Product Description

This compilation includes

Medieval II: Total War
Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms Expansion Pack

Medieval II: Total War is the fourth instalment in the Total War franchise following the million unit selling Rome: Total War.

An epic 450 year campaign challenges you to seize control of the medieval world. Fight across Europe, The Middle East and, for the first time ever in Total War, discover the New World and the fearsome Aztecs.

A redesigned graphics engine displays Total Wars signature 10,000 man battles in unparalleled detail, making Medieval II: Total War the most glorious looking RTS game of all time. Varied terrain and individual faces, armour and combat animations make battles more visceral than ever before.

However you must also build and manage your kingdom, balancing the needs of your economy, military and population happiness.

Experience religious fervour as you contend with the whims of the Papacy and the feared Inquisitors eager to quash heresy. Send your men to fight in The Crusades or wage Jihad as one of the great Muslim nations.

Medieval II: Total War is the greatest Total War game to date and sure to seize a position as one of the greatest PC RTS games ever made.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Sega
• Released on: 2008-02-01
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description

Medieval II: Total War is the fourth instalment in the Total War franchise following the million unit selling Rome: Total War.

An epic 450 year campaign challenges you to seize control of the medieval world. Fight across Europe, The Middle East and, for the first time ever in Total War, discover the New World and the fearsome Aztecs.

A redesigned graphics engine displays Total War’s signature 10,000 man battles in unparalleled detail, making Medieval II: Total War the most glorious looking RTS game of all time. Varied terrain and individual faces, armour and combat animations make battles more visceral than ever before.

However you must also build and manage your kingdom, balancing the needs of your economy, military and population happiness.

Experience religious fervour as you contend with the whims of the Papacy and the feared Inquisitors eager to quash heresy. Send your men to fight in The Crusades or wage Jihad as one of the great Muslim nations.

Medieval II: Total War is the greatest Total War game to date and sure to seize a position as one of the greatest PC RTS games ever made.

Customer Reviews

Addictive
Having owned and thoroughly enjoyed the first 'Medieval Total War' my expectations were quite high for this edition. Some reviews had also made me a little worried about the progression in game play and concept, but this was all dispelled upon my first play. Rather than armies simply being moved from region to region, mountains and lakes have to be negotiated as armies shape their way through the terrain. These paths can also be used as important strategic strongholds, or ambush locations for other unsuspecting passing armies. The first edition lacked terrain on the main campaign map and this is perhaps the biggest change when first playing the game.

The main beauty of Total War II is how detailed both parts of the game are. For those who have not played the game, the game is broadly divided into two sections - firstly a map style campaign, similar to Civilization or the board game Risk and secondly individual battle scenarios. The game can therefore be played as both a strategy game and/or a battle one. Battles can be resolved automatically or commanded personally depending on how long or short you want the game to be.

In terms of playing time, the game does require a large amount of attention if you want to succeed as a ruler. Turns cannot simply be skipped in order to save money or for a building to be finished, as otherwise other `factions' will leave you in their wake. With experience and patience a huge European Empire can be under your grasp, but just when you think you have the game cracked, new and more powerful factions appear from the east, natural disasters strike cities, the plague sweeps through Europe and then America is discovered. Unlike many strategy games that become tedious and repetitive over time, these events help keep the game interesting.

The expansion pack features four mini-versions of the main game. Each is as detailed as the main game, but concentrates on specific areas such as Britain and the Middle East. These are equalling rewarding to play and I found the Crusades Campaign (which I still have yet to complete) perhaps even more compelling and addictive than the main game.

Overall Medieval Total War II is an absolute masterpiece of a game and coupled with the expansion pack it becomes the only game you will want to play for a long time.

Medieval II : Total War
Medieval II is the successor to 'Rome' and the original 'Medieval: Total War', combining the best of the two games while adding a lot of great new features to the gameplay.

It puts you in command as a Medieval King, Sultan or Emperor, where you must lead your armies to victory over Europe and Asia, while building and maintaining a sprawling empire. The game is essentially split in two, allowing you to command huge armies in real-time battles in one section, and a turn based empire-builder in another.

The graphics are truly stunning, and the game is easily the best looking RTS on the market. The battle animations are also a wonderful new addition, allowing you to see your soldiers pull off some nifty sword work on the battlefield. The artillery and cannon loading sequences are also pretty good. It's the little details like these that make the game worth buying.

The game itself is packed full of features. You have the ability to play a 'Grand Campaign' which puts you in control of a certain Medieval faction over the course of 450 years of warfare. The 'Kingdoms' expansion allows you to play through several historical scenarios such as the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the Crusades, the Teutonic Wars and the 13th century conquests in Britain. Each scenario allows you to play as various new factions, be it Ireland, Lithuania or the Aztecs etc.

You can also try your hand at winning a historical battle such as Hastings, Pavia, Otumba or Acre. This puts you in command as various historical personages such as Richard the Lionheart, William the Conqueror or Hernan Cortes. You can even design your own custom battles!

With so much features, it will take months of gameplay to go through it all. I still haven't seen a quarter of what the game has to offer.

I've been wanting to play Medieval II for around 2 years, but my old PC wasn't up to the game's huge system requirements. Now that I have a new computer, I can safely say that the wait was worth it. Still, it is worth noting that even with a beefy computer you still need to turn down some of the features. For instance, I need to have features such as grass or shadows switched to the lowest settings if I want to play a medium sized battle - and that's with 2 GBs of RAM, a 512 MB Geforce 8400 card, and a powerful Intel processor. The game is also compatible with Windows Vista Home Premium, but it's better suited to Windows XP, especially if you want to edit the game files.

Medieval II: Total War is defiantely worth getting!

Ambiguous Review
I must say right now, before I go on, one minor detail: my computer isn't fast enough to play the actual battles, which is arguably the most important part of the game- my 1.8 GHz Intel computer can only play the campaign map, and that is all I can review at the moment.
Nevertheless, the campaign map is really quite entertaining. The cutscenes, oddly, play flawlessly on my computer, and they truly are amazing. There have been no budget cuts when it comes to voice acting, or synchronising the animations on screen with the sounds that you hear. And the game itself is far more tactical; factions won't enter war with you quite so lightly as they used to (i.e. in Rome Total War) and the options open to you have tripled in size.

To really enjoy the game, I would recommend a computer with at least 2GB RAM and 2.2GHz processor. Even on the lowest graphical settings, my 0.98 RAM computer cannot cope with the battles. If you can fulfil this game's requirements, however, then this is a companion that your computer quite simply should not be without.