Medieval 2 Total War Gold (PC DVD)

This compliation brings together Medieval total war 2 and the expansion 'Kingdoms'. It includes a thorough guide for each and if my experience is anything to go by then it loads and plays without flaws or fuss. This is very similar in looks and feel to Rome total war but this later incarnation is more sophisticated and complex. Rome is fantastic, quite possibly the best pc game of this genre so far which means Medi 2 (this game) has its work cut out if it is going to impress. And impress it does. On a 1650*1080 screen the units look absolutely amazing with layers and layers of detail. When units come together to fight on the battle field the little choreographed sequences look realistic and are thoroughly involving. Cities and castles too look really amazing with all the walls and towers you could ever wish for. This detail translates equally well on to the campaign map where you now have the ability to zoom in and out of the action according to taste (Rome had a fixed camera viewpoint). When cannons fire (over an increased distance) the earth shakes and caste walls are torn down...charge!!! So is it a great game and is this version value for money. The answers are yes and yes. I have been playing the Mayans in south america and my jaguar warriors have been making short work of the pompous technological spanish...who needs guns, not us!!! The expansions in Kingdoms appear to be well thought out and add some diversity to what was already an amazing game. However i have some criticicms that will not go away. For one, units now have the ability to ignore your orders as they please, so i now have to run around the battlefield like an old hen re-issueing ordrs to charge or engage. Tis is tiresome and detracts from the fun. it makes battles quite a bit more labour intensive without any increase in fun. At times when defending of engaging a settlement units get confused and start running around like headless chicken, the odd unit seemingly doing anything but obey the orders you just issued. They get stuck, confused and then just as likely mullered. My biggest criticism concerns the campaign map where the movement of units has been lets say s-l-o-w-e-d- down. Click on a merchant and click where you want him to go. Then go off and make a cup of tea. With fresh tea in hand, as you are sitting back down your merchant is just coming to a halt. So you get frustrated click on the space bar and everything zooms around the map. This is silly, poor and needless. In Rome you have about 550 turns to complete the main campaign, in Medi 2 you now have just 225 so you really have to get your skates on. No summer and winter turns as in Rome (and that worked so well) in stead each turn covers about two years. Sixhundred turns at 2 per year would have been much better and it seems that the slow speed of characters moving around the map serves no other purpose than to hide how short the main campaign is and how few battle will be fought. In conclusion this is an excellent game but my concerns are that the things that worked so well in Rome and were far from broke have been changed here for no gain. The game looks fantastic but it is alot less fun and as i have gone back to Rome i guess i have to say that for me Rome is the better game.

I have to be honest I have the complete total war series. And I have always loved the way in which it mixes Civ style game play with battlefield rts. Their is something about Med 2 that holds dear to my heart that makes it even far superior to empire or Shogun 2 in my eyes. And that is simply that it is by far the most epic, and can only be rivalled in my opinion by Rome total war. The variation of units is vast, depending on where you are on the map varies the way the factions fight. The joy of this is that you must change tactics accordingly to suit the strength and weakness your faction posses. Not all factions are balanced either, some have early game advantages but trail off later (Byzantium) while some are vice versa (Turkey), where some are pretty bloody strong all the way through (England and France especially). Another favourite of mine in this series is the town and castle system, different troops coming from places made for different combinations in armies. Not only that but defending a castle differs hugely from defending a town. Throw along with this the trade system, religious politics, crusades and Jihads and you pretty much have a recipe for epicness. And if that isnt enough, they pretty much put the icing on the cake with the Mongul and Timur invasions. If you own the holy lands when they arrive, then you bloody well be able to defend it. A game that always keeps you on your toes, always improving and doesnt shy away from epicness. The only down point for me is the battle A.I. is not so challenging after you understand it, even on the highest setting wall baiting (when you draw a huge host of the enemy straight into you walled archers and ballista/cannon towers, works great with elephants) attackers is very easy and says little for enemy generals intelligence. And when attacking with superior artillery the enemy just watches you devastate its ranks. The best Total war has to offer, on top of that a brilliant addition pack with 3 long games in one (I especially love the Incas pack). This is well worth the money if you do not have it, then why not?

Well, after issues with Securom (delaying my actual playing of the game for 48 hours until I had a new "exe" sent to me by their support team) I eventually got the game running. I very much enjoyed Rome:TW, so I was pleased to find that this game didn't differ too greatly in the mechanics and in fact added some nice new features. Gameplay wise it's enjoyable, with a fair mix of RTS battlefield shennanigans and some turn based overview map diplomacy and army movement. Diplomacy is a little limited, but functional, and resources are only of any purpose when developing your own trade i.e. they serve no bartering purpose. Actually saying that - very little appears to have any purpose during negotiations. The Medieval world is annoyingly fickle. Allies of 50+ turns will attack you for no logical reason, then act all butt-hurt when you give them a going over. Enemies of 100+ turns in comparison may never bother you. There really seems no great logic at play (especially when minor nations, or nations in extremely poor positions, make outrageously stupid moves - such as France declaring war on half of Europe, then in little more than 6 turns being annihilated due to the death of all their family members in 1 siege). If you can get over this weakness in the AI then you also have to deal with the stupidity of the Pope. Your own Catholicism is dependent on how corrupt you intend to be. The more gifts and tithes you hand over to the Pope, the higher in his estimations you will stand. To this purpose you can find yourself outcast very quickly if you retaliate against any of his "favoured" nations. If you play as the English you'll likely find the Scots are one such nation. Don't let my negative comments turn you away however. The game is extremely fun, even with its foibles. Fighting battles, choosing your preferred battlefield, taking advantage of the terrain etc are all key to your victory. The AI also uses some sense when approaching these battles - and you can find easy foes retreating themselves up a mountain in order to take advantage of the terrain, meanwhile you can perform the same maneouvre to change a hopeless situation into a victory against the odds. Developing a strong family line (with influential hereditary traits) is ultimately the key, as is the development of strong key Agent units (Merchants, Princess, Priests, Spys and Assassins). A good blade, or a kind word, can settle arguments or complete a mission that a massive army would struggle to achieve. The expansion packs each add new arenas and challenges - condensed and intensive campaigns, each are well worth trying out. The multiplayer is somewhat lacking. The option of either fighting each other or hot-seating a campaign is really missing out a trick. A co-op campaign would be a welcome addition.

Looking at the screenshots for this I knew it was going to be good, even though my interests tend to lie in the earlier medieval period covered in Medieval I...The graphics are amazing, the game has probably unlimited replays as you have a fair few factions to begin with and in addition to these you unlock any you defeat in the campaign, with the exception of certain factions such as the Mongols which you can never play in a campaign unfortunately (there is probably a mod for this somewhere). I stray away from map-based grand strategy games myself but the turn based map stuff in this is good fun, and a welcome lull in action, and is also great to look at (a lot more interesting than the maps in Medieval I and Shogun). My only criticism of the map gameplay is widely noticed pathfinding issues, though I believe there is a patch/mod for this as well... You may have problems with lagging but after closing most programs I found no problem with the main game...Kingdoms, however, generally lags no matter what I alter or close, which is a shame, as otherwise it is a brilliant, huge expansion...Britannia seems somewhat similar to the main game but the other three campaigns in Kingdoms - Americas, Teutonic and Crusades - are all excellent and make it worth buying this excellent value for money gold edition. In terms of history it all seems pretty accurate and realistic too...all in all a classic game that follows on from the equally brilliant Rome total war really well...

Med 2 Total War was a good game, at first, but with this expansion, I just can't be bothered playing it. The expansion does not offer the option of a grand campaign including the americas. I knew it didn't but bought it anyway to try it out. They could have provided a map with Spain, Morocco and part of Western Europe, and a good chunk of North America.. but instead it's too predictable for me.. a map of Mexico as a separate campaign (and other maps). I started it, but it was the siege business again. I found the AI battle for this was hopeless, with soldiers standing around doing nothing all day, and keep having to try and move them into the fighting, unbelievably tedious and boring. I gave up playing Med 2 because of this. I very much hope that Empire will avoid this city-scrap based war, and focus on field battles, and improve the AI, and speed it up a bit. As i plan to buy Empire, because of the improvements, like placing a lot of buildings like farms etc. on the map itself, instead of that city building list window, on Med 2. and a bigger map, and hoping that because sieges were not part of 18th century warfare, that they will concentrate on open battles, like a classic table-top war game. I know they are having some forts in Empire, but i hope it is not dominating.

The game itself is nice, although the older Medieval Total War (2002) was much better IMHO. However, if you plan to run it on Windows 8, be prepared to struggle with Sony's Securom.

The game was installed in less than an hour and as it uploaded it I noticed it didn't actually at any point begin installing or prompt to install the original game, which would explain the speedy installation. I then opened the launcher after it claimed to have finished installing 'Kingdoms' and I couldn't start the Medieval 2 total war program. It could be due to old data on my PC but it still doesn't explain how this happened.

This has to be one of the best PC games ever made. Firstly the campaign map looks awesome, a bit like Risk, and allows you easy control over your settlements. The online element is fantastic and, best of all, SCOTLAND ARE IN THIS GAME (including 26 other playable factions)!!!!!!! Also the expansion pack is cool, with four additional campaign modes: Teutonic (mid-Europe: the playable factions include The Teutonic Order, Lithuania, Poland (after unlocking), The Holy Roman Empire (after unlocking), Novgorod and Denmark), Britannia (SCOTLAND, England, Ireland, Wales and Norway), Crusades (Kingdom of Jerusalem, The Principality of Antioch, Egypt, The Byzantine Empire and The Turks) and The Americas (New Spain, Aztec Empire, Mayans, Apachean Tribes, Chichimeca (after unlocking), Tlaxcallans (after unlocking) and Tarascans (after unlocking). The diversity in this game, especially with the expansion pack, is incredible. I would say it is the best Total War game and my favourite PC game of all. And at a fiver, absolutely worth it.

Gioco immortale Credo uno dei migliori in assoluto e con i mod disponibili in rete praticamente illimitato Ci gioco da anni e per anni ci giocherò buon divertimento

Incontournable jeu à posséder pour les amateurs de stratégie, mêlant batailles en temps réel et campagne médiévale au tour par tour. Les 4 campagnes proposées avec la principales sont excellentes et permettent de découvrir le monde médiéval en guerre. La justesse des faits historiques et des événements marquants du Moyen âge nous plonge dans un vrai livre d'Histoire.

ha pasado tiempo desde el imperio romano. las características del juego y jugabilidad son muy parecidas al rome total war (campaña y batallas), cambiando las armas del combate cuerpo a cuerpo. buena mejoría en los graficos partiendo del 1er roma. además puedes controlar muy diversas naciones. la pega es que tdvía no he conseguido controlar como es debido el movimiento de la cámara en batalla. no se por qé no se me graban bien la configuración de teclas... en general como total war que es, me parece de lo mjor en estrategia. en este caso medieval

no scratches, installed perfectly, gameplay is super smooth even on high resolution

１０年近く前のものですが日本の某戦国ゲームしか知らなかった僕にとってはかなり衝撃的なほどすごいです。 ただ単にごり押ししようとすると必ず財政的に破たんするバランスが絶妙で、常に考えさせられるところがおもろい！ インストールから起動まで問題なくできました ちなみにｐｃスペックは windows8.1 x64 Intel Core i5-5200U HDD 393G メモリ 8G グラボは内蔵のIntel HD Graphics 5500ですがグラフィック設定を中にすれば全く問題ありませんでした