About 16 hours into my first ever campaign on this game, I've run out of steam and I don't know when I'll pick it back up again.
This is what I always do with Total War games; obsessively play them for about a week then drop them for months. I used to do this with Shogun 2, but I wanted to try out more of the series, and I love the idea of Total War set in medieval times, so I tried out this one rather than Rome II, the popular option.
This is an older game than Shogun 2, so it's not totally fair to compare the two but my experience with this series is Shogun 1, 2 and now this, so it's all I've got.
My biggest issue is this game feels noticeably clunky. I heavily dislike the camera and I feel like I can never get it where I want. You don't have full control as you do in future titles.
Another major issue is that troops seemingly don't follow orders. I don't know if I'm missing something or they're bugging out on the terrain, but literally countless times I will tell troops to move somewhere and they'll just stop a quarter of the way through. It's bizarre and leads to me having to micro-manage every single unit.
I also generally dislike the Ai. When at war with an Ai faction, they will basically just form a massive band of people and throw them at you until they all die, and they keep doing this until the war is over. They're more annoying than interesting.
But throughout all of the issues and my complaining, I still enjoy this game a lot, hence why I put in 16 hours in such a small amount of time. The battles themselves are really fun, though after so much time they do get stale, the units all feel very accurate and I enjoy testing out strategies. It also appeases my lizard brain to see more and more of Europe change to my kingdoms color.
So in the end, this game provides the tried and true Total War formula, set in medieval Europe. It is very fun and clearly has a lot of love put into it, but it has aged very poorly in some areas and playing it today feels very clunky at times. It makes me wish for a more modern Medieval Total War game than anything.
This is what I always do with Total War games; obsessively play them for about a week then drop them for months. I used to do this with Shogun 2, but I wanted to try out more of the series, and I love the idea of Total War set in medieval times, so I tried out this one rather than Rome II, the popular option.
This is an older game than Shogun 2, so it's not totally fair to compare the two but my experience with this series is Shogun 1, 2 and now this, so it's all I've got.
My biggest issue is this game feels noticeably clunky. I heavily dislike the camera and I feel like I can never get it where I want. You don't have full control as you do in future titles.
Another major issue is that troops seemingly don't follow orders. I don't know if I'm missing something or they're bugging out on the terrain, but literally countless times I will tell troops to move somewhere and they'll just stop a quarter of the way through. It's bizarre and leads to me having to micro-manage every single unit.
I also generally dislike the Ai. When at war with an Ai faction, they will basically just form a massive band of people and throw them at you until they all die, and they keep doing this until the war is over. They're more annoying than interesting.
But throughout all of the issues and my complaining, I still enjoy this game a lot, hence why I put in 16 hours in such a small amount of time. The battles themselves are really fun, though after so much time they do get stale, the units all feel very accurate and I enjoy testing out strategies. It also appeases my lizard brain to see more and more of Europe change to my kingdoms color.
So in the end, this game provides the tried and true Total War formula, set in medieval Europe. It is very fun and clearly has a lot of love put into it, but it has aged very poorly in some areas and playing it today feels very clunky at times. It makes me wish for a more modern Medieval Total War game than anything.