stopped and didn’t play the game again for a month. This was the ultimate disappointment for me. One of the cons that stick with me from those first impressions was the ridiculous amount of factions. This made starting out a diplomatic minefield (oh how I missed being surrounded by rebels which I could attack without any moral qualms), it also made the end of turn wait almost unbearable further into the game. If you turned on the option to see the AI moves, then you would literally wait ten minutes and just see horses moving back and forth. By the time your move came back again, you had forgotten everything you wanted to do. Another were several actions that creators of the game seemed to expect you would take for granted. I mean I couldn’t for my life understand why I couldn’t garrison my town. It took me several frustrated turns to figure out that the buildings in that town provided it with soldiers. My biggest complaint though is the slowness of the game. I remember being able to take of large swathes of Europe on the easy setting within the first couple moves in the first Rome. However here even in Rome 2, it takes me 10 moves to take over italy alone. It just makes everything seem to drag along. Therefore my lack of incentive to pick this game up again. However my guilty conscious would not let me go. I loved this series, I payed money for this game. I was going to give it another chance. Another chance I did give it. And on second viewing I did find some positives. Without my over hyped expectations I could appreciate things that my bitter eyes had overseen in my first sitting. The update in graphics is absolutely great and some of the additions are not that bad! I mean the naval battles recapture some of that epicness I felt when I first played the Total war games. Also the new battle mechanics make the battles so much more immersive and realistic! In fact the second session was significantly longer than the first failed one, and there will be many more. All in all I think this game is quite an achievement, apart from some cons which are being cleaned up in each successive update, and was worth the £30 pounds I spent. However I guess I made the mistake of playing it like it was the first Rome, which it wasn’t. It is its own game, and cannot be seen as a twin (albeit higher graphics) than its predecessor. So if you are someone who is happy with their old Total war games, and sees absolutely no reason to change, in fact would abhor change, avoid this game. It will just disappoint you. However if you are looking for a new approach to this classic series, and don’t have too high expectations I would suggest go for it! Now I’m off to conquer the world with....hmm...I’m feeling the Iceni (brits) today!