The expansion pack for Medieval: Total War adds a ton of great content, but little else that's new or improved.
I've always enjoyed the expansion packs for the Total War series much more than the original games. The original Medieval's Viking Invasion and Rome's Barbarian Invasion were smaller, more focused titles that played to the series' strengths (battlefield combat) while cutting down on some of the tedious management on the enormous campaign map. Kingdoms, the expansion pack for Medieval II: Total War, directly follows this pattern and expands upon it by offering not one but four huge new campaigns for "Total Warriors" to sink their teeth into. While the new content doesn't offer any real game play innovations (and the few new features included are of dubious quality) the new campaigns alone will be enough for fans of the series to want it.
At the heart of this expansion are the four new campaign settings. First up is a Crusades map in which a pair of occupying Christian powers (Jerusalem and Antioch) go toe-to-toe with the warriors of Islam and the might of Byzantium to establish the Kingdom of Heaven. Britannia details a 13th century war between the English and the Scots, Irish, Welsh and Norwegians for control of the British Isles. The Teutonic campaign pits the pagan Lithuanians against Christian powers (including the dreaded Teutonic Order of Knights) in a clash between the Old Gods and the New Testament. Finally, the Americas make an appearance in the New World campaign which follows the footsteps of Cortez and the Spanish as they battle to defeat powerful Native American nations such as the Aztecs, Mayans and the Apachean tribes.
Each of these campaigns is of top quality and arguably better than the monstrously huge European map that came with the original game. Players who thought religions were fun in the original game, for example, will have a blast with the Crusades map. Christian nations get awesome knight units that prove their fun value that first time they crash into an exposed enemy flank and display why people without firearms never argue with 1,300 pounds of horse and armor. Playing the Byzantines is more of a diplomatic thrill -- trying to get the Christian and Moslem factions to slaughter each other without falling back on the amusing but notoriously temperamental Greek Fire Throwers.
The Britannia map offers two basic choices. Players can be the English who start holding half the map but quickly find out why nobody tries fighting on four fronts at once while dealing with an internal insurrection. Playing as one of the smaller factions is tougher, but more fun as they try to nibble away at the English and dodge their big, mailed fist. The Teutonic campaign offers the Lithuanians the choice of economic growth by conversion to Christianity at the cost of the loss of pagan-only units. The New World campaign bears more than a little resemblance to Rome: Total War's Alexander expansion (at least while playing as Spain) in which the powerful, technologically advanced but horribly outnumbered Spanish must lean more and more on Indian mercenaries and friendly local powers as they try to defeat the Aztecs to conquer America.
What each of these campaigns share is a smaller map and a tighter and more focused strategic challenge. The biggest drawback of the original game's campaign was the mid-to-late game doldrums that found the player hitting the "autoresolve" button on a lot of one-sided battles. There's no such dead-time in Kingdom's campaigns. A smaller number of provinces on each map along with well-balanced factions and well-paced "events" (such as European Crusades on the Crusades map or a revolt of English nobility in Britannia) keep the game moving and provide constant new obstacles for players to overcome.
The amount of content gets even deeper when replayability is considered. Each map comes with between five and thirteen new factions to play with. Each has its own starting position along with historically inspired strengths and weaknesses. The Byzantines, for example, have their Greek Fire Throwers but must hold on to Constantinople in order to use them. The Teutons have awesome mounted Knights but are hampered economically by only being able to build castles. The clash between the Crescent and the Cross on the Crusade map is a fascinating challenge marked by Christian reliance on heavily armored infantry and an Islamic force built around cavalry and speed. It will take a long time for even the most dedicated Total War fan to burn through this much content.
It's only in the New World campaign where the game's design begins to break down a bit. Ironically, this isn't because the campaign is strategically unbalanced, it's not. It's because the campaign is built around a fight between antagonists that were historically unbalanced. In order for the game to work, the player controlling the native forces had to have a chance against the technologically superior Spanish. As a result, the Native American factions are less fun to play because they're based on massed infantry and huge numbers without the strategic diversity enjoyed by the other factions in the game. While the American campaign is a lot of fun, there was a definite missed opportunity here to explore pre-Columbian Native American warfare, a fascinating and (to our knowledge) under-explored area for strategy games.
There are a few more issues in Kingdoms. Some are carryovers from the original game that Kingdoms does nothing to address. The game's strategic AI on the campaign map has been buffed up a bit but still has some blind spots (like coastal cities) that can be exploited by a savvy player. Cavalry path-finding is still kind of wonky. Players will need to baby-sit the guys on horseback because they sometimes refuse to take anything approaching a direct path to their destination. Even worse, they sometimes pull up short during a cavalry charge. This kind defeats the whole purpose of "charging." The AI of subordinate generals who reinforce the player during multi-army battles is... well... "strategically-challenged" would be a genteel way to put it. A more colorful way would be my loud shouts of "Where are you going, you moron?" and my determination to never use a back-up army again.
Then there's hotseat multiplayer. This is easily the most baffling and pointless addition in Kingdoms. Hot seat multiplayer allows two players to play a campaign map against one another at the same computer. This works fine from a technical standpoint, but does raise the question of why it was included at all. Hot seat multiplayer removes the single greatest strength of the Total War franchise by autoresolving the real-time battlefield fights. What's left is an over-complicated Civilization-style strategy game with very long turns. We suppose there may have been an outcry among Total War fans for this type of gameplay that we somehow missed. In that case, here it is. Enjoy. For anyone who's actually going to try to play this way, though, here's our advice: bring a book -- a long one. We hear the new Stephen King is a good read.
In the end, players who know and love Medieval II won't be dissuaded by the annoyances present in Kingdoms. Minor pathfinding errors and a gameplay mode most will never touch can't possibly compare with the chance to run a Crusade, face down pagan warriors, beat back the Irish or battle a blood-thirsty horde of Aztecs looking for sacrifices. The Creative Assembly team knows what Total War fans want, and the huge amount of new content found in Kingdoms is it.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Once more into the breach, dear friends.
Even assuming that you've played it since it was released, it's a safe bet that there are still some surprises left in Creative Assembly's Medieval 2 Total War. But assuming that you've seen everything there is to see in the game, the developer is offering up a wealth of new content in their latest expansion pack, Medieval 2 Total War: Kingdoms.
The first thing you'll notice about Kingdoms is that it takes a ridiculously long time to install. It seems like ages ago that I was shocked by a game that took up a full gigabyte on my hard drive (No One Lives Forever, I think), and the 4GB's worth of content that this expansion packs makes that seem like small potatoes. On the plus side, each of the game's four campaigns is installed as a separate file, so you can install them as you need them.
Each of the four campaigns covers a historically significant conflict from the Medieval era: a five-way fight for the British Isles, Crusades in the Holy Land, religious wars against pagans in Northern Europe, and even the Spanish conquests in Mezo-America. Each campaign comes with numerous new factions, new units (including named heroes with improved abilities), more detailed maps, and some interesting opportunities to flex your strategic and tactical muscles. Each new campaign also comes with a whole of specific presentation elements, from new cutscenes to entirely new soundtracks.
The Britannia campaign is the meatiest of the lot. Starting in 1258 players can either take on the role of England as she tries to gain control of the islands or of one of four other players -- Wales, Ireland, Scotland or Norway -- as they fight to keep England from gaining dominance. At first glance, it seems like England has the easier task here. Though she has a large empire and lots of troops, she's surrounded by enemies and has lots of problems with unrest at home. In addition to fielding enough armies to take care of the small Welsh and Irish factions, England will have to protect her coasts from Norwegian raids and keep some troops at home to deal with the inevitable uprisings that are sure to come.
Those who thought it odd that the original game didn't have more of an emphasis on the war for the Holy Land will be happy to see the Crusades campaign here. Focusing on the two Crusader kingdoms of Jerusalem and Antioch and their war with the Turks, Egyptians and Arabs, this campaign really captures the spirit of the setting nicely. There's plenty of historical panache here, with mamelukes and mailed knights clashing in front of eastern cities in the desert.
Bishops aren't quite as important as generals or spies, but this is a religious war with two very clear cut opponents. Between them sits the Byzantines with their unreliable but oh-so-enjoyable Greek fire weapons. Off the map to the east and west are other European crusaders and the Mongols. Their appearance will be a nice surprise depending on which faction you're playing and where your borders are.
Though there are other significant players in this campaign, the other real standouts are the Lithuanians. As a slightly less advanced faction, they won't have access to the heavy troop types of their neighbors, but they have plenty of irregular forces that are ideal for fighting in the nearby forests. Moreover, they have very powerful Holy Warriors that they can recruit so long as they remain a pagan faction. Knowing when to convert to Christianity in order to gain the significant diplomatic advantages it brings is a particularly interesting problem for the Lithuanian faction.
The Americas campaign is the biggest departure from the standard Medieval 2 model. Rather than forcing players into a contest of equals, the Americas campaign highlights the technological differences between steel and gunpowder of the European armies and the less advanced but more numerous Native American tribes like the Aztecs and Apaches. While it's an interesting historical simulation, the inequalities inherent in the setting really make it seem like the native factions are designed to lose. Spain starts out with significantly fewer troops, of course, but their technology more than makes up for it, particularly when you consider that the natives have no access to cavalry or boat transport. Sure, it's accurate from a historical standpoint, but it's not nearly as fun as the other campaigns.
AI pathfinding is still a bit wonky, both on the strategic level and the tactical level. On the overland map, armies will automatically choose to go the long way around when shorter routes are blocked by the enemy and cavalry will still run the wrong direction and stop short on charges from time to time. In both cases you can micromanage the movement to get the results you want but it's an issue that should have been resolved.
On the subject of AI, the allied AI in battles isn't always as reliable as it should be, leaving players no option but to personally direct them in battle. But since the entire allied army is led as a single unit, it's a bit unwieldy.
The new expansion also allows gamers a chance to play hotseat multiplayer with automatic battle resolution. Adding to the ways you can play Medieval 2 is never really a bad idea, but there's really no enjoyment to be found here. The strategic phases are far too long to maintain your interest during your off turns, and the automatic resolution pretty much eliminates the game's main attraction, tactical battles.
©2007-09-10, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved