Poll: What's the Deal with Rome II: Total War?

[Iklwa]

I know I'm late to the game here (get it?), but apparently although most reviewers thought it was amazing, Rome II: Total War was found guilty of "Teh Suck" in the court of public opinion. So my question is: what did you guys think? And why? For the sake of argument, I'm a TW vet, and although it does have its issues, I love Rome 2. I just want to hear some of the internet's opinions on this one.

 

[oplinger]

I liked Rome II, however it was plagued with technical issues, I couldn't play any maps with water on them or it would have loads of microstuttering. On some maps (randomly) it would also just skip every couple of seconds. My saves would get corrupted, and the AI was just horrid (maybe due to the other technical problems?)

All in all it was a mistake to buy it at launch. They did however fix -all- of these problems (the AI one is debatable I guess.) for me, so I'd rate it as one of the better TW games for sure. And I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to get into the series.

 

[small]

Well when it was first released it was bordering on being completely broken but with months of patches it seems to work as promised these days.

It's weird how badly they screwed up after shogun 2 which was praised for the most part by critics and fans alike apart from complaints about every faction having similar units. It was almost like they scrapped everything and went back to the drawing board which is the only reason I can think they would miss basic features that have been in the series since the very beginning.

It does have some interesting features. allowing an army to have a unit history is a brilliant touch, amphibious battles are a good option for the series and the tactical maps are excellent not to mention the province system is a good addition.

Its still not good that you are so limited with building in each city though.

honestly they would of been better off taking the foundation of Shogun 2 and adding the features to that instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

I do like the game but the campaign tends to really drag near the end

 

[Greg White]

The A.I. is a bit derpy at times and the campaign can be pretty broken in late game when you have everything researched, but the game itself is pretty good.

It's different from the Total War games prior to Shogun II in that units can be panicked quicker if they're losing, speeding combat up, but heavy artillery, especially onagers, seemed a bit broken against everything, but especially cavalry since they can take out elephants with no issues(I killed one army's HQ within seconds of the fight starting because he was on an elephant) and take out most of a horseman unit with one volley if they're dumb enough to charge straight for you.

 

[Elfgore]

Eh, I'm in the middle ground. Now, when the game came out it was a total piece of shit. Downright moronic AI, lag everywhere, and so many glitches it was crazy. Hell, I guess I was lucky enough to even play the damn thing. After multiple patches though, the game has been made playable, but nowhere near what it could have been.

AI is still a little wonky, especially in siege battles. The campaign AI seems to enjoy garrisoning all of their armies around their cities, so taking a city can be a real pain. My biggest complaint now is all the DLC. This has been the worst total war yet. Multiple faction add-ons that modders already made available for free. Unit packs that are fucking useless! *glances at Beasts of War* The campaign is quite enjoyable, Rome is the most OP nation, and the modding scene is fantastic.

 

[L. Declis]

Well...

I preface this by saying that Rome: Total War was a game I completed several times over with loads of factions. I loved the first game.

I also played Empire Total War a bloody bunch of times, according to Steam I've shoved in over 100 hours of that. Not as much as Rome, but still.

So, take my view with the massive amount of bias that I have.

I pre-ordered Rome 2: Total War for £40. Looking back on it, I would have paid... £15, maximum. I have played maybe 10 hours of it. Then I uninstalled it and played Empire Total War again.

I REALLY HATE THE PHRASE "Streamlined for the masses" or "Dumbed down" and I rarely use the phrase as streamlining is usually a way of saying "Made it understandable without having to consult a Wiki", but my god...

They GUTTED Rome Total War. They cut out the fat, meat and flesh and left with with a diamond covered skeleton that looked pretty but was otherwise NOT FUN. And it's hard to make a game set in my second favourite period of history NOT FUN about using massive armies NOT FUN, but they did it.

They severely cut down on the town management to the point of it meaning ultimately nothing, other than capture all the areas of it's basically useless to you.

They have destroyed the ability to effectively micro-manage your army by forcing you to use only 4 or 5 armies at a time in these massive groups, making waging a good defence nearly impossible from multiple attackers, and the "Peasants who happen to be in town" is such a poor replacement that it's nearly not worth it.

Diplomacy remained as screwy as ever, with AI's making non-nonsensical choices and declaring war on you for no reason even if you had been allies, and they could never understand a good trade.

AI in combat was strange as all hell.

They still haven't figured out ship battles, and while the combine ships with land battles was a good idea and decently executed, doing so would drag the frame rate into the guttle and make a ten minute battle drag to an hour, despite having a very good computer which can handle massive battles on just land.

They removed a lot of the background stuff, like multiple faction, the ability to choose an heir and so on. While it's loads of little things, it added up to create a game which was a prettier, but pale shadow of itself.

It was a game which I was looking forward like no one's business, and I played it and... it sucked. It sucked hard and it's cut a lot of enthusiasm out of the next game for me. It was probably the first game I ever pre-ordered and was burnt hard by, and I think I have only pre-ordered 4 games in my life which have disappointed me.

But if this is the direction they are moving with the Total War series... Well, I shall be sad indeed.

 

[spartandude]

I selected waffles because i couldnt agree with the other 2 options. This game is not awesome and it is by no means polished.

 

[Cal Shackleford]

When I got Shogun 2 I played it obsessively for days on end (well within reason). When Rome 2 came to my PC I found that I wasn't as drawn in as Shogun 2, or even the original Rome or Medieval 2.

I think it is probably one of the weaker entries into the franchise, but by no means is it as bad as some say. A lot of promises only half-realised and ideas poorly implemented, but not a "total failure." (That said I loved vanilla Napoleon and Empire, if only for the Grande Armiee and PLC)

Rome 2 was, undoubtedly, out too early - I think now is about when it should've been hitting the shelves. If there was more time in the oven, I think there would be less of a sense of violation among the more hurt fans. That said... seeing a trireme slice through the earth to the musical stylings of Toto is its own special joy.

As it stands? It's fun, has a few problems, a few flaws, but mods can smooth out the rough edges. However without mods I'd say it is at "polished turd" level on your poll. And even with mods, poor old Parthia is lacking some love -_-'

I hope CA holds back a little for the next one, takes their time and slap a year or so to the production schedule, I'd rather we wait and get a shiny golden egg.

 

[ISearchForTraps]

I play Rome Total War 2 ALOT, but I agree it was TERRIBLE at release, it still has crashing issues, sometimes it's a struggle to get through 1 turn in Campaign without the game locking up.

 

[BeeGeenie]

I believe Rome 2 suffered from over-ambition. It had cool new graphics and had hundreds of factions!!... but as a result the turn times were biblical and the whole thing was an unoptimized mess. The AI was new!!... and completely broken.

Basically, I think they were trying way too hard to make an "impressive" game.

As Jeff Goldblum might say the devs were "So preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."

 

[Stu35]

Pretty much from the Original Rome:TW onwards, I feel that the whole series has been plagued by the "Big Budget, Big Ambition, Poor bug-testing, Poor balancing" problem.

Shogun 2 seemed to suffer somewhat less from this, possibly due to a more limited scope. This may have given them the impetus to go on again for Rome 2 to give it another big shot, and it didn't necessarily land.

Nevertheless, I've given it a "good" on the poll, because I enjoyed it, I enjoy all the TW games, and I will continue to buy them as long as CA continue to shit them out.

 

[Xan Krieger]

I don't have any issues with it right now, especially after I modded it to remove the food and squalor systems (they still exist but everything has a +/-0 food and squalor effect). The way those were done was just retarded and needed to be either redone or removed.

As for everything else, now would be the time to get it, I heard about all the launch issues and I'm glad I avoided those. It's not as good as Rome was (then again, what is?) but it's worth getting now.

I voted that I love waffles because I really love waffles.

 

[Jandau]

First of all, I'd like to state that the poll options are one of the things wrong with gaming community in general - everything is either the best game ever or a complete piece of crap. Which is stupid.

As for the game itself, now that it's been patched, it's decent. It's the most stripped down Total War game, but it's not terrible. Also, not much in the way of modern alternatives - not that many empire-building games set in ancient Rome with large-scale RTS battles. While the first Rome is an excellent game, it shows its age at this point. Rome 2 provides the flavour in a current-gen engine, but suffers from oversimplified mechanics that take away quite a bit of depth of previous games.

So, if you're into ancient Rome, sure, you could do worse than Rome 2. But if you're not married to the time period, get Shogun 2, Empire or even Medieval 2 instead. If you don't need the bling and the RTS battles, get Crusader Kings 2. The list goes on. Basically, it might scratch an itch, but that's about it.

 

[Redryhno]

Let's just say I have about 10 hours in Rome 2, and at least 150+ on Rome1, Medieval, and Shogun2 each. It's just not worth getting, much like Empire in my opinion. Too many individual factions that never expand beyond 2 or 3 settlements, and the only thing that pissed me off about Shogun2, DLC factions and units.(which were annoying in Shogun, but they only had like 2 packs where Rome has like...six? Ten?) And they didn't make or break the game by not being in it.

 

[The Harkinator]

RTW2 isn't great. I'm not just talking about the bugs, the way the game plays and works is contradictory in some places and frustratingly broken. I will start with what I like about it though:

- I like the raising army system. While the selecting a family member system is a bit rubbish and shallow (Original Rome's family tree has never been bested) I do like the idea of actually raising proper armies. I don't like the limit based on faction size, the limit should be the financial cost of upkeep. But the idea is sound of having a general muster an army.
- Naval assaults on cities have been a long time in the making. The AI is still a bit naff on handling these but the combination of fleets and armies adds an extra dimension to many battles and reward the player for using them in conjunction. Naval combat isn't working yet and still struggles in TW but it is several steps in the right direction.
- Fog of war on the battle map means units can now be hidden and move around out of sight. They might have overdone it just a tad but it means using scouts in the early stages of the battle is now a strategy that reaps rewards.
- The MASSIVE number of factions that replace the more vague "Rebels". It adds so much more flavour and depth to the campaign map and the ability to conduct diplomacy with them adds more potential strategies. History tells us that many nations made alliances with various tribes to aid them and I was very glad I could do a bit of this myself. I hope they keep this for future games.

Now the essay on things I don't like:

The campaign is terribly designed. Building settlements is completely broken, the high end buildings and expanding the city actually increase the squalor of the place despite. This even counts for large scale farms, food production is a good idea in theory but is horribly executed as it requires you to turn entire nations into giant farms (or lots of little farms since the people get angry at plentiful food production) and even the great cities of the age only have a few slots. Even mighty Rome is limited and can't get everything. Diplomacy is also a mixed bag, while you can see how they will react as you alter deals the clear problems are still there. But I think diplomacy will never be perfected.

In addition, battles are more arcadey, unit health bars are things I'm not a fan of and units seem less hardy in any case. They also seem more stupid, allowing my javelin throwers to exhaust all their ammo against them and wait politely to be finished off. I've already mentioned the terrible naval battles and with ramming taking front and centre over cannons (obviously) ship movement becomes clearly embarrassing. It seems less like strategy and more like a victory of the best sluggers. In all other cases, pass victory to the Spartans.

Phew, can you tell I was disappointed at the way the game turned out?

 

[NemotheElvenPanda]

The only thing that Rome 2 Total War got universal praise over was how it depicted the many factions in the game as historically accurate as possible. The Celtic and Germanic factions are members of actual civilizations with cities and laws instead of screaming naked people, and the Egyptians looked as they did under the Ptolemies instead of looking like they walked out of the Prince of Egypt. People loved that. Everything else about the game however can't and doesn't get the same treatment. While I still wish I could play the game, I know that it won't be the same experience in past titles.

 

[Albino Boo]

Its not a bad game. I liked some of the changes to the city/provence management system and it being less dependant on generals. Its still bad at simulating the politics of Republican Rome but so were all the others

First of all, I'd like to state that the poll options are one of the things wrong with gaming community in general - everything is either the best game ever or a complete piece of crap. Which is stupid.

I entirely agree with that point.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

Rome 2 feels more like a tech demo than a game. The gameplay is shallow, offers no strategic depth what so ever other than move stack from A to B until you beat the game. The AI doesnt work, and combat is awkward. I used to love the series, but now I hate it.

 

[Ender910_v1legacy]

Eh.... With Europa Barbarorum II coming out this month for Medieval 2, I don't really see much point in bothering with Rome II. I mean I like some of the things that CA did with Rome II, but at the same time they really gutted a lot of the inner mechanics that made previous Total War games so enjoyable.