Q for ONLY experienced TW players and long time TW fans

[Revan The Great]

Buy it. It's not that bad.

Everyone's just mad because they let their hopes get up and they listened to the CA apologists who said everything would be fine and dandy at release. As others have said, all you need is a little context for previous Total War games to know that this is kind of par for the course. I grant you, there are some terrible design decisions that no patch will ever fix, but I think 80-90% of the game will be great sooner or later.

[freeboy]

This is both a playable, albeit not perfect and very beautiful game...
Im a grog... and for the TYPE of game it is, fun beer and pretzels game its good and challenging and most of all FUN... I totally dissagree with the moaning going on.. my 2cents worth its a great value on sale.. if you can find a deal...

[beksibeksi]

ive played every tw game since rome 1 and yes this is the next big evolution of total war
the problem is in the polish
it will be the best tw game ever within 2-4 months

[evenflowjimbo]

I say buy it. It's pretty fun, albeit the bugs and lack of optimization. I'm putting all my eggs in one basket and hoping that CA will fix it. That, or Nvidia will release a driver that will support Rome 2 and fix my battle lag. Although, with the help of the community here, I was able to play relatively smoothly in battles.

[2gutter67]

I'm certainly not the longest time fan, but I picked up the series when Rome I came out and fell in love with it after I finally got it installed on my incredibly old eMachines with like Windows 98 or some such.

This game has flaws, I will absolutely not fight against that. The diplomacy AI is a little confusing and doesn't make decisions that really make the most sense all of the time. The battles are waaaay too fast. Then there are graphical glitches that I get all the time. It told me I could run the game on extreme using an outdated processor (i7 2600S) and graphics card (AMD Radeon HD 6570) for god's sake...

However, I've still had a fair amount of fun with the game. I've only played Carthage up to this point, so I can't speak to the experience of the entire game, but it's been good and bad. Bad in the sense that I've lost a lot while figuring out how to play. Good that now I've put in about 10 hours I understand how to play the game well. But then it's bad again because just like in all the other TW games, once you figure out how to finesse the game you're unstoppable even on the hardest difficulty.

I personally say buy it but not immediately. If you don't have it already debate it with yourself for a little bit longer, but buy it at some point. It's different, but it's not nearly as bad as some people are saying it is.

[NZV]

I wanted to love this game and tried to convince myself that it wasn't so bad, but as-is, even release day Empire and Civ5 were better. It isn't even that things are dumbed down - it just seems like everything was very poorly thought out and implemented. I haven't been able to summon the willpower to launch the game today because it's just so unbelievably boring. Really thinking about reinstalling Rome 1 or Medieval 2. Maybe Shogun 2 or FOTS if I can get some co-op going. Hey CA, just give me Stainless Steel with co-op + the newer unit replenishment mechanics and I'll never need another TW game again. You can make a Rome reskin too, if you want.

[mrmouth]

Wait till 1.05

So true. Given their one-patch-a-month average that they touted a couple of games back - 5 or 6 months and this game will be complete. And then the mod teams can start with an actual, complete base.

It's midly fun to explore the game and new features and I will fire it up between now and the 17th when GTA5 is released. After that it gets shelved for the holidays and I will revisit it in spring.

[Edocrab]

I'm so glad that I only payed $45 bucks for the game back in early summer due to an online deal at another site. Definitely not worth the full 60 bucks it is right now, but it's still enjoyable/playable for me at the LEAST. The long turns do get tiresome though...

[Doge Domenico]

You might wanna wait till at least December. It's empire tier right now.

[zbeck008]

Hilarious how everyone is so down on it! I literally giggled and hugged the box when it came....then threw it at the wall about six hours later! I second what everyone has said so far. I'd wait till next year when you won't pay an arm and a leg for a beta version...I feel like the joke is on me for buying this junk.

[PointOfViewGun]

must say Im so confused with this forum and reviews

Im passionate TW player, played all TW series in hundreds of hours, except Shogun 1 and 2 (couldnt really get it on Japanese history and culture, although played S2TW a decent time)

so I please ask for ONLY experienced players, IS R2TW worth buying? Im afraid I would get disappointed like with CIV series (second best after TW, also played all editions from CIV1 till CIV5), cause I have feeling that all those good strategy games are leaning to casual gamers, getting too childish and arcadey as series evolve

thank You so much in advance for answering my question and concern

I've played every single Total War game, from Shogun I to Shogun II. My laptop that I'm currently playing the game on high setting with no problem is a 3 year old Asus G53 with an i7 core and a 1.5 GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M graphics card. I've pre-ordered the collector's edition and it is certainly worthy buying it.

So far, I have a total of 8 hours in this game. Consider the fact that nobody have played this game enough to comment on AI exhaustively. Some features are out but a lot others that people haven't experienced or even understood is in there. It could make use of a more in-depth tutorial though people skim through that pretty quickly normally. Valandur is right, people who like the game are currently playing it. I'm certainly checking the Rome II section of the forum now for new threads because I've played it for a couple of hours already and preparing for bed.

Rome II certainly has the best graphics so far. Nobody can contest that. There is a lot of variety in battlefield which can look alien to the eye at first. We're more used having much better color defined soldiers but Rome II takes a more realistic way and presents a more accurate look of the battlefield.



To those claiming that this game had no beta; I'd prefer how they're doing it currently. Instead of delaying the release of date for testing a beta that is played by a couple of dozen or hundred people they have thousands of people playing the game and feeding the developers data to work at. CA tweeted recently that they've been getting lots of data to use for their patches. Steam shows 118,302 people playing Rome II as the peak number. This allows a much faster patching process. With Medieval II it took about 6 months before the game was made playable if I remember correctly.

[Smartbomb]

Hilarious how everyone is so down on it! I literally giggled and hugged the box when it came....then threw it at the wall about six hours later! I second what everyone has said so far. I'd wait till next year when you won't pay an arm and a leg for a beta version...I feel like the joke is on me for buying this junk.

Yea same here. Now I'm gonna have to lay low for a couple weeks because I told about 15 people that this was gonna be the PC game end all be all..... When the initial menu screen popped up I got so excited I started laughing. The the reality sunk in after about 15 turns and 3 battles later.... I was just thinking...WTF is going on? I used to love to look at the charts in RTW M2TW, region economic growth, even the so called ergonomic UI in R2 is inferior to the one in NTW, not to mention the 4 minute battles, and when it was all over I just started playing NTW LME and didn't play R2 until earlier today. I pretty much wasted my entire day playing my Macedon campaign trying to find the greatness that I've been hearing about on these forums and it's nowhere to be found. I got duped by hype and that is a character flaw. I have repeated this mistake too many times when it comes to these types of games.

[Consortium11]

Will you enjoy it if you buy it?

Yes. It's a new Total War game, assuming you can get it to work it looks fairly pretty and I've enjoyed games that are objectively far worse than this one.

Should you buy it?

No.

Not right now.

The fact is that in a post-Empire world anyone who buys a Total War game on or around release has to expect massive amounts of frustration with it. We wish we didn't, we wish CA would release a game free of major bugs, we wish they would release a game that actually feels like it's been properly tested, we wish they'd release a game that doesn't feel somewhat like a beta-version that's been shipped before it's ready because they have to meet a marketing deadline but deep down we know that on release a Total War game is going to be massively... and often fundamentally... flawed. And considering how revolutionary Rome 2 is and how big a scale it's presented on, those flaws are pretty deep seated.

In three months? The game will be cheaper, the patches will have improved it and the mod community should have created fixes to many of the other issues.

So yes, you can enjoy the game for the moment. But frankly, right now, I think you'd likely get as much enjoyment from giving one of Shogun 2, Napoleon, Medieval 2 or even the original Rome another go, perhaps trying out some mods you haven't tried before. Come back to Rome 2 in a few months when it's finally closer to the game it was meant to be.

[Andy06r]

After trying the game, I'd still buy it again at full price.

My Geforce 560 TI GTX is managing 45-50 frames on High settings, Ultra sizes, and Ultra textures with Trilinear filtering and AA on. The distance that the models switch from high res to low res is IMO a little to soon, and therefore noticeable, but meh. Game works fine technically, looks good but a little aliased but I have an old video card and can't complain.

My Suebi campaign is entertaining. I've been able to make a Non-Aggression with Marcomanni, but he isn't trading with me yet - perhaps because it's only worth 57 bucks and he has a 'Devious' reputation? Maybe he doesn't want to have relations yet? I don't mind. I'd much rather trade routes be a sign of friendship, and not just convenient ways to make a buck before one party declares war on the other. The army stances are neat (Raiding as Suebi... mhmm), I personally like the UI (thank you CA for moving the buttons AWAY from End Turn!) and learned it quickly, and I like the army system.

I've had two battles so far - open field and siege.

The open field I had a massive downhill charge. Levy vs. Levy, and then I flanked with my infantry general and it was over. The AI did two things that impressed me - my entire line was spears except my left flank was a mace. The AI light cavalary charged that flank, killing both the skirmishers and the maceman and forced me to peel off a spear to deal with it. Their skirmishers were on my right flank and attacked me the entire battle until the lines broke. I say 'lines' loosely as the Suebi, but I don't mind the blobbing from the German cultures at all.

The Siege the AI had a couple spear levies and some ranged units. They put everyone on the gate house and would not let me in, and they used up all of their javelins skirmishing with my Javelins and my Shield Wall soldiers. I sent in derpie Club Levies to tire their garrison, and then sent in my spear levies and beat them handily. The Club Levies rapidly rallied, not even making it past my skirmishers before they turned back which a nice touch. I crushed the AI, but he put up the best defense he could given the circumstance.

So would I buy this game again? Definitely.

[Chirurgeon]

must say Im so confused with this forum and reviews

Im passionate TW player, played all TW series in hundreds of hours, except Shogun 1 and 2 (couldnt really get it on Japanese history and culture, although played S2TW a decent time)

so I please ask for ONLY experienced players, IS R2TW worth buying? Im afraid I would get disappointed like with CIV series (second best after TW, also played all editions from CIV1 till CIV5), cause I have feeling that all those good strategy games are leaning to casual gamers, getting too childish and arcadey as series evolve



thank You so much in advance for answering my question and concern

If you are willing to take the time to understand the game and all the new dynamics then this game is totally worth it. Politics, agents, surprisingly strong factions, and random twists make this game simply amazing if you ask me. It will take you out of your comfort zone but if you ask me that is not a bad thing. Play on a hard difficulty level and it feels like you are truly earning your victories. I recommend it highly

[chopa2010]

thank You guys, It has been a very constructive thread so far, I will come back in few months for r2tw

if anyone has some mod suggestions for M2TW beside Stainless Steel, please do...I will give it try to keep TW entertained for this few months

[Sii]

I've played since the very first Shogun when I was very young. The game itself would be fun if the expectations of previous titles weren't with me. Concepts I've been used to since the first Rome: Total War have been removed.

Simple things like the immersive UI which represented the era you were playing in very well have been replaced with an oddly more modern UI which just takes you out of the feel of a Total War game.

The family tree and genetic and learned traits are pretty much removed (seen since Empire but even worse than Shogun). There are still random traits for your generals, however some come in odd fashions. I'd say about 80% of my faction's family and opposing factions received traits such as "Not Quite Right" or "Unhinged", basically almost your entire administrating faction and opposing family leaders and generals are either slightly deranged to completely insane. The family tree itself has been completely removed, you cannot see who your heir is, who you're married to (IF you get married, many of my faction leaders have spent from ages of 30 to 62 without a marriage proposal), who your brothers, sisters, nephews, sons, fathers, mothers are. Which just seems completely absent-minded considering the title faction, Rome, has 3 different 'families' vying for power. This removal has itself removed any connection with your family, armies, or faction and any depth to any sort of narrative that would come with those characters.

The battles seem slow if you have your troops walk, but once the fighting starts it's over in maybe a couple of minutes.

A lot of things just make no sense to me like "Flaming Javelins" or abilities like "Use the Whip" which are either ridiculous or are just somewhat arcade-like. You are presented with so many different abilities that I feel shouldn't be there or, better yet, should be earned through ranking up your army. Ranking up your army really isn't all that great, it all becomes cookie cutter much like the skills you develop with your generals and family in Shogun 2. It would have been better if it was more like selecting a retainer in Shogun 2, where you had two different RANDOM options to choose from. "Do I give my Legion the ability for it's heavy infantry to sprint and run faster? Or do I give my Legion a 'Standard Bearer' (not in the game that I'm aware of) which will give the option to choose your Legion's best men (i.e., a rank 9 Principes unit) as a standard bearer which will boost morale in a certain radius around it?

All-in-all it doesn't feel like a Total War game, it feels vaguely familiar, but just not quite it. I know I just spent probably 3 paragraphs writing about the negatives, but all that doesn't mean it's a bad game on its own merits. The graphics are wonderful, at least for me, the combination of land and sea battles are really quite fun. Many people have complained about optimization - and it does feel a little slow (I'm getting about 38 FPS on benchmark*) - but I'm playing it pretty well on Ultra (there's another level, 'Extreme'). If I had never played a Total War game before this one, it would be great, probably worthy of an 8.5-9 rating. As another entry into the Total War Series, I'd give it about a 7.5.

* - Radeon HD 7950, i7-2600k 3.4 ghz, 16g RAM, Windows 7

[Caesar_1991]

Is it worth buying?Nope,not now,buy it after 2-3 monhts of heavy patching,balancing,fixing and optimazing + mods.
But if your looking for true tw game dont buy it ever,now its just a random strategy game not tw.

What pray tell is a tw game then

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Rome 2 isn't arcady, consolized or dumbed down. Those saying this need to ask their parents to change their ridalin dosage. It has the best diplomacy so far, and the most in depth management of both characters and armies. Capture points are actually more historically accurate and complex rather than the ridiculous race to the city plaza/crashing to lines of flags against each other as with every other TW game before this. Reiterating: Rome 2 has the best diplomatic AI so far (Rome 1 had none, Med 2's didn't work, Empire's was just plain goof, Shogun 2's was passable), and improved CAI, a BAI that actually attempts to flank, and more micromanagement -though interesting micromanagement.

[redxavier]

This is the first total war game that I feel actually needs mods. For the rest, mods have been there to enhance the experience or to make it more replayable and/or up to date, but here, they're sorely needed to fix, or rather to revert, the gameplay mechanics.

It feels like no-one has really sat down and played the game. The UI especially is non-immersive, impenetrable and unfriendly.