Rating: 
Summary: reviews all wrong
Review: Notice that all of these reviews are referring to the wrong game??? I'm looking for reviews on Shogun Total War and these reviews are about Medieval Total War. Hey, Amazon, get it together!
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing detail
Review: I've been playing computer strategy games for more than 20 years, played my first one on a green-screened Compaq with 64k of RAM, played them by the dozens, and for my money, this is the best one so far. The amount of detail is incredible, the battle scenes feel amazingly real -- you feel transported to another place and time. The strategy, role-playing and tactical aspects of the game all work together pretty flawlessly, creating a credible feel of following your regime through hundreds of years of struggle. There are some downsides -- some of the strategy aspects and diplomacy don't seem to affect gameplay much, for instance -- but the incredible attention to detail is amazing. I played Shogun Total War and thought it was cool, but this really takes the game to another level. Requires quite a bit of computer horsepower to run, by the way, when you've got 2,000 or more men battling it out. Some amazing battles, with the tide shifting back and forth, the issue undecided for hours, sometimes, the weather changing, etc., rallying troops, sending for replacements, making desperate last-ditch bids in the final minutes with your king. If you like wargaming, strategy games or if you're a history buff, this game will keep you interested a long, long time. Lots of replay value -- I've played probably 100 hours and feel like I've only scratched the surface. Haven't tried multiplayer yet. Anyway, this is guaranteed fun. The learning curve is somewhat steep, but I find the interface really intuitive. Great stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Among the best...
Review: The best medieval strategy game of all time! If you like this game just wait till Rome: Total War comes out...
Rating:
Summary: Samurai Meets Knight
Review: The guys of the epic Shogun: Total War games have really gone for ultimate perfection with their European version. Medevil Totalwar is a truly worthy heir to Shogun (a game I recomend you try before MTW). Shogun made the gamer truly think like a Japanese Warlord. Something games like Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, ect. just don't do. It is the same for MTW in which the gammer must balance subterfuge,with all its sabatoge and murder,and the empire building grunt work of VAST armies battling over EPIC 3D battle fields(think Bravehart)! MTW takes what developers did with STW and adds SEVERAL improvements. Inquisitors from all the cultures search and destroy any heritics and any antisentement to your rule, much like the Shinobi of STW. Assassains kill rival generals and diplomats, like the Ninja of STW. But this is were things pick up were STW left off. Siegies are fought for real. Artillery pound castle walls to dust as up to 10,000 warriors, under your every order, battle it out on a real time 3D battle field were snow, rain, heat, wind, and down right nasty nature, effect the morale of your army. To control your land completely, your shores must be patroled for enemy invasion. To do this you have to build great fleets of warships, something STW completely ingnored in Japanese history. The Pope himself in Italy may call for money from you, or to crusade against other "hethen" cultures. Following his demands will ultimately throw you into the Great Crusades, but not following his holy order may also land you in some serious [trouble] when he calls for one of those crusades against you! Your blood line must be kept going if you want your empire to last forever! Marrying off your children will produce those needed heirs to your throne, but even more intrigueing is marrying them to rival factions. Doing this will open up those, "Huge...tracks off land!", when they die. It will also keep your generals from starting a civil war for your throne. Keeping track of heirs isn't automatic like in STW. If you dont keep youngins in the family a 70 year old king isn't going to have the energy to suddenly "make some heirs". Medevil Totalwar WILL be 200 times better then Shogun so if you liked Shogun you will like Medevil Totalwar. If you haven't experienced Shogun Totalwar you deffinatley should check it out. Medevil Totalwar IS going to be the best TBSG (turn based stratedgy game) and the best overall SG (stradegy game) for years to come. There is a true replay value on this one. Not even Richard the Lionheart could play this one once and master its epic size intregue and Medevil warfare simulation(that almost perfectly recreates the way war was fought all those centuries ago). Oh, and for the gammer with the "lagging software" MTW's 3D engine is absolutly incredible. The revolutionary engine makes it very easy for computers with only 64 Megs of RAM to keep up with the games HUGE battles. Battles that can sometimes take up to 45 minuets when all 10,000 max knights are running around out there! As you can see I give MTW 11 out of 10! Way to go Creative Assembly! You're the developers realy behind all of this awesomeness!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent yet Infuriating
Review: Usually games of this nature are very small scale and require countless tedious tasks to gather the resources you need to grow your kingdom. With Medieval Total War I was pleasantly surprised. The premise of the game is excellent as are the battle sequences. The pros and cons of the game are as following:Pros:
- Excellent story and historical accuracy. The inticracies of medieval europe is portrayed well. Nations present in the game come from the following locations: Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Holy Land, and Northern Africa. All the major players of the period are present.
- Lots of different troop types, many of which are exclusive to different nations. This gives the game some replay value since different nations have different strengths and weaknesses.
- Large scale battles can be fought using your own custom armies. These armies can be set up to fit your own particular generalship style. Your generals and troops develop into better soldiers each battle that you win.
- The game focuses on the battles NOT on all the other tedious stuff.
- Everything isn't always peachy. Rebellions, civil war, assassinations can all happen. So you have to think and play certain countries a certain way. Cons:
- Bugs abound in the game. The most infurating one is when the game boots you out when you try to save after fighting a large battle for 45 minutes. This happens occasionally.
- The computer cheats at times making your good battlefield decisions irrelevant. Like any game the computer needs a little help to keep up with you at times. For the most part this is not a big deal.
- Graphics are sub-par for type-A games now. Not horrible, just not as glossy as you would expect.
- Some battlefield troop mechanics are stupid. For instance a cohort of 100 peasants will attack one foot knight in an open field and not break their rectangular formation and surround the knight. So basically the 2-3 guys on the front of the rectangle will fight the knight.
- Sieges are very simplistic. You can't place your archers on the walls etc. In summary, I feel that this game definitely has more pros than cons to offer the strategic gamer. Sure it has some problems but when you take on a project like this it would have taken forever to get everything perfect. If you like empire games or medieval warfare this is a must have. Kudos to Creative Assembly. Medieval was such a step up from excellent Shogun that I can't wait for Rome: Total War.
Rating:
Summary: Not an expansion!
Review: This game rocks! IT's not an expansion as some have labelled it, but a new game engine that can literally render hundreds of units on the field of battle. An epic strategy title that you must have if you are a hardcore fan of the genre or just a noob looking to recreate the Battle of Stirling from Braveheart. They are doing another sequel Rome Total War that is going to make this look like Lincoln Logs in comparison from all accounts
Rating:
Summary: Might and deception
Review: This game does a fantastic job of re-creating the look and feel of the fight for control of Japan in the 'middle-ages'. You control one of the great clans of Japan (or, the invading mongol hordes in the Mongol campaign) and must plan, structure, deceive and fight your way to gain overall control. It is also quite historically accurate - even your generals and heirs have the names of their real-life counterparts. The game operates at two levels: turn-based strategy level across the whole of Japan, and real-time strategy on an individual battlefield. There is great diversity in the units you can employ and the way you can build them up to gain an advantage over your adversaries. At the strategic level you can also send out spies, ninjas to assassinate enemy generals or envoys and make and break alliances with the other clans. There is also a multiplayer game, which is fun for a while but lacks depth. The single player game is much better. Shogun:Total War looks impressive and is fun to play. Be warned though - it's very absorbing so may take up a lot of your life if you get hooked. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: They don't get any better than this!!!
Review: This one is the KING of strategy games, the perfect marriage of RTS to TBS, it will steal many hours of your life away, and you best start buying flowers for your spouse or girlfriend right away after purchasing it. The real time battles are simply awesome, you can have in a custom battle up to 25,600 men on the battlefield at one time if your system can handle it and you have never seen such an awesome sight in any computer game before. No other game company can match this engine for the amount of units you have on the battlefield. The sound, the gnawing and gnashing of teeth as the little units individually fight for their lives, sometimes running, sometimes doing heroic deeds to save the day. Individual generals/leaders for each army with vices and virtues just like people in real life can influence others with vices and virtues, so can your generals and leaders. Just about every historical unit you can think of is included in this time period, with the ability to mod other time periods into the game, that many modders have already done. The Patrician v1.2 is a roman time period mod for MTW and it is simply fantastic. The strategy portion of the game is simular to oh a little bit like civilization where you build buildings that give you upgraded units, or special units like assassins and or spies, religious pieces to convert the heathen on the map, Inquisitors that will eliminate any buildup opposing your factions religious beliefs and heretics. And princesses that you can marry off for alliances with other factions or have your princes marry other factions princesses for the same effect, as well as providing offspring for when each king dies. There's just too much in this game to say it all in 1k words..GET THIS GAME and you won't need any others. ;)
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully complex at first glance but...
Review: The detail given this game is awe inspiring at first, but on close examinantion it's often excessive and superfluous. I found myself stripping away layer after layer until it was actually playable. There must be hundreds of different unit types, and I'm still not sure if it isn't all the same just to get a huge stack of generic spearmen, throw them into the fray, and let the computer auto-calculate. The game offers a huge array of diplomatic agents, but they rarely prove useful. Diplomats and princesses have difficulty actually finding a ruler to propose an alliance to, and even if they do, the AI almost always rejects the proposal. So the player usually ends up not bothering with diplomats and letting computer players come to them. I found spies to be the most useless of all. Supposedly they dig up dirty laundry about a certain individual, but they are absurdly easy to catch and have never in my experience actually succeeded in their mission. Assassins succeed sometimes, but not enough usually to make paying for them worthwhile. Inquisitors are the only agents in the game I found to be useful enough to actually make.
For the most part, the diplomacy part of the game is a joke. The designers should have made this aspect of the game stronger. As in almost all games of strategy, the player gets better results from spending that money on troops and sending them in. The Pope.
He is perhaps the single most annoying aspect of the game. If you even take back a territory which you lost a turn ago to a surprise attack, he threatens to excommunicate your faction for defending itself. For Catholic nations, excommunication is practically unavoidable. And if the player has built piddly little border forts and town militias, it proves to be no more than an annoyance. The Pope's power is so weak in the game that once again, it is more expedient not only to take your territory back, but to go on a counteroffensive. In fact, it is most convenient to simply conquer the Vatican and put a puppet Pope in place so you can do what you want. The gameplay of Medieval: Total War is certainly addictive, but in the end it is little more than your standard strategy game of unbridled and unthinking aggression. The AI is unpredictable enough that it scarcely matters whether you're allied with them or not. They might just get in their heads one morning that they want to attack you when you are much stronger or be peaceful neighbors for a century while they are strong. Even on the expert level, this game presents relatively little challenge for all but the toughest factions. If you have some time that needs to be consumed, I guarantee the mastery of Europe will take hours of your time, but otherwise, look for something with same premise and without all the pretense of complexity.
Rating:
Summary: Great Enhancement of Original
Review: Very nice expansion pack. My experience with these packs is you generally don't get your money's worth. This one is the exception, a fine enhancement of the basic game plus the added campaign of the viking invasion set on an English mapboard. A wide range of added units in both the Viking campaign and the normal game. Gameplay is enhanced with smarter AI in both the battlefield and turn based portions of the game. The new pre-battle troop modification and selection screen is a nice addition. You can actually select the order in which your reinforcements arrive and also which units you want for the intial force involved in the battle. Overall a fine addition to the original and I can't wait for Rome Total War's arrival. Great work Activision and Creative Assembly!!!
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