| |
|
Time consuming, ain't it?
My first impressions are: the Strategic level looks a lot nicer than Rome, and runs reasonably well even on my aging machine. I'm unconvinced by the Witches / Heretics subplot, although having Inquistors roaming under control of the Pope is neat and they're truly to be feared this time around. Merchants leave me likewise unconvinced. The Missions side of things is greatly improved over Rome, and it's fun when your nobles are telling you to do one thing (generally pwn the fuck out of the opposition) while Popey is telling you to beat your swords into ploughshares unless you'll go to Jerusalem for him.
The game I've run so far has gone along the lines of "defeat the Scots, (mostly) defeat the French, go on Crusade, end up with a cloth-eared nincompoop on the throne, get told to send the faction's Great White Hope, Prince Stephen the Really Really Nice and Talented on Crusade against the overwhelmingly powerful Mongols, watch several heroic defences before Stephen dies, get excommunicated, watch the rest of the Crusaders turn up several years too late". Pretty cool all round, and the numerous technological advances and random events are well done. Guilds are interesting, although it would be nice to know what some of them actually do. Shame the Glorious Achievements bit has vanished, though.
A major difference with previous games in the series is the division between Castles and Cities; essentially, in MTW2 your major production of military units is centred around dedicated castles (which are considerably better realised on the battle maps than previously) and your money-making mostly takes place from walled cities. Seems to work quite well in practice.
The real-time battles side aren't really my thing so much but they looks splendid, much improved over Rome even on the mid-detail setting I'm using; your troops are all individual and wear different armour depending on how well you've equipped them (so you might have, say, two companies of Longbowmen side by side, one wearing padded jacks and t'other wearing chainmail) and the fighting looks pretty convincing. It seems a bit harder to control your troops than previously; they take longer to respond to your orders, especially the cavalry units. It appears to be deliberate, and fair enough. Cavalry appear to me to be much less powerful than previously, which is all right and proper in my book, while the missile cavalry units are exceptionally dangerous against most infantry, which again seems fair enough. The game is beset, as usual, with silliness whenever seige engines are around; they fire with extreme speed and deadliness and because of this the presence of a handful or even one makes armies in formation a sitting duck. This would perhaps be appropriate for Napoleonic battles; it is stupid for medieval combat. I appreciate that artillery staying in one place and firing a few times per day would be boring to watch, but having to avoid semiautomatic incendiary trebuchet fire is equally tedious. They could and should, in my humble opinion, have limited the siege weapons to actual sieges. Hum-ho. The AI on the whole seems competent rather than talented; sometimes it will pull off an exceptionally scary coordinated attack, sometimes it will make like Cetewayo in the film and "test your firing power with the lives of its warriors". Morale and momentum seem to be well handled by the underlying engine.
Niggles and faults aside, it's a lovely looking game and very interesting to play. Now, if I can only defeat the Danes and the Holy Roman Empire, I should be able to conquer the world with Border Horse next time round. Light thieves all! |
|
|
