Skookum Stratagium (Medieval - Total War (PC))

Member Name: SlyClone2k

Product:	Medieval - Total War (PC)
Date:	20/03/03 (1170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Mind blowingly good strategy title, Huge armies lend depth and excitement, A good source of historical knowledge

Disadvantages: Heavy on system resources, Can eat up lots of time.

I thought I'd lost this review to the mire of my hard drive, it's been flattened and rebuilt at least three times since I wrote it way back in September last year. Would you believe I actually wrote two versions, one for Ciao and one for DooYoo, now that's the sort of commitment to quality SlyClone aspires to!

The Total War series of games have been the cause of many arguments within the Clone household. Mrs Clone not being particularly keen on Mr Clone spending vast swathes of time behind the computer and ignoring her. It is easy for hours to drift by unnoticed while you attempt to gain just one more territory or quell one more rebellion, or possibly be egged on into another battle against an online opponent. In fact there was a time during the lead up to the wedding that Mr & Mrs Clone nearly didn?t become titular (stop that sniggering) following one of my marathon sessions, somewhere nearing 36 hours only interspersed by food and toilet runs!

Medieval: Total War is the second game in the Total War series, though it is by no means a sequel to the original named Shogun. Medieval, as the name suggests, takes us to the start of the 12th century medieval period. The game itself consist of plenty of game modes for the single player, Full Campaign, Historical Campaign, Historical Battle and Custom Battle if this wasn't sufficient then Total-War can be taken online to compete against players across the world.

Should you choose one of the campaign modes you will be asked to decide which era you would like to begin in, Early Late or High. Starting early puts all the known factions on a level footing, gunpowder is still 160 years from discovery and buildings within the provinces are at a minimum. Choose a later period and the computer estimates where you would be by this period and completes the buildings for you. The territories you'd expect a county to own, though essentially historically accurate, may be smaller or greater

.

One of the things that stands out about the series (Total War) is the depth of research that has been done in an attempt to create a historically accurate arena. From the units available to the different factions, to buildings and the occasional world event that shapes a faction. World events such as Marco Polo's return from the East, the invasion of Ghengis Khan or the rise of Joan of Arc. Also you?ll be able to play most of the prominent nations that existed during this period; France, England, Egypt, Denmark, Italy, Germany, The Turks this list goes on. Each nation, while having many common units, also has a selection of units elite to them, for example the English Long Bowmen. Religion also plays a major part; the game is split into two main areas, Catholicism and Islam. As the game progresses and you take over the world, the religion of the country can make or break your ability to hold onto the territory you have conquered. Should you be a Catholic country invading a heavily Muslim territory your army could face constant repeated opposition and uprisings, and may eventually be driven from the soil, therefore it is important that you can draw on Bishops and Alims (the Islamic version of the Christian Bishop) to preach the word of your lord on foreign soil. Should you be Catholic your daughters can be sent to foreign lands to spy or marry into the families of the opposition allowing you to stake claim on their lands should the worst happen (to it current ruler!).

So you can see the game has quite considerable depth even before we get to the nitty-gritty; a large variety of units, religion, princesses and that's not to mentions spies and assassins. The campaign mode is played out in a -turn based style- strategy not terribly different to Civilisation or Risk. Each turn gives you the opportunity to create new units, or amend the building queue to ensure you are developing correctly. New buildings allow for the improvement of three
key a
reas; Strategic (creation of spies, emissaries, assassins), Economic (farms, mines, merchants), or Military (from peasants to cannons). Creation of buildings and units may take anything from a year to twenty years, each turn being a year. It is the time where you invade new lands or possibly pull out of others.

Invasion, or the conquering of new lands, is where the fun starts and what sets the Total War series apart from the rest. A battle takes you in to a real time fight, allowing you to take control of your armies. The army (on a grand scale) will consist of the units you have placed in to the territory. Units that may have anything between 8 and 100 men depending on their type. For example Royal Knights are extremely strong and will have 20 men, the Peasants are extremely weak and have 100. As opposed to other strategy titles, Command and Conquer or Age of Empires, rather than control lots of individual men, you control the entire unit. The only real way to picture it is to imagine battles where the two armies lined up against each other, archers forward, pike-men ready to defend against cavalry, hand to hand units ready to launch into battle, think Braveheart or Waterloo. The battles are played out across rolling vistas that go some way to matching the territory they represent, Scotland has mountains, Wales has lush green valleys, much of Northern Africa is represented by flat sandy terrain. With rousing music matching the part of the world you live in thumping from your speakers, music that cunningly tells you whether first strike has been made. The sound of horns can be heard ringing out the sound of triumph or retreat, cavalry hooves and the clash of metal all adds to the overall feeling of watching a full-scale medieval war. I'm told it is possible to have armies of upto 10,000 men fighting, I've only managed to drag up an army of 2,500 so far, and thats combing the culmination of several states and several years, and even a batt
le on this
scale already begins to feel epic.

The tactics you use in a battle will have a great effect on the end result. Certain units will fair better against others, spearmen have advantage over cavalry as their long reaching poles can be used to keep them back, swordsmen will massacre archers should they be able to catch them. Allow yourself to be flanked and your men will panic, run and be slain. Fortunately a battle trainer (tutorial) is on hand to give you an idea what will work against what, but ultimately learning how to place your army or how to use certain units for attack or defence is something that battles and skirmishes lost will teach you.

One of the things that made the first game so good was the online community, as many of you are part of this community I'm sure you are aware how much fun they can be. TotalWar online takes only the RTS (battle) section of the game, there by allowing you to pit your tactical wits against others in a bid to gain reputation and respect from the other generals you will meet there. Total war gamers are often members of clans, and many are extremely friendly. I made many great friends during the time I played Shogun: TW, friends who I still speak with now, despite not playing online so much.

The multi-player game has been given the Quake treatment, giving more game modes; Last Man Standing or King of The Hill might ring a bell. One of the major enhancements is the fact that Medieval: TW has been released by Activision and is powered by the GameSpy network. This allows for greater reliability and support. EA were often criticised by their poor handling of the multiplayer servers for Shogun: TW.

This really is a good game if you are in to strategy, or have a hankering for history. But there is one criticism I would raise and that is the dropping of the FMV. Shogun told parts of the story using FMV and the history behind the Shogunite was extremely interesting, not to mention th
e FMV assassina
tions of generals. I always feel a decent FMV sequence is the least one can ask as a reward for completion of a game. Medieval seems to have dropped this largely in favour of adding lots of text based reading that relates to the key events. Sure this is probably to allow for more space on the disks to allow for the immense battle fields and a huge increase in the developments that can be made, but it would have been nice.

System Requirements:

·3D Hardware Accelerator Card required - 100% DirectX 8.1 compatible 16MB video card and drivers
Pentium II 350 or Athlon processor or higher English version of Windows 98/2000/ME/XP
·128MB RAM
·4 x CD-ROM drive
·1.7 GB of uncompressed free hard disk space (plus 200MB for Windows swap file)
·100% DirectX 8.1 compatible 16 MB video card and drivers
·100% Windows 98/2000/ME/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and drivers
·Direct 8.1 (included)

Personally I disagree with the PII mimimum requirement here. On my PIII the game is beginning to suffer some and loading times can be quite immense.

Required for Multiplayer Mode
oPentium III 750 or Athlon processor or higher
oInternet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP?IP) play supported
oInternet play requires 28.8 Kbps (or faster) modem
oLAN play requires network interface card and drivers

I found a 56k modem was laggy, and lost connection a couple of times, so though it will play its not entirely acceptable. Broadband is just around the corner but might prove a little too late for me!

A fantastic game, that has pushed it's predecessor from my top 10 all time greats list. Well worth every region tinkering, spear raising, territory occupying second.

10/10


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