Total War: Attila Preview - Hands-on With Doom
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
On the one hand, the time period should be really interesting, being closer to the start period of "Medieval TW: Viking invasion" (one of my favourite installments) than the start of Rome 2.
Also, this time period promises some serious diversity in terms of units: unlike Rome 2, which generally has pretty same-y units (at least compared to Medieval 2). Add to this the fact that they are apparently bringing back a load of diplomatic options that didn't appear in Rome 2, and it should be a pretty interesting game.
On the other hand, that is all relative to Rome 2, which despite the obscene number of hours I appear to have put into it, has never really seized me in the way some of the previous TW games have.
Also, full price? Really? I would hope that as one final display of reconciliation they are going to offer a discount for people who bought/pre-ordered Rome 2. Seeing as how we were very much guinea pigs for a broken engine, that really seems fair*. As for giving money upfront: CA have practically no chance of getting me to pre-order anything from them ever again.
*Person who belongs to a group thinks that that group should have money off a product? Who saw that coming?
Also, this time period promises some serious diversity in terms of units: unlike Rome 2, which generally has pretty same-y units (at least compared to Medieval 2). Add to this the fact that they are apparently bringing back a load of diplomatic options that didn't appear in Rome 2, and it should be a pretty interesting game.
On the other hand, that is all relative to Rome 2, which despite the obscene number of hours I appear to have put into it, has never really seized me in the way some of the previous TW games have.
Also, full price? Really? I would hope that as one final display of reconciliation they are going to offer a discount for people who bought/pre-ordered Rome 2. Seeing as how we were very much guinea pigs for a broken engine, that really seems fair*. As for giving money upfront: CA have practically no chance of getting me to pre-order anything from them ever again.
*Person who belongs to a group thinks that that group should have money off a product? Who saw that coming?
It's a nice coincidence that I just watched Terry Jones' Barbarians series on YouTube - now I feel like playing the Vandals or Visigoths in Total War...
I'm with Maff about pre-ordering from CA; it's not "once bitten, twice shy", more like "Every dog from this breeder will maul you for about 3 months before the training sets in." With luck the Rome 2 Engine will have most of it's bugs cleaned out for Attila, but it's still not going to be something I leap for when it comes out.
I am keeping an eye on it, though, because I really like what they're trying to do. I remember thinking that Barbarian Invasion for the first Rome was a good idea, but marred by the fact that the hordes were all but indestructible, so hearing that a player got wiped out early is a good sign.
I am keeping an eye on it, though, because I really like what they're trying to do. I remember thinking that Barbarian Invasion for the first Rome was a good idea, but marred by the fact that the hordes were all but indestructible, so hearing that a player got wiped out early is a good sign.
The thing about Rome II was not that it was just broken at launch, but that the actually working elements of it were underwhelming. The graphics weren't all that impressive: there was a reddish-brown tint over everything. The battles were bizarrely quick in relation to other Total War games, units were unbalanced(like the elephant cavalry) and everything was streamlined in the wrong fashion.
Not to mention that the campaign AI was a step down from the excellent Shogun 2.
I don't know, perhaps they could pull another Napoleon Total War with Attila? This one seems less linear, so it's entirely possible that this could mitigate the slurry that was Rome II.
Not to mention that the campaign AI was a step down from the excellent Shogun 2.
I don't know, perhaps they could pull another Napoleon Total War with Attila? This one seems less linear, so it's entirely possible that this could mitigate the slurry that was Rome II.
Sounds pretty much the same as RTW:BI right down to the possibility of your faction splitting off into a new faction rather than just generic rebels. Although that does seem to apply to all factions now rather than just the Romans.
Doesn't exactly sound all that interesting to be honest.
Doesn't exactly sound all that interesting to be honest.
I'll just have to go and be nitpicky here, but "the decision to concentrate on a time-period and setting that's not very far removed from the last title" is something that CA has been doing for a great long while now: Empire was followed by Napoleon, Shogun II had Fall of the Samurai, and now Rome will now go through the same motions.
Taking the time and effort to alternate between mass upheaval, and more gradual improvement is something that has done a lot for the series - each radically new game really did bring quite a few new toys, and each evolvement did subsequently polish and fix those toys to become pretty damn good games in their own right.
That said, I'm really not sure. I've spent hundreds of hours on each TW game since Medieval II, bought Rome on release, and have yet to log more than 30 hours. Somehow it didn't really catch my fancy.
Taking the time and effort to alternate between mass upheaval, and more gradual improvement is something that has done a lot for the series - each radically new game really did bring quite a few new toys, and each evolvement did subsequently polish and fix those toys to become pretty damn good games in their own right.
That said, I'm really not sure. I've spent hundreds of hours on each TW game since Medieval II, bought Rome on release, and have yet to log more than 30 hours. Somehow it didn't really catch my fancy.
Not that I'm not looking forward to this, but all these "new" features were pretty much established back in Barbarian Invasion and then never used again in Total War. See also: swimming units to fuck up your bridge defenses.
I must be in the minority but I really like Rome 2. I'll probably get Attila, but I would have preferred a Viking/Dark Ages time period.