To further political interaction, the strategic game features several special
units. The first is emissaries which are used to propose alliances or
bribe enemy armies to join your cause. Princesses represent young ladies
of the royal line who are made available for marriage. Marrying a princess
to one of your generals will ensure greater loyalty, while marrying into a
foreign royal family will form a bond of alliance between your factions.
Assassins are used to assassinate enemy generals, leaders, or other strategic
units. Spies are used to protect a province from assassins or to gather
information on enemy provinces and leaders.
As you build your economy and grow your armies, you'll eventually want to
conquer neutral provinces and attack your enemies. When you move an army
onto a province that you do not own, you are given the choice of directing the
attack yourself or letting the computer resolve the battle. If you take
control, the game switches to the real-time mode and places you in control of
the units in your army. If you choose to let the computer resolve the
battle, you will be informed of the battle's winner and the number of casualties
on both sides. In either case, winning the battle wins the province (or
results in the repulse of invaders).
On the strategic level, the AI tends to play conservatively, concentrating on
establishing alliances and shuffling armies into position to defend itself.
The computer is quite fascinated with assassinations, and when you've reached
the point in the game when the computer can begin creating assassins you can
expect several attempts to kill your generals every turn.
The strategic component of Medieval: Total War plays slowly, and it can take
some time for you to build your armies and economy. This is especially
true if you play the early medieval campaign, as you'll have to build your
infrastructure and tech trees up from scratch. You'll fight many of your
battles with archers and peasants for quite a while before you have enough
structures in place to start creating better units. The heart of the game
is its large real-time battles, and you'll need to make a serious time
investment in a campaign game before you can start enjoying large-scale battles
with a variety of troop types.
The campaign game also feels a bit hollow and devoid of life. There are
no cutscenes, no way to look in on the castles in your provinces other than
through a structure creating dialog window, and all events, major and minor, are
relayed to the player via text pop-up windows. The only atmosphere is
provided by the medieval chant inspired background music. The real-time
battles are so fast-paced, lively, and good looking, that they make the game's
strategic component seem lifeless in comparison.
The campaign game is not really bad, it's just that it's not really great and
that it can't produce the same level of enjoyment as the real-time component.
The two components are geared towards two different kinds of strategy players,
and turn-based gamers might not find much enjoyment in the campaign game and
will not like the fast pace and chaos of the real-time battles. Real-time
fans will find the length of the campaign game, and, more importantly, the
length of time between major battles will try their patience. They will
find themselves spending much more time fighting historic and custom battles,
and will more than likely avoid the campaign games.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
85%. Although the strategic aspect of the game is merely average, this
game can be recommended based on the strength of its incredible real-time
battles.
System Requirements: Pentium II 350; 128 MB RAM; 16 MB
Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 1.7 GB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse.
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