Medieval Total War

Published by Activison
Developed by The Creative Assembly
Platform: PC CD-ROM
Price £34.99
Released: Out Now

Shogun Total War was a very special game indeed. Taking the unprecedented step of combining real time battles with turn based strategy the game was virtually perfect in every war. Players had glorious 3D battles with hundreds of units on screen and in the turn based strategy section they had an unbelievable amount of depth to handle and very sharp AI, with which to battle their wits against. Most gamers could only point to the lack of a campaign mode as a multiplayer option as being the solitary disappointment with the game. After a successful expansion pack for Shogun, The Mongol Invasion, the developers turned their attention to the middle ages and finally, two years after the release of Shogun Total War, we have the sequel, Medieval Total War.

From looking at the screenshots you'd be forgiven for thinking that this game is simply Shogun in Medieval attire. Indeed on first appearances the similarity is remarkable, but deceiving. From the first few moments of play however, the illusion of similarity is smashed to pieces. Shogun's gameplay became intense very quickly with rival factions going for your throat at the earliest possible opportunity. Medieval is an entirely different kettle of fish. When you begin the campaign game you are given the option of three starting dates. There's Early (1087) High (1205) and Late (1321) periods for you to choose from. Should you choose Early or High as your starting points then you're in for a more drawn out game than Shogun could ever offer. You'll also have a choice of what your goals are to be in order to win. You can either choose Domination as your goal, which requires you to conquer two-thirds of the provinces or you can choose Glorious achievements which expects you to keep control of the homelands (the provinces you began the game with) as well as meet some other specific goals. There are 12 factions for you to choose from and they all play uniquely and have their own special units. Each faction modifies the games' difficulty so if you pick a faction such as the Polish for instance, the game will be slightly harder whereas the Almohads are slightly easier to play with.

In Medieval Total War the management of your finances is of absolute paramount to all of your objectives. Trade plays a key role, as does improving the farmland in your provinces so that the income is as high as possible. Of course you can raise taxes but this can cause unrest and might even trigger a revolt toward you. Without the all important florins to support your armies, and provide adequate defensive structures, you will always be susceptible to attacks and also be hampered in your bid to take more provinces.

Your generals are also playing a more important part this time around. In Medieval they have traits that can be altered by events that occur during a game. They have ratings for influence, loyalty, piety, dread, command and acumen. These are all self-explanatory, except maybe for piety. Piety shows the weight the general gives to his religious beliefs. Considering that religion also plays a significant part in the game, this is important. Generals also have vices and virtues. Some of the vices may be kept secret and you'll have to investigate them with a spy to find out what they are. It's worth remembering that your troops are influenced by what they think of their general and if you have a right scallywag their morale will not be very good either.

Religion is a major factor in this game. The factions all have their own religious persuasion whether it be Catholic, Orthodox or Muslim. If you control a Catholic country for instance you have to be careful with any aggressive moves toward any other Catholic factions. Should the Pope be upset with your actions you run the risk of Excommunication which means that the Pope could launch a crusade against you which would cause you untold damage. Just as Catholic factions can launch crusades, so can Muslim factions launch Jihads which are essentially the same things except Jihads are concerned with the reclamation of once Muslim lands.

There are plenty of gameplay modes on offer in Medieval Total War. There's the main campaign, quick battle (options are chosen for you), historical battles and historical campaigns are both based around key points of medieval history and give you a chance to fight key historic battles. The historic campaigns are based around the careers of important generals. The multiplayer game is again battles only, so those of you (me included) who were waiting for a full multiplayer campaign will be disappointed. There is also a very easy to use map editor that enables you to create unique terrain to use in battles.

Just as Shogun was fine for deaf gamers, so is Medieval. All information in the game is given in clear, easy to read text. One disappointment though is that all the verbal information in the tutorials is not given in text but thankfully all the important information and instructions are given in text. The manual is rather thin on the ground when it comes to information. This game needs a manual that goes into great detail. Thanks to the DVD style packaging and dare I say it the lucrative strategy guide market, the manual provided leaves a lot to be desired.

Graphically the game is virtually identical to Shogun. The game's turns are one year each (in Shogun they were a season each so there were four to the year) so you don't get the seasonal weather like you had in Shogun. This is compensated for by the varying terrain such as the deserts in North Africa. What is disappointing is the lack of unit variation on the strategy map. Like Shogun it is still impossible to see what the armies are made up of without clicking on them. The board game type pieces on the strategy map actually look quite poor by today's standards too. This is a minor niggle though and doesn't detract from the excellent gameplay that this title offers.

Medieval Total War will thoroughly impress fans of Shogun Total War. There are so many new gameplay elements that we can't go into them all otherwise the review would be five times as long, suffice to say that the overall effect is excellent. Creative Assembly have refined the basics that they had with Shogun and added a wealth of improvements to the gameplay. Unless something really special is released before the end of the year what we have here is the finest strategy game that you can currently purchase.

Overall Game Rating: 9.5/10 Quite simply breath taking. It just isn't possible to do the game justice in a review. Fans of Shogun or fans of strategy games in general owe it to themselves to own Medieval Total War.

Deaf Gamers comment: Some non-essential comments are not subtitled in the tutorial but otherwise the game is excellent for deaf gamers