Take command of your armies and expand your reign. Conquer, destroy, rebuild and improve the cities of the greatest medieval nations of the Western and Middle Eastern world. Employ diplomacy to manipulate your allies and enemies and direct epic and visceral real time battles with up to 10,000 meticulously detailed troops shedding blood on lush 3D landscapes complete with dynamic weather effects in order to re-write history and rule the world. Spanning four and a half centuries of Western history’s most bloody and turbulent era, Medieval 2 encompasses the golden age of chivalry, the Crusades, the creation and propagation of gunpowder, the rise of the professional army and the discovery and conquest of the Americas. The indirect sequel to 2002’s Medieval: Total War, Medieval 2 is set between years 1080 and 1530 and focuses on medieval warfare, religion and politics in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
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Amazing TBS game!
Cool gameplay mechanics.
Cool gameplay mechanics.
As Total War games go, Medieval II is one of the them i always love going back even today. One of the games i feel in my comfort zone where i can start a France run for the millionth time and still enjoy it despite doing one a week ago. Why? The game is just good.
It's core mechanics while simple then any modern Total War games, or by standards, any games today, shines bright. It's simplicity creates more opportunities for things to happen in the campaign. The AI isnt the brighest, but perfect Ai wouldnt really be good wouldnt it? Because of that the game often on very high difficulty can be quite the pain because of the AI being quite unpredictable.
The controls are...outdated but this game is from 2006, so i will cut slack considering this has game also has one of the snappiest, fluid and engaging battles i've played where on higher difficulties strategy does matter ( holy shit strategy in MY strategy game? no way).
Alas Medieval 2 is a gem, and one of my ever must play list of all time ^^
It's core mechanics while simple then any modern Total War games, or by standards, any games today, shines bright. It's simplicity creates more opportunities for things to happen in the campaign. The AI isnt the brighest, but perfect Ai wouldnt really be good wouldnt it? Because of that the game often on very high difficulty can be quite the pain because of the AI being quite unpredictable.
The controls are...outdated but this game is from 2006, so i will cut slack considering this has game also has one of the snappiest, fluid and engaging battles i've played where on higher difficulties strategy does matter ( holy shit strategy in MY strategy game? no way).
Alas Medieval 2 is a gem, and one of my ever must play list of all time ^^
It is unwise to praise the day before sunset, but it's my favorite Total War until now, especially with the Americas expansion.
I wish gunpowder was possible earlier in the game.
I wish gunpowder was possible earlier in the game.
I think I'll try a newer one. This feels very old.
I made a list a few days ago inspired by this game, where I tried to collect my favourite instances of non narrative based games with good/enjoyable writing. I absolutely adore the flavour text in medieval 2, the barks when clicking units, the battle narrator, they are all so infused with earnestness and the vibes the game is trying to convey I have a goofy smile when Im playing this game the whole way through.
It's not just that every single unit of the game be it agents, generals, army and navy units etc have numerous voice lines all in mostly appropriate national accents and dispositions based on their personality and relationship with your leader ; which is great of course, but its also that in conjunction with the games' trait system.
Checking out an enemy spanish general with high chivalry : "We seek an honourable engagement"
Sending your diplomat as an egyptian faction to negotiate a peace treaty : "Of course, mighty sultan".
These are small things, but small things are what life and game design is about a lot of the time. Slightly modified from Rome Total War, every general has 4 skills and several traits based on their actions, their upbringing (i.e if their dad was a god of the battlefield they are more likely to start out as a decent commander) and some random chance. I love the flavour text for each of the skill levels, just like every other bit of text in this game its so fun. One of the traits is chivalry/dread. Basically how noble the character is. High Chivalry gives you buffs to morale and High Dread debuffs to enemy morale, which even out so you want to have high one or the other instead of trying to be in the middle.
I had my faction leader slowly become more and more dreaded which made battles easier but also made me so invested in him, like I was almost roleplaying an evil tyrannical ruler. Eventually he got the epithet "the malevolent" and that was so funny to me, like yeah Sultan Miswar the Malevolent, woe betide he who forgets his name. "A Man so malevolent he considers honour and virtue foolish weaknesses". Still not quite as good as "A stuffed olive has more importance than this man - it could choke someone important and change history." for minimum influence characters in rome 1.
It's funny, for a long time I considered Shogun 2 the more solid game, and to a certain extent that is true, though more accurately its the more streamlined game. See, future total war games did away with these traits (though I havent played any other future games other than three kingdoms after rome 2) and simply had a standard sort of upgrade tree. This is "better" design by conventional standards but there is a charm that it lacks in my view.
Whilst having high chivalry and high dread are similar in its battle effects, high chivalry is preferrable because it leads to higher population growth in cities which is really important. The key is that whilst a lot of the traits have various levels of randomness and predictability (a general who's stuck in the boonies doing nothing will get pretty poor traits generally, whereas if you put one to oversee a city with a big mining complex it might gain "mining knowledge" etc) the actions for chivalry and dread are almost entirely the result of the player. Unlike Rome 1, enemies are captured when defeated during a rout, meaning after each battle one may choose to either ransom them for money (neutral, but if rejected you will have to execute them), release them (good obviously but can you afford to keep letting the enemy go?) and execute them all (bad, but you are rid of them). Similarly one of the strongest units in medieval 2 is your own general's cavalry bodyguard, which in rome 1 could be used to singlehandedly win battles through cycle charging. However constantly doing this in Medieval 2 will lead to "winning first" which gives more dread to your general, incentivising you to "fight honourably" to get those bonuses.
So it leads to a nice mix of roleplaying and decision making on whether or not to be ruthless and efficient or saintly and risk having to work twice as hard. Similarly the semi randomness of the other traits imo reach a nice balance between keeping you on your toes, not relying entirely upon one guy who will turn out to become a drunkard. Now, this system bears some resemblance to both the chaos system of Dishonored and the general traits systems of games like darkest dungeon, but why is it then that I hate the former and wouldnt touch the latter because I know I would also hate it? Well, for one thing its the intensity of it. Medieval 2 is not exactly a challenging game so being fucked by the algorithm or accidentally letting your idiot son become an asshole by leaving him in some backwater town doesn't feel soul crushing. The other being, in relation to something like dishonored, that it feels to me as an actual choice to play the game in one of two ways rather than the game throwing a fit that Im using the tools it keeps giving me. Also that I actually enjoy M2TW and hate stealth games generally.
Also inherited from rome total war is a nice system wherein a trait is initially positive but if let progress becomes negative. For e.g in Rome 1 a general could get the trait social drinker, +1 command. Essentially having a healthy appreciation for booze made him more liked by his men, but could eventually become day drinker - 1 command or even drunkard - 2 command etc. Lots of traits follow this model and I quite enjoy its implementation, even if its hard to avoid the traits progressing into the negative side eventually.
There is a lot more that could be said about M2TW, its historical accuracy is far from perfect but much better than "ptolemaic egypt having a bronze age army with motherfucking chariots" - Rome Total War 1. The interactions with religion are interesting, like how European countries are constantly being threatened with excommunication for fighting each other by the pope who will call crusades to try to unify them into spreading the faith whereas as a muslim country as long as you have a high faith imam you can call a holy war whenever (except if one has already been called recently), which is a nice reflection of the centralization and lack thereof of the two religions respectively.
Like in Rome 1 you might as well only ever recruit troops in one city or two to maximize bonuses and the retraining and various troop types are kind of an ass even if I get their function in slowing down conquest when moving into less developed territory.
Anyways, for the most part I really just want to again highlight the writing which is my biggest source of joy playing this game. I love the battle advisor, some of thse lines go so hard : (muslim battle advisor) "All praise to allah! This is a most crushing victory! Your name will live in marble and our foes' in sand!" (mediterranean battle advisor) "We are blessed! The enemy general is dead! We have sent the idiot to hell" "Our King has run from the field! I pray victory does not run after him, may the Lord have mercy on his soul". Etc etc.
Just goes to show, good writing is always good to have even if your games' story is going to be almost entirely told through emergent gameplay and player actions.
It's not just that every single unit of the game be it agents, generals, army and navy units etc have numerous voice lines all in mostly appropriate national accents and dispositions based on their personality and relationship with your leader ; which is great of course, but its also that in conjunction with the games' trait system.
Checking out an enemy spanish general with high chivalry : "We seek an honourable engagement"
Sending your diplomat as an egyptian faction to negotiate a peace treaty : "Of course, mighty sultan".
These are small things, but small things are what life and game design is about a lot of the time. Slightly modified from Rome Total War, every general has 4 skills and several traits based on their actions, their upbringing (i.e if their dad was a god of the battlefield they are more likely to start out as a decent commander) and some random chance. I love the flavour text for each of the skill levels, just like every other bit of text in this game its so fun. One of the traits is chivalry/dread. Basically how noble the character is. High Chivalry gives you buffs to morale and High Dread debuffs to enemy morale, which even out so you want to have high one or the other instead of trying to be in the middle.
I had my faction leader slowly become more and more dreaded which made battles easier but also made me so invested in him, like I was almost roleplaying an evil tyrannical ruler. Eventually he got the epithet "the malevolent" and that was so funny to me, like yeah Sultan Miswar the Malevolent, woe betide he who forgets his name. "A Man so malevolent he considers honour and virtue foolish weaknesses". Still not quite as good as "A stuffed olive has more importance than this man - it could choke someone important and change history." for minimum influence characters in rome 1.
It's funny, for a long time I considered Shogun 2 the more solid game, and to a certain extent that is true, though more accurately its the more streamlined game. See, future total war games did away with these traits (though I havent played any other future games other than three kingdoms after rome 2) and simply had a standard sort of upgrade tree. This is "better" design by conventional standards but there is a charm that it lacks in my view.
Whilst having high chivalry and high dread are similar in its battle effects, high chivalry is preferrable because it leads to higher population growth in cities which is really important. The key is that whilst a lot of the traits have various levels of randomness and predictability (a general who's stuck in the boonies doing nothing will get pretty poor traits generally, whereas if you put one to oversee a city with a big mining complex it might gain "mining knowledge" etc) the actions for chivalry and dread are almost entirely the result of the player. Unlike Rome 1, enemies are captured when defeated during a rout, meaning after each battle one may choose to either ransom them for money (neutral, but if rejected you will have to execute them), release them (good obviously but can you afford to keep letting the enemy go?) and execute them all (bad, but you are rid of them). Similarly one of the strongest units in medieval 2 is your own general's cavalry bodyguard, which in rome 1 could be used to singlehandedly win battles through cycle charging. However constantly doing this in Medieval 2 will lead to "winning first" which gives more dread to your general, incentivising you to "fight honourably" to get those bonuses.
So it leads to a nice mix of roleplaying and decision making on whether or not to be ruthless and efficient or saintly and risk having to work twice as hard. Similarly the semi randomness of the other traits imo reach a nice balance between keeping you on your toes, not relying entirely upon one guy who will turn out to become a drunkard. Now, this system bears some resemblance to both the chaos system of Dishonored and the general traits systems of games like darkest dungeon, but why is it then that I hate the former and wouldnt touch the latter because I know I would also hate it? Well, for one thing its the intensity of it. Medieval 2 is not exactly a challenging game so being fucked by the algorithm or accidentally letting your idiot son become an asshole by leaving him in some backwater town doesn't feel soul crushing. The other being, in relation to something like dishonored, that it feels to me as an actual choice to play the game in one of two ways rather than the game throwing a fit that Im using the tools it keeps giving me. Also that I actually enjoy M2TW and hate stealth games generally.
Also inherited from rome total war is a nice system wherein a trait is initially positive but if let progress becomes negative. For e.g in Rome 1 a general could get the trait social drinker, +1 command. Essentially having a healthy appreciation for booze made him more liked by his men, but could eventually become day drinker - 1 command or even drunkard - 2 command etc. Lots of traits follow this model and I quite enjoy its implementation, even if its hard to avoid the traits progressing into the negative side eventually.
There is a lot more that could be said about M2TW, its historical accuracy is far from perfect but much better than "ptolemaic egypt having a bronze age army with motherfucking chariots" - Rome Total War 1. The interactions with religion are interesting, like how European countries are constantly being threatened with excommunication for fighting each other by the pope who will call crusades to try to unify them into spreading the faith whereas as a muslim country as long as you have a high faith imam you can call a holy war whenever (except if one has already been called recently), which is a nice reflection of the centralization and lack thereof of the two religions respectively.
Like in Rome 1 you might as well only ever recruit troops in one city or two to maximize bonuses and the retraining and various troop types are kind of an ass even if I get their function in slowing down conquest when moving into less developed territory.
Anyways, for the most part I really just want to again highlight the writing which is my biggest source of joy playing this game. I love the battle advisor, some of thse lines go so hard : (muslim battle advisor) "All praise to allah! This is a most crushing victory! Your name will live in marble and our foes' in sand!" (mediterranean battle advisor) "We are blessed! The enemy general is dead! We have sent the idiot to hell" "Our King has run from the field! I pray victory does not run after him, may the Lord have mercy on his soul". Etc etc.
Just goes to show, good writing is always good to have even if your games' story is going to be almost entirely told through emergent gameplay and player actions.
I have no idea how I put this many hours into it.