Total War: Rome II

 PC
  • Publisher: Sega
  • Release Date: Sep 2, 2013
User Score
4.4

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 3974 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,184 out of 3974
  2. Mixed: 613 out of 3974
  3. Negative: 2,177 out of 3974
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. awvalle
    Sep 4, 2013
    8
    This game can be reviewed in two ways. Comparing it to all video games, and comparing it to other Total War games. In relation to other games, this game is amazing, a solid 9. It requires thought, has very good graphics and has a sense of epicness and scale no other game can match. Compared to total war games, I'd say it's a 7. Battles are resolved very quickly, optimization isn't great,This game can be reviewed in two ways. Comparing it to all video games, and comparing it to other Total War games. In relation to other games, this game is amazing, a solid 9. It requires thought, has very good graphics and has a sense of epicness and scale no other game can match. Compared to total war games, I'd say it's a 7. Battles are resolved very quickly, optimization isn't great, and the campaign UI isn't my favorite. Diplomacy works decently with other factions, but they don't seem to deal among themselves. Others complain of bugs, but I haven't encountered absolutely none. The AI has seen little to no noticeable improvements from Shogun 2. In the campaign it is quite passive, and in battles, it seems to be worse than in Shogun 2. Probably not as quality a game as Shogun II, but has vastly more replay value. I had decently high expectations, and they were generally met. The Auxiliary system for the Romans is something that I'm very happy about, allowing very powerful armies. The province system is also a plus, although the UI could definitely be improved. The economics are as simplistic as ever unfortunately. If I hadn't bought the game yet, I'd probably wait for 1 or 2 major patches, then definitely jump on.… Expand
  2. Bonsaimancer
    Sep 4, 2013
    2
    A great example, why it´s more worth to be a pirate having paid for this game made me just feel really bitter. I´ve played for 24 h and it really isn´t working properly.

    Diplomacy isn´t working well (as always in TW), soldiers are VERY VERY stupid I hate it how the horses tend to return to fight the spear-men head on even if I order them for the 10th time to withdraw. Also capturing    A great example, why it´s more worth to be a pirate having paid for this game made me just feel really bitter. I´ve played for 24 h and it really isn´t working properly.

    Diplomacy isn´t working well (as always in TW), soldiers are VERY VERY stupid I hate it how the horses tend to return to fight the spear-men head on even if I order them for the 10th time to withdraw. Also capturing routing enemies is compared to Shogun simply broken it´s more like a Terry Fox run with your pals to the borders and eventually someone dies in the process. I can´t see whether my units are tired, can´t see detailed information about their status and mood, general unit is compared to Shogun quite useless. All together the fights are simply BAD I played Shogun campaign a week ago and EVERYTHING was better there....WTH is that supposed to be CA?!

    AI sucks generally, graphics are worse than Shogun 2 and performance is much worse also on the tactical map. Loading times between turns take forever and enemies tend to attack You even if their chances aren´t even visible at the strength bar. The more I write the more problems I suddenly realise...I could carry on like that for an hour, but I´ll rather summarize it in one sentence....

    Please, DON´T BUY THE GAME, because they don´t deserve Your money....at least not now     … Expand
  3. Uknowwho
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    Overall a great game. However flawed by AI issues, long turn cycles during end game (with you only doing 1 2 things) and lack of investment in generals. Guard mode needs to make a return and legionaries should be able to be made to throw javelins at will similar to original RTWI. A couple of strong patches should be able to fix the majority of the issues.
  4. psychoravin
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    I wanted to like it but in this state I cant. I cant beiieve the differnce in scores of the pro reviewers and the fans such broad spread you know something is up when all the pro reviewers think so much of a game. wonder how much they got paid on prop up one of those streamlined games as such. I had two crashes and I've never had crash problems before with any game. I actually after aI wanted to like it but in this state I cant. I cant beiieve the differnce in scores of the pro reviewers and the fans such broad spread you know something is up when all the pro reviewers think so much of a game. wonder how much they got paid on prop up one of those streamlined games as such. I had two crashes and I've never had crash problems before with any game. I actually after a short session wanted to play something else like The Sims 3 how terrible. I even thought of playing the origional RTW but remembered how bad the ai was in that one and all the rest up to Shogun 2. I'd play Shogun 2 but I don't like asian games that much, but I do like challenge so I'd play SPARTAN or SACRIFICE. This one didn't make my interested list though I wanted it to so bad. Needs lots of work.… Expand
  5. CA1994
    Sep 4, 2013
    7
    Total War Rome 2 was supposed to be a great step forward into a new generation of total wars. They hyped up the game way to much. The campaign map is so huge and there is no way to zoom out. Military victory conditions are crazy. Just for Rome it is hold 114 cities! There is no campaign options yet to have lesser victory conditions. The battles are fun especially the naval aspect withTotal War Rome 2 was supposed to be a great step forward into a new generation of total wars. They hyped up the game way to much. The campaign map is so huge and there is no way to zoom out. Military victory conditions are crazy. Just for Rome it is hold 114 cities! There is no campaign options yet to have lesser victory conditions. The battles are fun especially the naval aspect with land. But the campaign map is horrible in size and the fact that cities are in provinces now. If you don't own all the cities in the provenience they are unhappy. Also the fact that you have to passive the population that takes so long. There is different cultures that really hurt public order. Cities start out generally unhappy until you control the whole province and can issue a edict that can improve happiness. At least from what I played it seems like armies can only be 10 units large. Also on day 1 the battles I played online were laggy. I am happy to get back the factions and away from the avatar they did that part right. The awesome battles are the only reason I am giving it a 7 instead of 6.… Expand
  6. Nostok
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    I don't understand what all the negativity is about. This game is great! I've been a fan of the Total War series for at least a decade now. The games have steadily improved but have always been fun. Rome II is another exceptional achievement. I've been playing for about 15 hours now and have encountered no bugs, no crashes, no graphical issues. The only thing I can figure is thatI don't understand what all the negativity is about. This game is great! I've been a fan of the Total War series for at least a decade now. The games have steadily improved but have always been fun. Rome II is another exceptional achievement. I've been playing for about 15 hours now and have encountered no bugs, no crashes, no graphical issues. The only thing I can figure is that people don't understand that strategy and military tactics are what this game is about, not run in the middle and shoot as in the millions of multiplayer hell games.

    There is almost no learning curve if you've played the previous Total War games. A nice addition is the bird's eye view in the battle space. While I can't experience the highest graphics setting with my limited pc, the graphics I can achieve are still great!

    CA's commitment to patching and fixing bugs is commendable.

    Great work CA and don't listen to all the haters.    … Expand
  7. StepYourGameUp
    Sep 4, 2013
    2
    Simply frustrating to have paid $79.95 USD, which ended up being closer to $90.00 AUD! For a product that had made a lot of promises but did NOT deliver on most of them, feels like a beta.
    Performance optimisation is a joke.
    Battlefield Siege AI is seldom smarter than playing against a 6 year old. Campaign map UI is sloppy and counter productive for mouse input. Texture quality is sub    Simply frustrating to have paid $79.95 USD, which ended up being closer to $90.00 AUD! For a product that had made a lot of promises but did NOT deliver on most of them, feels like a beta.
    Performance optimisation is a joke.
    Battlefield Siege AI is seldom smarter than playing against a 6 year old.
    Campaign map UI is sloppy and counter productive for mouse input.
    Texture quality is sub par even on maximum setting. General graphical fidelity is WAY below what was shown.
    ABOVE ALL.. the game crashes on most people systems, broken product essentially.
    Thanks for charging me almost $100 to be a beta tester CA!    … Expand
  8. Ackz
    Sep 4, 2013
    8
    Great game, really captures the Total War feel. After playing a lot of Shogun 2 it's refreshing with the changes they've made, especially with how there are a lot more actions available for units from the get-go. Of course there are some issues keeping it from a 10, these can be summed up as follows: some unit actions don't always work as they should; some units have balance issues;Great game, really captures the Total War feel. After playing a lot of Shogun 2 it's refreshing with the changes they've made, especially with how there are a lot more actions available for units from the get-go. Of course there are some issues keeping it from a 10, these can be summed up as follows: some unit actions don't always work as they should; some units have balance issues; graphics drivers not up-to-date so lower framerate; long wait times ending turns in multiplayer; incapable AI. Overall load times are much, much better than in Shogun 2 at least and with the weekly patches it should run fine for most everyone in a matter of a few weeks. The core game however, very solid and worthy of the Total War title!… Expand
  9. jseph1234
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    This game was not ready for release and requires a lot of changes to make it worth playing:
    I gave it a score 5/10 due to the following:
    1. Capture point concept in general: Causes the A.I. to sit back and just guard those points and not properly reinforce their beleaguered troops that are under fire. Plus, sometimes you get the A.I. just camping those points, very frustrating. 2.    This game was not ready for release and requires a lot of changes to make it worth playing:
    I gave it a score 5/10 due to the following:

    1. Capture point concept in general: Causes the A.I. to sit back and just guard those points and not properly reinforce their beleaguered troops that are under fire. Plus, sometimes you get the A.I. just camping those points, very frustrating.

    2. Battle Animation Speed/Length of battles: The animations are moving WAY too fast and the units are dying WAY WAY WAY too quick. The length of the battles are absurd.
    3. Blobbing and lack of cohesion of unit lines (A.I. and Player): Perhaps this is due to animation/battle speed but this is not ancient warfare, particularly when you have enemy troops able to push through a phalanx; that is not going to happen without someone dying.

    4. User Interface Cards for Battle are ridiculously obstructive, hard to read and don't provide nearly enough information    … Expand
  10. Holyhesk
    Sep 4, 2013
    8
    Ignore idiots giving this a 0. Thier computers would probably struggle playing Pacman. Played only 30 mins of the campaign and it's by far the nicest looking TW yet. Running like a dream at the moment on Extreme settings. Giving this 8 because it would be unfair to rate it at 10 after only 30mins. Can't wait to load it up again.
  11. knightsbore
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    So sad to see how quickly they fall. When you look deep into this game you can see how they really tried to get some of their old problems right. The problem is they completely lied on so many things, made a HORRIBLE UI, and pretty much killed the series for me. I loved every single previous game, they had their problems but I wanted to work through them, because the game when it workedSo sad to see how quickly they fall. When you look deep into this game you can see how they really tried to get some of their old problems right. The problem is they completely lied on so many things, made a HORRIBLE UI, and pretty much killed the series for me. I loved every single previous game, they had their problems but I wanted to work through them, because the game when it worked was so much fun. This game is not fun, I end up just charging my infantry at highest difficulty head on because if I try to implement a strategy it wont work. The campaign controls are clunky and impossible to understand. This game is so many steps back from even Shogun 2 its sad. Sega seems to now like to copy what happened with aliens colonial marines, as I can honestly compare it to this.… Expand
  12. aRussian
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I see many giving 10's saying this is "normal" for CA. It's time to demand more because this is horrifying. I won't make excuses for CA even though Rome 1 brought me on board and I enjoyed most of the other games in the series.

    This was a gigantic PR campaign just to rustle up some dough for a largely disgusting product. Like, I feel like I stuck my hand in a toilet from just handling    I see many giving 10's saying this is "normal" for CA. It's time to demand more because this is horrifying. I won't make excuses for CA even though Rome 1 brought me on board and I enjoyed most of the other games in the series.

    This was a gigantic PR campaign just to rustle up some dough for a largely disgusting product. Like, I feel like I stuck my hand in a toilet from just handling it and being part of it. They got that much right.

    As for the game:

    This is one of those "click master" games. The battles are so terribly fast that it's a big step back from ANY game in the series. Some complained Shogun 2 was fast but I felt that it wasn't too terribly bad in sieges and with skirmishes prior to clashes. Rome 2... There is no point in moving around the field maintaining formation. As soon as the armies clash, you get the same thing. A big blob. No maintaining ranks like the good old Rome. And worse, the units will automatically go running after whatever unit they are attacking when they rout after a hundred men fall in half a second. It's a glorified matching game of rock-paper-scissors. You click the rock unit to go attack the scissors unit while avoiding the paper unit. That's all. Hitting rock on scissors will blow the unit up near instantaneously. Where are my fire at will, loose formation, and guard buttons??? And what is will all these stupid "abilities" that makes everything seem so arcade? There is an ability for everything! Generals have multiple and units have their own. So it's a key-smashing endeavor of rock-paper-scissors... Not total war.

    I expected there to be factions more powerful than others, but you've got balance issues with some "super factions" popping up. I did expect this as I do in most games so won't complain so readily here.
    The diverse units claim is probably an utter sham as some units look rather familiar and like a copy-past-smear job. The only thing that differs are the names for some. While I expected it somewhat given that there probably wouldn't be the number of unique units they claimed, it was saddening to see that you have barbarian units, hellenic units, roman units, and eastern units that only "diverge" on name. I haven't seen nearly all but it seems to me that you have 4 set types of units with different names.

    And the AI everyone is so fond of... I'm not even sure I want to discuss it because even after cranking the difficulty ALL the way up, I still found myself easily being able to dispatch armies I had NO business dispatching. The enemy will not defend walls and is preoccupied with amassing giant blobs on capture points within the city. Walk into city meeting little resistance other than those magical unmanned arrow firing towers (step backwards from Medieval 2 and Shogun 2) and having to order your blob to attack their blob and wait an entire 5 minutes for several thousand troops to be dead. I think only a giant microwave could kill that many so quickly...
    The "reactive AI" they love to show off really doesn't vary much. It goes with that rock-paper-scissors approach and a rock unit will chase a scissors unit waaaaayyyy out of place until you can throw a paper unit at their rock unit with no problem. No matter the difficulty. It's like the AI has tunnel vision and just zooms in on one unit it wants to take out with this unit of its and chases it to the moon.

    I was lucky in that I don't seem to be experiencing the crashes as often as most. The diplomacy, however, is just freaking frustrating. I know the original Rome was a bit lax in trade acceptance. Ceasefire and then offer trade. Deal. Bit too easy. This game it is an absolute chore to procure trade relations. Like, learn how to do handstands, juggle, and sing all at the same time. It's a joke. I just gave up for the most part and concentrated on my borders.

    Moving an army to water creates a super navy capable of murdering ACTUAL navies. So what is the point of trying to get naval superiority when a super navy can just march right off the land and into the water? Isn't naval superiority about denying forces the ability to land at X? I actually haven't had much battle time with navies so I'm afraid I don't have too much of a legitimate complaint other than those spontaneous super navies from an army deciding to grow sea legs.

    Since I'm approaching the max, I suppose I just have to thank people for actually reading if they did and am sorry I didn't get to positives. Graphics were good on mine, although faces looked... errrr, off. Please wait to buy, you are only supplying the monster and enabling this disgusting behaviour of releasing unfinished material because people will by it. Demand better. Save yourself the despair until they fix it. If you were looking for Rome II, you'll be disappointed. this product is more like Rome RTS. It's a sad day after so much excitement...    … Expand
  13. Kackur
    Sep 4, 2013
    6
    The score I'm giving this game reflects it's current state. I feel there may be a decent title hiding here behind the many bugs and performance issues but it is rather hard to see at the moment. Currently the game is very close to unplayable. It is filling with graphical glitches, performance issues and crashes. For the more tech savy of us there are ways to tweak the settings so theThe score I'm giving this game reflects it's current state. I feel there may be a decent title hiding here behind the many bugs and performance issues but it is rather hard to see at the moment. Currently the game is very close to unplayable. It is filling with graphical glitches, performance issues and crashes. For the more tech savy of us there are ways to tweak the settings so the game does run somewhat smoothly and stable, however I feel many people will not get to that point.
    Bugs aside there are other issues with this game that really need to be addressed. The largest of these being the UI. It is complete Don't get me wrong it looks very pretty, but that is all that it has going for it. The biggest grip I have with it is the lack of detail. This is a game with countless stats that you need to manage to succeed at, however there is no way to get a list of the current stats or a description of what they do for either your cities or generals. When your generals or cities gain promotions you get to choose between bonuses such as +1 authority or +10% growth rate. However, since you have no way to check what your current values are or even what these stats do exactly you really can't make an informed decision. I still have no clue what authority does. Searching it in the games online manual comes up with nothing. Additionally the games does not list your cities current growth rates. So how are you supposed to decide if a 10% growth rate increase is a good direction to go in? And this is the same for virtually all the stats. About the only stat that it does show you is food. However it doesn't explain how this affects anything!! Does having more food make my cities grow faster? Or does it affect happiness? Seriously what is the point of all these stats if we can't use them to further the game play...
    Now on to the tactical section. Once again the UI fails here. Every time you reselect a group of units it resets their formation. So you are forced to give them new formation orders every single time you want to move them. Additionally for some reason they decided to do away with the group movement and rotation controls. As far as I can tell there is no way to just tell your troops to walk forward. Additionally when you have multiple units selected you often can't tell them to run as a group. Sometimes you can sometimes you can't. This is true even when all the units are capable of running.
    That being said there are things done right. The best thing that this game currently has going for it is the extreme diversity in troops and cultures. It is obvious the developers put a lot of time in fleshing out the various factions and I really appreciate that. This was one thing that I couldn't stand about Shogun. All the factions were just slight variations of a common set, which made sense for historical reasons, but at the same time deprived it of re-playability.
    Other than that Rome II does right what many of the other titles in the series do, however in many aspects UI especially it is a step backwards.
    I really hope that CA fixes this title. I see potential here, but as it currently stands I can't give this a score higher than a 6.    … Expand
  14. VideogamesIlike
    Sep 4, 2013
    6
    Rome 2 is certinally a disappointment, though hardly the worst game ever as many user reviews state. It does, however, more than earn it's mixed reviews.

    On one hand the game is beautiful on higher end systems like my own, giving a gravity and scale to the conflict unseen in any Total war game before. It brings cultural diversity that Shogun 2 sorely lacked also. However, in many    Rome 2 is certinally a disappointment, though hardly the worst game ever as many user reviews state. It does, however, more than earn it's mixed reviews.

    On one hand the game is beautiful on higher end systems like my own, giving a gravity and scale to the conflict unseen in any Total war game before. It brings cultural diversity that Shogun 2 sorely lacked also.

    However, in many ways it is broken. Good ideas like internal politics are not at all explained, and are poorly executed at best. The player seems to have far more limited control over their cities, with the new interface robbing cities of much of their infomation. I often find myself at very low public order with little ability to work out why, or what I can do about it. Though the new army system is cool in theory, and it's nice to give armies some personality, it robs the game of some tactics, especially the- who should I hold back to garrison, who should I advance- question. Though their are many cultures, and a great deal more diversity than Shogun, there is a startling lack of unique troops, and the large number of filler factions with one or two provinces only seems to rob the primary factions of any unit individuality. Battles are far too fast paced, with combat taking mere seconds, gone are the epic scrums, now battles rarely take longer than five minutes at best. Mist of which is moving your armies. The AI hasn't improved much at all, and all the challenge in hard simply comes from relentless numbers, rather than genuine, fair tactics. Multiplayer has been massively stripped down from a Shogun high point, with all progression and army individuality dropped to return to a comparatively stale no stakes battle. Rome is a strong game on it's own terms, but very weak for a total war game. I have come away more disappointed with Rome than any TW game to date. A sad mistep for the successor to my favorite total war game. It lacks the depth of paradox, and the responsive war-based fun of the older games. The worst of both worlds.    … Expand
  15. aaronwestley
    Sep 4, 2013
    4
    Aside from consistent crashes when loading a tactical battle, the game is ok. If no crashes, would give an 8. Nice looks, removed some features I didn't enjoy in Total War: Rome.
  16. Derfel
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    I am a big fan of Total War series, I bought every single game&dlc up to date. But I will never buy anything from CA. Rome II is a real disappointment. It's developed for 12 years old retarded CoD players.

    - Combat is too fast paced. Thousand of men die in a few minutes and even the most crowded battles are over in 3-4 minutes. (No I am serious) No tactics, no flanking, no retreating    I am a big fan of Total War series, I bought every single game&dlc up to date. But I will never buy anything from CA. Rome II is a real disappointment. It's developed for 12 years old retarded CoD players.

    - Combat is too fast paced. Thousand of men die in a few minutes and even the most crowded battles are over in 3-4 minutes. (No I am serious) No tactics, no flanking, no retreating etc...
    - It's rushed. CA didn't even try to optimize it. Textures are like crap and it's laggy. It looks nothing like trailers.
    - They promised to support low end computers and laptops but it's not even working on high end PC's.
    - Navies are pointless. Your armies can just march into the sea and 20 ships will magically appear to transport them. They can easily destroy most of the warships.
    - They have removed a lot of useful features from past games.
    - It's an over-simplistic arcade-like game. Special abilities are terrible.
    - Day one dlc.
    - İncredibly stupid AI
    - Stupid UI made for consoles. (feel free to not believe this, you will see.)
    - No family tree, no veteran units, nothing we know from good old Total War games.

    I can expand this list but I am bored of this game. Sorry for grammar mistakes, I am not a native speaker    … Expand
  17. Efa
    Sep 4, 2013
    7
    A good game, with huge potential, if not for the fact it simply doesn't feel finished.
    Riddled with bugs and frame rate issues, this is only a Beta. Plus, with all the "new" features (by which I mean all the removed features) It just doesn't feel like a sequel, or even part of the series.
  18. N1kke
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    I have been waiting this game for a while but what i get Broken game, i have super rig and my FPS is 15-25-fps i luv total war series but why release buggy game i don't wanna play low settings or medium because i know my rig can do better than that and EVEN medium settings lag is terrible..
  19. HazardGamer
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    The game is full of bugs

    Insanely stupid AI. The only way it could possibly protect a capital city is if it had 40 units guarding it. The AI also doesn't know how to use siege weapons, and will often fail to even get past the wall. Death from above, and a 2000 man army lies dead at my feet... with 3 of my units lost. Some cities can only contain 5 (capital) or 3 buildings, yet    The game is full of bugs

    Insanely stupid AI. The only way it could possibly protect a capital city is if it had 40 units guarding it.

    The AI also doesn't know how to use siege weapons, and will often fail to even get past the wall. Death from above, and a 2000 man army lies dead at my feet... with 3 of my units lost.

    Some cities can only contain 5 (capital) or 3 buildings, yet nothing was done to display why a capital city such as Rome can't contain 6 buildings. Hey, maybe it's just a bug.... as if there wasn't enough of those already.

    The AI will constantly abandon cities (capital ones aswell) even if it has more units than the approaching enemy.

    Agents who can't enter armies, cities or board ships.....

    Siege engines are bugged so much that units either get stuck or fail to actually use them.    … Expand
  20. vodafak
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Terrible performance issues, looks worse then Rise/Fall of the Samurai, crashes, quite a lot of bugs. Land battles are too fast, almost pointless, while naval battles are terrible. AI is terrible, even user interface is one of the worst I've ever seen. Waiting for AI turn to finish takes forever. There are bunch of balance issues as well...etc.
    I don't think they got one thing right with    Terrible performance issues, looks worse then Rise/Fall of the Samurai, crashes, quite a lot of bugs. Land battles are too fast, almost pointless, while naval battles are terrible. AI is terrible, even user interface is one of the worst I've ever seen. Waiting for AI turn to finish takes forever. There are bunch of balance issues as well...etc.
    I don't think they got one thing right with this game. It's a failure of epic proportions.
    Worst of all, CA clearly lied about the performance requirements and I can't even get a refund on Steam.    … Expand
  21. eagle
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    I think this game is great overall. Even though it has some bugs and doesn't run well, but it has beautiful graphics and great gameplay. The animation, graphics, sound, and gameplay dynamics were completely redone from the previous total war games. Bugs and performance issues should be fixed in a couple of weeks and patches, so therefore I don't think people should judge this game uponI think this game is great overall. Even though it has some bugs and doesn't run well, but it has beautiful graphics and great gameplay. The animation, graphics, sound, and gameplay dynamics were completely redone from the previous total war games. Bugs and performance issues should be fixed in a couple of weeks and patches, so therefore I don't think people should judge this game upon those issues.… Expand
  22. THEWERESHEEP
    Sep 4, 2013
    8
    I don't understand why this game is receiving such hate, we all know CA releases games a tad too early but they always show strong post launch support for their products. I bet all the major kinks will be sorted out with in the coming weeks.

    As for game play it was exactly what I wanted. An improved version of the first Total War that I ever played with great visuals and increased    I don't understand why this game is receiving such hate, we all know CA releases games a tad too early but they always show strong post launch support for their products. I bet all the major kinks will be sorted out with in the coming weeks.

    As for game play it was exactly what I wanted. An improved version of the first Total War that I ever played with great visuals and increased historical accuracy. I don't have a problem adjusting to the new UI either. You just need to dig a little deeper and you'll learn it fairly quickly. The only issues that I have are short but brutal land battles and repetitive naval battles in which all that occurs is a massive ****ing ram fest.

    As for everyone having issues with their games crashing and horrible graphics and texture issues, I've got no idea what the hell is going on as my game has only crashed once in fifteen hours. I can also run it on extreme/ultra at a solid 40 fps.

    P.S Sega published this game not EA, the amount of idiots bashing the wrong people is astounding.    … Expand
  23. zionis24
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Bugs, I can handle, I can wait for the patches... But what I can't stand are some ridiculous fantasies presented in this game. If you have any knowledge of history--or dare I say, commonsense?--you would find some things represented in this game immature and disturbingly retarded.

    When I see half-naked men on steroids marching toward me in drilled line formations I start to wonder if    Bugs, I can handle, I can wait for the patches... But what I can't stand are some ridiculous fantasies presented in this game. If you have any knowledge of history--or dare I say, commonsense?--you would find some things represented in this game immature and disturbingly retarded.

    When I see half-naked men on steroids marching toward me in drilled line formations I start to wonder if CA is insulting my intelligence or if they were just trying to out do Hollywood.

    Campaign map is very innacurate. Embarrassing.    … Expand
  24. Falrinth
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Well for me and all my numerous friends who were hyped for Rome 2 this game is huge disapointment. It looks and works worse than shogun 2. Looks like half trough development phase. Shaders not working, AA not working properly, performance is horrible at i5,i7 and to date GPUs while shogun 2 looked much sweeter and FPS high and smooth. The look of this game doesnt look at all, not even 20%Well for me and all my numerous friends who were hyped for Rome 2 this game is huge disapointment. It looks and works worse than shogun 2. Looks like half trough development phase. Shaders not working, AA not working properly, performance is horrible at i5,i7 and to date GPUs while shogun 2 looked much sweeter and FPS high and smooth. The look of this game doesnt look at all, not even 20% of how its shown on "screenshots" from producer. On top of that numerous game braking bugs, broken AI, horrible placeholder interface, bugs, battle speed silly fast, awkward camera, awkward units behavior, fights looking far worse than shogun 2... well i dont know where to stop, but this game is just cr... compared to predecesor. No fun at all to play... Ah, and btw. shaders seems to be broken aswell no difference which one i choose at system that can handle them all it all looks like if there would be some cr.. shader on.… Expand
  25. Barca
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    We just bought a console port.
    I redact my 2 out of 10 and give a 0 out of 10 for lies and trickery.
    Look for Rome 2 on PS4 and Xbox One.
    I really wish I hadn't preordered this game.
    Facepalms.
  26. Midgetsmasher
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I feel shamed that i bought this. I shouldn't have listened to all the marketing. They made us think this game was a state of the art version of Rome I. Well as you may have noticed.. it is not and you should avoid it.
  27. ROME2BETRAYAL
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Terrible performance even in high end rigs (4670k @4.4, z87saber 16gigs and 770 lighting).

    No beta testing carried in this game whatsoever (CANT EVEN FINISH PROLOGUE, WTF?) Many good features that were great in Shogun 2 were removed like being able to guide your faction leader/general through a unique military career, now every general is disposable and you get an infinite pool of    Terrible performance even in high end rigs (4670k @4.4, z87saber 16gigs and 770 lighting).

    No beta testing carried in this game whatsoever (CANT EVEN FINISH PROLOGUE, WTF?)

    Many good features that were great in Shogun 2 were removed like being able to guide your faction leader/general through a unique military career, now every general is disposable and you get an infinite pool of them.

    SEGA forced CA to rush this unfinished "videogame" and invested more in ADVERTISING the game than actually MAKING IT.

    A.I. IS TERRIBLE. WORST THAN ANY TW GAME SINCE ROME 1. Unbelievable.

    Avoid this game AT ALL cost until SEGA apologizes for such a colossal up and fix all the they DIDN'T ****ING BETA TEST.

    I'm very frustrated and angry at a videogame that was supposed to be THE VIDEOGAME. If you played it, you would understand.    … Expand
  28. Davido1
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Made an account just to get this off my chest, this game is a do not buy if you love the series. If you buy this game you are only encouraging more of the same and we will never see a decent game from these guys again. There is no tactical combat in this game, the turns take too long, there is not much to do when your turn is even up.

    It is not even in the same league as other games of    Made an account just to get this off my chest, this game is a do not buy if you love the series. If you buy this game you are only encouraging more of the same and we will never see a decent game from these guys again. There is no tactical combat in this game, the turns take too long, there is not much to do when your turn is even up.

    It is not even in the same league as other games of the series. The game has lost it's soul, some say they are trying to appeal to casuals...I don't know but in the end it appeals basically to no one.    … Expand
  29. Kypdurron11
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    General Cap= bad idea
    Victory Point= You can win or lose battles just by avoiding people and sitting on random parts of the map...
    Confusing UI= I can handle a abundance of UI I've played wow with enough add-ons to fill the screen. This how ever was amazingly un-intuitive, confusing and just unpolished Lag ridden=I complete my move in campaign and spend the next 5 minutes waiting on AI    General Cap= bad idea
    Victory Point= You can win or lose battles just by avoiding people and sitting on random parts of the map...
    Confusing UI= I can handle a abundance of UI I've played wow with enough add-ons to fill the screen. This how ever was amazingly un-intuitive, confusing and just unpolished
    Lag ridden=I complete my move in campaign and spend the next 5 minutes waiting on AI so I can play again
    Overall Uninspired performance from this company, truly sad    … Expand
  30. Naku
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    I've been waiting for this game with hope since i'm Total War fan, i played all titles in series since first Shogun. I would not tell that this is worst launch in Total War series history but it's close to Empire. But since CA have so much experience now in 2013 im suprised that this game came in such terrible contition. I cant point out pros for this game becousei just can't enjoy playingI've been waiting for this game with hope since i'm Total War fan, i played all titles in series since first Shogun. I would not tell that this is worst launch in Total War series history but it's close to Empire. But since CA have so much experience now in 2013 im suprised that this game came in such terrible contition. I cant point out pros for this game becousei just can't enjoy playing it right now, there are so many bugs and glitches that eh...

    - Horrible optimalization, horrible performance even on high-end machines.
    - Clunky UI
    - Loading times
    - False advertising, they showed something different on thieir alpha version.
    - Way too fast battles, every battle ends in under 10 mins.

    Big, big disapointment...    … Expand
  31. GerbilTracker
    Sep 4, 2013
    2
    It gets a 2 because I could get it to run, and it didn't crash...although the game looks terrible...with everything minimized and on low, i still watch as the game drops to bellow 10 FPS during benchmarking (wherein I got my first achievement...Play 1 hour of Rome II...yeah, I received it while benchmarking just to try and play the game at an FPS that wouldn't make my eyes hurt and bleed).It gets a 2 because I could get it to run, and it didn't crash...although the game looks terrible...with everything minimized and on low, i still watch as the game drops to bellow 10 FPS during benchmarking (wherein I got my first achievement...Play 1 hour of Rome II...yeah, I received it while benchmarking just to try and play the game at an FPS that wouldn't make my eyes hurt and bleed). They said this game would be optimized for high and low end machines. Blatant lie. The AI is hilarious...and by hilarious i mean silly and very non-threatening. I think this game actually took a step back from Rome I in that department...and also yes, I am a guy who created a metacritic account just so I could express my absolute disappointment in this game and Creative Assembly. With a system WELL above the recommended specs, I have never had so many problems getting a game to work properly....and I do mean ever. I own every other total war game except for Napoleon, and I am a huge fan of Shogun(1 and 2) as well as Medieval and Rome 1. This absolute piece of beta crap is inexcusable. I am one of the most forgiving gamers you could meet, but this garbage needs to end. First and last time I will ever be suckered into buying a game via pre-order, and fat chance I will support Creative again until they change this pathetic business practice. Many of us are to blame as well...if you pre-ordered like I did, its sad to say that we have become part of the problem....we are rewarding poor business practices by doing this (Thanks to TotalBiscuit for helping me to see that light). To those that read this, Rome II is yet another warning bell. We, as the gamer community, should down right REFUSE to pre-order anything. Period. Rome II is a GREAT example of why, and unless we hit them were it counts, they will continue this arrogant, terrible behavior...all the while patting themselves on the back on the way to the bank while throwing in-game dress up clothes at us to try and satisfy the anger of being lied to and having our trust abused. Thanks to any for reading.… Expand
  32. 39OakTree
    Sep 4, 2013
    2
    Beware the mindless drones are striking 10/10 for a halfsquezed on a platter. This game is not worth a green rating, its way to unpolished to receive even a yellow one unless youre a fanboy cretins ofcourse. how about some of you actually buy the game first and play an hour before posting this terribly uncritical comments that sound like diarriah in a kindergarten.
  33. tomhardy
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    The worst gaming experience in my life. Played only few battles, but graphics look worse than tetris and AI sucks. For some reasons game crashed 2 times.Definitely unfinished product

    Now I will give it 4/10 because game needs a patch.
  34. Latrec
    Sep 4, 2013
    3
    After my senses came down from the inital hype of this game, I came to write this off as Terrible. This is why:
    -Terrible UI: Both within the campaign map and battle screens, the UI is simply too complex to easily understand and remember. I handled RTW1's UI within seconds of playing it. No such luck in RTW2; buttons are randomly placed, look alike, and are hidden out of the way. I'm    After my senses came down from the inital hype of this game, I came to write this off as Terrible. This is why:
    -Terrible UI: Both within the campaign map and battle screens, the UI is simply too complex to easily understand and remember. I handled RTW1's UI within seconds of playing it. No such luck in RTW2; buttons are randomly placed, look alike, and are hidden out of the way. I'm spending too much time wondering what a button does again, rather than actually you know playing.
    -Stupid Character/abilities:
    a) WTF is cunning? Authority? What does it affect specifically? I cannot seem to find this information anywhere, EVEN IN THE ENCYCLOPYDEA! WTF?
    b) The Rally troops ability used to be a button to keep wavering units from routing... Now it just buffs a single unit instead... And the second wind button? wtf? RTW1 was an attempt at being historical while keeping the game balanced and fun.. RTW2 is the exact opposite. Fail.
    c) The lack of a family tree is a bit of a letdown, but there are other features that have been implemented to continue to make things somewhat interesting.

    Enemy AI: On the campaign map the enemy is simply TOO defensinve (and even incompetent at that, sometimes). I've sent small armies as map scouts before, only to spot an army three times the size within reach of me, BUT because I wasn't yet near the city, that army never attacked my scouting party. It just sat there, waiting. I've also marched towards a city (while suffering from a plague/-20% morale) only to have the army garrisoning it run away, wait until I conquer the city, then return to reclaim their city. Their reconquista fails and they get destroyed but they could've potentially defended their town had they simply stayed put in it.

    Protraits: They are ugly. Confusing. GTFO.

    Lag: I can run Shogun 2 on ultra. I can run Skyrim with 4k texture mods, ultra settings, ENB presets, extended LODS, and a ton of other graphic mods, just fine. Hell... My computer will start to overheat before I really see a hit to my FPS. But this game... It lagged with 500 units total on the battlefield. It lagged again on a lower setting with a less detailed map. And it lagged again on High setting with a similar map. Clearly EA needs to fix this aspect of the game.

    On the plus side the map is more detailed than before. No more barbarian cities; all cities are owned by a faction. I believe the dev team may have also fixed the glitch/ability to make 500,000gpt conquering only mediterranean coastal cities, but I'm as of today unsure, as I've only played the Suebi so far.

    And last but not least, a word to EA: I truly understand the marketing/financing impact of DLCs, but developping a DLC alongside the game itself is just wrong. It's like buying a house and realising you need to spend another $xxx on the garage attached to it. Wtf?    … Expand
  35. betts_corey
    Sep 4, 2013
    9
    This is a Good Game, and I will stand by my "9". I do not see how people can justify giving the game a Zero simply because 1) there machine cannot run it (which is a lot of them) or 2) small, petty superficial problems that will be fixed in a few weeks. It is sad that the game is getting rated so low because of people's ignorance and lack of patience. It is a solid game. The Cultures allThis is a Good Game, and I will stand by my "9". I do not see how people can justify giving the game a Zero simply because 1) there machine cannot run it (which is a lot of them) or 2) small, petty superficial problems that will be fixed in a few weeks. It is sad that the game is getting rated so low because of people's ignorance and lack of patience. It is a solid game. The Cultures all look and play differently, unlike Shogun 2 where each faction had 2 or 3 unique units but all played identically. There are no game breaking problems IF you have a good computer and many of the "major issues" will be gone within a few weeks. If you like Total War games, This game is for you.… Expand
  36. jesterx7769
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    The new studio has ruined this game.

    -Graphics: I have a newly updated gfx card and good system that I can run every other game on highest settings like Grid 2, however in Rome 2 I get 20fps, seriously? This may be worth it if the gfx were good but the textures and gfx are horrible. Each unit is unique which isn't worth the sacrifice. The world map is also horrible I have no idea why it    The new studio has ruined this game.

    -Graphics: I have a newly updated gfx card and good system that I can run every other game on highest settings like Grid 2, however in Rome 2 I get 20fps, seriously? This may be worth it if the gfx were good but the textures and gfx are horrible. Each unit is unique which isn't worth the sacrifice. The world map is also horrible I have no idea why it looks so bad compared to games like Crusader Kings 2 or EU4.

    -The voicing and character models is bad

    -AI and such is the same as always, so is gameplay.

    Sadly it is just the graphical performance that makes this game completely unplayable. Another new studio has ruined a good franchise they are just using the name to get sales    … Expand
  37. v1ctor
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    First off, let me say that you don't need a high end computer to enjoy Rome II. If your machine can handle Shogun II, it can also handle Rome II. That being said, you will have to play around with the settings a little bit to make sure the game runs at 30-40fps average in large battles. The new UI can take some time getting used to, especially if you're a long time Shogun II player, butFirst off, let me say that you don't need a high end computer to enjoy Rome II. If your machine can handle Shogun II, it can also handle Rome II. That being said, you will have to play around with the settings a little bit to make sure the game runs at 30-40fps average in large battles. The new UI can take some time getting used to, especially if you're a long time Shogun II player, but once you get the hang of it, it's very intuitive and easy to use.

    Graphics are absolutely amazing even on mid range computers. Like I said, if your computer can run Shogun II you shouldn't have any problems. [Word of advice: Lower Unit Details and Unit Size (CPU bound) as well as Shadows and Water Quality (GPU bound) if you're experiencing low FPS in large battles].

    If you've never played a Total War game before, because you thought that they were too difficult and tedious too learn, give this game a try.

    As for the technical issues some people have mentioned, I can only speak for myself but in 20h of gameplay I've experienced only a single crash. Pretty amazing for a brand new PC release if you ask me.

    Last but not least, I'd like to add that the game certainly isn't a 10 out of 10. But due to the large amount of unfair and braindead troll comments, I deceided to rate it 10/10 anyway. It's easily a 8 out of 10 maybe even a 9 out of 10 if you're a hardcore RTS player.    … Expand
  38. LT_sigerius
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Terrible game, both in terms of historical validity, and in terms of gameplay and unit stats, special abilities. Poor optimization and the imbalance in every moment. DONT BUY THIS GAME
  39. Aquilifer11
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Sorry this game is a complete disappointment. I've played first Rome and it is one of my favourite games of all time. Now this one plays like it is written by a completely different programmer team. The design and interface is awful, gameplay is dumbed down. Waste of time and money!
  40. Pikko79
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    One of the biggest fails in gaming industry this year. I preordered this game and was hoping to enjoy it. However, this game doens't play as good as Medieval and Shogun. CA removed many things such as city management and family tree. I loved these features and now the are gone. Interface looks not so good indeed. I will continue to play because I paid money, but I really dislike this game,
  41. bzdt1
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    The main problem of this game is that no provide "wow effect" anymore, nothing new, just shogun 2 with some new animations and skins, very boring technical problems
  42. histomaniaque
    Sep 4, 2013
    9
    I really don't understand all the hate about this game. People review it basing themselves on the bugs which are to be fixed 1 week after launch. They waited so long for this game (so did I, but not fooling myself) that their expectations were unreachable and are therefore really disappointed. Seriously, this game may deserve a 6 or 7 if you don't like it, but all these 0 aren't correct.I really don't understand all the hate about this game. People review it basing themselves on the bugs which are to be fixed 1 week after launch. They waited so long for this game (so did I, but not fooling myself) that their expectations were unreachable and are therefore really disappointed. Seriously, this game may deserve a 6 or 7 if you don't like it, but all these 0 aren't correct.
    But what I have been playing for already 15 hours is in fact a great game which needs minor fixes beside what have always been Total War games' real flaw: its AI (which is why I'm not giving a 10). CA has in fact improved much, you don't feel like you can't lose anymore after the 10th turn like in Shogun. There's always that mighty eastern empire or that gallic confederation that makes the game constantly hard (even when minor civilisations are very easily crushed). If you have a strong computer, this game is beautiful, music is magnificent, voice acting is splendid and the game is really immersive all in all. The different civilisations are really different to play and it has been done well (I tested Iceni, Rome, Pontus and Egypt).
    So this is a great game and the critic reviews are far more realistic than those of these pissed off, never content players that don't even consider that the modding community can fix the flaws about which they scream so hard (they would surely scream just as loud if CA had done exactly the opposite...)    … Expand
  43. Raye
    Sep 4, 2013
    3
    I've played Total War for over 10 years now and I can honestly say that this release is just as bad as Empire, if not worse. They have slowly taken the winning formula for Total War and dumbed it down for the masses. 'Casual gamers', the console and phone game generation have been the downfall of many a great PC game series. From top to bottom this game is purely sacrilegious to any TotalI've played Total War for over 10 years now and I can honestly say that this release is just as bad as Empire, if not worse. They have slowly taken the winning formula for Total War and dumbed it down for the masses. 'Casual gamers', the console and phone game generation have been the downfall of many a great PC game series. From top to bottom this game is purely sacrilegious to any Total War fan who values depth and tactical battles. They have taken away all of our control and implemented gimmicks to please the casual gamer. I will provide some insight into the fundamental flaws at the core of the games design rather than elaborate on the myriad of optimization problems and bugs the game suffers from at this time.

    GAMEPLAY:
    A huge number of features that were available even in Total War: Rome are missing both conceptually and mechanically. I will try and break down the problems point by point as they relate to gameplay.

    -No family tree.

    -No 'Loose' or 'Tight' generic formation commands. Can't spread to avoid enemy fire?!

    -No 'Guard' command, your units cannot be instructed to maintain their position and formation at all costs.Even the most disciplined melee troops devolve into a blob during melee combat.

    -You cannot toggle fire at will on infantry with javelins, they only fire when they charge. Some unfortunate tactical consequences are that they cannot throw javelins to break an enemy charge and then receive the broken charge, they cannot fire on skirmishers and cavalry harassing them, and if you move reserves to reinforce a battle line they will AUTOMATICALLY throw their javelins into the backs of your own men who are already engaged. WTF CA?

    -Troops have inappropriate context based behavior or a complete lack thereof. IE. They will stand in position and take arrows to the face from archers ten feet away (as if instructed to guard, but still lose unit cohesion in melee) and will not chase routing enemies. During a melee blob if a unit of men destroy their immediate foe (target) they will not engage nearby enemies. They will stand there watching their comrades get hacked apart five feet away.

    -Auto run breaks unit cohesion.

    -BATTLES ARE WAY TOO FAST! The battles last a few minutes generally. You spend three minutes walking to the enemy force. Your lines meet and devolve into a chaotic blob and the melee is typically over in about 30-50 seconds as one side routes. If you were inclined to flank the blob you typically don't even have time to move a single flanking unit around into position before the melee is decided. You're far better served simply committing the unit into the blob of doom right away and spamming the 'magic' combat buffs/abilities your men have. Speaking of..

    -MAGIC COMBAT ABILITIES! You can hit a button and suddenly your men charge with more force than usual or you can magically remove all fatigue? Get your voodoo out of my Total War. Abilities should have a justifiable function that makes sense.

    -Units run entirely too fast, especially with tactical map speed buffs on roads for certain units and while charging. I would seriously estimate that your men can charge at nearly 30mph.. Again, wtf?

    -Diplomacy has improved so far as the campaign AI actually interacting with you in ways beyond declaring war but it is almost always on their terms. If you prefer passive diplomacy you wont notice the problem but if you want to proactively cultivate an environment of success with your neighbors you will fail. The AI refuses to accept logical treaties of any kind without bribes, very unfortunate.

    -Magic boats appear when you move an army into the ocean... Magic.... Boats.... These transport ships are free and can be used to great effect in naval battles. Building and maintaining an incredibly expensive navy is rendered void of strategic value and ineffective. You can recruit a bunch of militia and march them into the sea and ram your enemies navy to death without much difficulty. Horrid.

    -The campaign AI is atrocious even on the highest difficulty setting. The AI nations will maintain small armies and play passively. If they do field large armies the majority of the time they will consist of almost all slingers or other skirmishers. This causes most battles to involve a 10 second melee blob of doom then 10 minutes of you chasing down skirmishers at random. Epic disciplined and mechanized meat grinding battles? I bought the wrong game.

    -Unit size is locked. Why do I have smaller unit sizes than the original decade old game?

    -One turn per year. Good luck utilizing the fresh general development ideas cause all your generals will die of old age very quickly assuming they survive even one blob of death thanks to the extremely high kill rates.

    -The UI is beyond inconvenient. It is a mess of sub menus and obscure iconography. You play the game through a figurative maze, not a streamlined UI for 2013.

    -The awesome in game encyclopedia of the legacy Total War games? Still gone.    … Expand
  44. isleman
    Sep 4, 2013
    4
    If you haven't bought the game yet, I recommend holding off until the worst bugs and AI have been fixed. I would wait at least 2-3 months before the game becomes truly playable.
  45. Izay
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    CA should be ashamed. Releasing a broken product that is not fit for purpose. This is literally grounds for Class Action and I sincerely hope someone takes the initiative. We paid GOOD money to get a working product and I can't even break 20FPS with my 2500K@4.7GHz&680.
    THIS IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.
    You just lost a loyal customer. I would not normally rate anything 0 because    CA should be ashamed. Releasing a broken product that is not fit for purpose. This is literally grounds for Class Action and I sincerely hope someone takes the initiative. We paid GOOD money to get a working product and I can't even break 20FPS with my 2500K@4.7GHz&680.
    THIS IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.
    You just lost a loyal customer.

    I would not normally rate anything 0 because there is ALWAYS some form of entertainment to be found, but when I can't even get my game running it deserves a 0.    … Expand
  46. ZarKo
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    This game is broken, don't bother, wait until they get it fixed. Game crashes when you attack towns, game crashes when you enter enemy territory, game crashes when you do nothing. I don't like new UI which looks ugly and for some reason they removed normal city building mechanics.

    This game is not playable in its current state. Will it ever be playable? Probably yes after they will    This game is broken, don't bother, wait until they get it fixed. Game crashes when you attack towns, game crashes when you enter enemy territory, game crashes when you do nothing. I don't like new UI which looks ugly and for some reason they removed normal city building mechanics.

    This game is not playable in its current state. Will it ever be playable? Probably yes after they will patch this game.    … Expand
  47. twfan
    Sep 4, 2013
    2
    i am a big fan of TW series and I try really hard to like this one, but I just cant. Battles are completely spoiled, they last for few minutes/sometimes seconds Morale and daying speed are just to low, armies cannot hold formation. It is not about strategy anymore. All you have to do is select all your troops, click charge, wait awhile and if you are lucky you win. No walled cities werei am a big fan of TW series and I try really hard to like this one, but I just cant. Battles are completely spoiled, they last for few minutes/sometimes seconds Morale and daying speed are just to low, armies cannot hold formation. It is not about strategy anymore. All you have to do is select all your troops, click charge, wait awhile and if you are lucky you win. No walled cities were supposed to take away boring sieges, but in reality it didnt help at all. You are still forced to fight in narrow streets and thus you will face lots of pathfinding issues. Things such as ugly units cards, bad UI, boring soudntrack are just minor problems, but terrible AI and fast paced arcade battles with no strategy involved makes this game unplayable.(at least for me)… Expand
  48. Goldeus
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    After 10 hours of game play, I am very dispappointed with the game. First of all the optimization. What a shame that my computer can't run the game well with a 7970 Vapor-X 3Go, i5-3570k @4,3Ghz, 16Gb RAM. There's also a problem of CTDs, at any moment of the game (campaign map, battle map, changing options...). And I am not the only one with those problems. Didn't they test their gameAfter 10 hours of game play, I am very dispappointed with the game. First of all the optimization. What a shame that my computer can't run the game well with a 7970 Vapor-X 3Go, i5-3570k @4,3Ghz, 16Gb RAM. There's also a problem of CTDs, at any moment of the game (campaign map, battle map, changing options...). And I am not the only one with those problems. Didn't they test their game with differents configurations before releasing it Apparently not. And that's why, mostly, the 0 stands for. And it's unaccetpable for me.

    After that, some points of immersion are missing such as cutscenes of speeches (even if the general still say something if we look at him at the beginning of a battle), spie's and assassin's videos... Next, AI is not as brilliant as the developpers are saying. Particulary during sieges and still (like others TW) with diplomacy. I also feel (maybe improperly) that the campaign is too easy. I'll have to try with harder modes. Finally, the graphics are not that beautifull. A bit more than Shogun 2, but it's faaaar from the screenshots of CA during the development.

    Sorry for my imperfect english, but I wanted to express my frustration with a game that I was waiting for since years... In need of a patch or some drivers updates, and fast     … Expand
  49. brymht
    Sep 4, 2013
    9
    Excellent game. I'm not a huge fan of the Unit Cards, and the battles are a tad fast pased; but still truly an amazing game. I'm looking forward to seeing new content and patches. When you expand the map to India; I will be buying it.

    However, I'm a big Total War fan as is. This is a different experience from Modding RTW and M2TW:K; which I've done a LOT. However, I wouldn't say    Excellent game. I'm not a huge fan of the Unit Cards, and the battles are a tad fast pased; but still truly an amazing game. I'm looking forward to seeing new content and patches. When you expand the map to India; I will be buying it.

    However, I'm a big Total War fan as is. This is a different experience from Modding RTW and M2TW:K; which I've done a LOT. However, I wouldn't say bad. CA is attempting to make the game available to people who are NOT like myself; which I can respect. They did not create the money for a few thousand purists; and they have bills to pay.

    Assuming the modding tools are there and we can extend and slow down the combat a bit; this will become an 11 with mods.     … Expand
  50. Wheeler711
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Played a good 6+ hours and I can tell you now do NOT buy this game. It is unfinished. The battle of Carthage looks nothing like the demo that they showed. Its a much smaller battle. The campaign map is laggy. The UI and AI are terribly done. Loading screens take forever. When you end your turn you are going to have to wait even longer. This is all with the following PC specs on myPlayed a good 6+ hours and I can tell you now do NOT buy this game. It is unfinished. The battle of Carthage looks nothing like the demo that they showed. Its a much smaller battle. The campaign map is laggy. The UI and AI are terribly done. Loading screens take forever. When you end your turn you are going to have to wait even longer. This is all with the following PC specs on my computer. GTX 680, Intel i7 2600k cpu, 8gb of RAM. Please do not listen to the fan boys that are out to fool you into buying it. Do yourself a favor and wait for patches if they manage to fix it.… Expand
  51. Samze
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    They messed it up, the AI is horrible, the interface sucks and the pc opt is just terrible, and the graphics looks like they took a step back, and what's up with the 1 general cap
  52. PublicEnemy
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    Needs a lot of bug fixing and graphical performance improvements. All CA releases are shaky, and that is fine, but after so many titles CA did not learn from their mistakes.
  53. sergioccc
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    The game is really a 0, with high end pc core! 7 and a 7970 edition ghz 15-25 fps in battles. Do not understand how someone can throw the worst game ever and what reviews are scoring high, when it really does not work and is 0
  54. Omghaibuttonz
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I should have known, thats all I keep telling myself. I am not one of the people having performance issues, I mean despite the large time spent looking at load screens it all works and functions. I knew when they switched philosophies from the days of TW:Medieval to the style of Shogun and Napolean... I knew in the back of my mind that TWR2 was going to be revamped TWR1 with all the terridI should have known, thats all I keep telling myself. I am not one of the people having performance issues, I mean despite the large time spent looking at load screens it all works and functions. I knew when they switched philosophies from the days of TW:Medieval to the style of Shogun and Napolean... I knew in the back of my mind that TWR2 was going to be revamped TWR1 with all the terrid idealogies of Napolean and Shogun. I am an idiot.

    Ok the pros
    -Battles look good, albeit quick.
    -Pathing is marginally (and I mean marginally) better.
    -The way cities build although revamped from Napolean and Shogun, is still a huge improvement. I still really miss the style of Medieval and TWR.
    -Armies can recruit from the field
    -Agents are more fun, spies in particular

    Cons
    -10 years to take a damn turn. I dont think I spent as much time on my turn as I did waiting for my next one. Holy good god
    -Prologue would be fun if I wasnt forced to sit through and manage the battles. Some people just like the autoresolve button... stop forcing us to to manage these battles if we dont want regardless of it being just the prologue.
    -It doesnt matter what graphics setting your on, the game still overall looks like crap. NOTHING looks trailer quality, in fact much of it looks quite worse
    -Ai DERRRRRRP
    -Release day DLC.... what a dirty ploy for a $60 game.
    -Navies USELESS
    -Anyone try to split an army yet? Its as about as fun as going to the dentist.
    -This idea of provinces and capitals is stupid. The idea that I cannot garison units in the cities without a general is even dumber.
    -Generals required to have an army.... seriously.
    -Functional multiplayer anyone?
    -Tech tree.... holy good god thats bad
    -Cant wait to spend time crouched down to look really closely at that SMALL INFORMATION WINDOW
    -Back to graphics, turn them on ultra.... tell me if you can tell your armies from the blobs of shadows apart. that just looks TERRIBLE
    -General Character Management is wonky at best.

    I feel scammed of my $60 and really really dumb for having bought this game on release. I KNEW I should have waited to read reviews first. Dont make my mistake if you havent purchased this game yet.    … Expand
  55. Bluster67
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    I have enjoyed all of the total war games up until now. The biggest pain about this game is that it is virtually unplayable due to all the crashes and bugs. I have never been able to play this game for 30 minutes straight without crashing. AI is more stupid than it was in Empire. No Avatar mode which I liked in Shogun. For me developers are dead after this game.
  56. Legion_ix
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    Some reviews criticizing the AI very harshly dampen my hopes seriously. But after the very well made tutorial, where it was possible to see that the AI is still not good (like in every Total War game, maybe except Medieval 1), but by far not such a catastrophe as it was described in couple of reviews. So confidently I went to the main campaign. Now some hours of playing later, I have toSome reviews criticizing the AI very harshly dampen my hopes seriously. But after the very well made tutorial, where it was possible to see that the AI is still not good (like in every Total War game, maybe except Medieval 1), but by far not such a catastrophe as it was described in couple of reviews. So confidently I went to the main campaign. Now some hours of playing later, I have to admit Rome 2 is a huge disappointment it feels unfinished, confusing and counterintuitive, castrated and yet overcomplicated, and yes, boring most of the time. The reason for this is not the AI. Rome 1 managed to create a much more enjoyable gameplay with even a worse AI.

    Not finished

    Sadly in current status the game is on the late beta level. For sure it is better than by some other games published in early beta or even nearly in alpha but still it is not polished, not even finished. There is a massive amount of things that are simply not done or not done properly.

    Sadly there are tons of other minor or major undone or badly done things in this game. It is clearly that some months in development would improve the game hugely. For such an established company like CA you can expect a finished, polished product. Especially after the experience that they had with Empire.

    Music

    The soundtrack in Rome 1 was one of the things that supported the atmosphere massively. Without it would be a different game. It included some slow, relaxing but also fast, aggressive tracks. In Rome II there is barely any music and if you hear something it is just some tu-tu-tu in quasi ancient style that don’t create any immersion. In De Bello Mundi you get shivers by listening to the Gladiator main theme on the campaign map or a great feeling of an epic battle by listening to Conan theme. In Rome 2 you only get sleepy and bored instead.

    Click orgy

    Why to make things easier when it is possible to make them complicated? In other TW games you send the agent to the province and let him do his job. Intuitive and easy. In Rome 2 you have to click every time when she arrived in the new province. If you forget to click on the icon, well your problem. The agent won’t do anything.

    You want to make a new trade agreement? Then go to one of the both icons (click!), go to the faction symbol (click!), go to the agreement button (click!), go to the trade agreement (click!), go to send (click!), your counterpart sign it or refuses go to the accept button (click!), go to the button to stop the negotiations (click!). Congratulations you signed your first trade agreement! Just kidding, in most cases you don’t. So please go on to another faction and make click, click, click. And don’t worry now there are so many factions you can spend half an hour to sign couple of agreements and make hudreds of click, click, click besides.

    After some hours of click, click, click I was very excited by the glorious work CA did here. I’m confident a bit of more click, click, click would improve the gameplay even more.

    Road to win: “Cancel good feature and make the existing more complicated”

    It is impossible to explain why CA cut such important for the atmosphere and easy to implement features like family tree or wide building management. But it is even worse. Some of the features are now without any reason overcomplicated but not necessary better.

    UI Uber Interface

    I have to admit that I hated (and still hate) the unit icons and also don’t like the buildings icon. However the new UI approach looked good and I seriously thought it could be a good improvement for the gameplay. Unfortunately it’s not, it’s a catastrophe. And unlike most of the things mentioned above it won’t be completely fixed, since it is unlikely that CA will redone the UI completely.

    There are two problems with it.
    First. It is confusing and counterintuitive. Some things are on different places instead to be combined, or the structure doesn’t make any sense, or the icons are sometimes too large but in important to small, or is it just not logical at all.

    Second problem is the coexistence of such an UI with the Total War gameThe design, all these non saying criptical pictures and the information that are not visible on the “right” place but somewhere besides are out of place. You never get the feeling to play a game about ancient times. To create an empire, to build it up, to manage it, care for your characters and command your armies. The whole time you just clicking some pictures. A very, very big fail. I have to appreciate now modern UI and a historical game are just things that don’t match. At least not in this way done in Rome II.

    Conclusion

    I’m a bit angry but also very, very sad what happened with Rome II because I had such an expectation for it and especially shortly before the release very optimistic about the result. For sure it will be better through patches and mods, though due to some fundamental reasons even with that won’t be a game that a lot of us expected.    … Expand
  57. 1warrior1
    Sep 4, 2013
    2
    This is a great disappointment to the total war series... so many glitches and game also crashes after an hour of playing... I can't understand why they removed family screen and walls from many cities.

    Don't wast your money with this game...now I cannot even resell it.
  58. Touton
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I made a metacritic account just for this review. I have a monster PC and the game is simply unplayable, I can max BF3 but in Rome 2 the ground is flashing black grids, the screen is constantly tearing and the animations are nonexistent.

    I did not pay to get into a beta, I paid to play the game, and the game is simply unplayable.
  59. yozabo
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    The Game has so many bugs, glitches, & crashing problems it's a joke. I personally have crashes in prologue & I have a more than adequate system. I have been all over the forums & to say the problems are widespread would be an massive understatement. Until then, save your money.
  60. kostarico
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Once again we see the same story... official critics from game magazines got paid and write a good reviews on a terrible game. I wished i never bought it actually.

    Total War: Rome II is terribly bad.... i played Total War Shogun 2 recently, Empire Total War and other games of the series, i was always a fan of it. this game is a serious step back from previous games of the series.    Once again we see the same story... official critics from game magazines got paid and write a good reviews on a terrible game. I wished i never bought it actually.

    Total War: Rome II is terribly bad.... i played Total War Shogun 2 recently, Empire Total War and other games of the series, i was always a fan of it. this game is a serious step back from previous games of the series. Terrible graphics, terrible UI, awful AI and etc. I can't believe that the same company actually did all the other games of the series before.

    Shogun 2 was a real breakthrough for the series... how we got ripped off for $30 for a poorly done game with terrible user-friendly interface and hilarious quality. Just try it out by yourself company Shogun 2 (a real masterpiece) and Rome 2 (real crap).    … Expand
  61. Exakter
    Sep 4, 2013
    8
    This game is fun, not 10 stars, but certainly nothing below 5. My computer handles it perfectly, and it's no beast. I'm guessing most people don't treat their hardware right and haven't optimized their software in ages. It's a common problem with new TW releases.

    Bugs Have noticed maybe 2 in a 24 hour session, fairly reasonable. + Graphics, it's all beautiful, streamlined campaign    This game is fun, not 10 stars, but certainly nothing below 5. My computer handles it perfectly, and it's no beast. I'm guessing most people don't treat their hardware right and haven't optimized their software in ages. It's a common problem with new TW releases.

    Bugs Have noticed maybe 2 in a 24 hour session, fairly reasonable.

    + Graphics, it's all beautiful, streamlined campaign map (I have played since Shogun 1, and I love this new map), Diplomacy (it's actually reasonable for once in a TW game, nothing compared to Paradox but then I don't expect that). Battles are nice and fun, (though yes short, but I say again.. Vanilla TW.) Navies now do something!!

    - No Family tree, that really blows. I like the new faction stuff, but family trees RPG character aspects have always greatly appealed to me in TW games, and this one does it poorly. It IS a real shame.

    To comment on other reviews, even though I shouldn't.... I think a lot of 12-17 year olds are buying this not knowing what they will get. TW games are never historically accurate, nor are they particularly in-depth. They are a campaign map battle map action empire builder. They emphasize the pretty things, the fighting, the animation, the sounds. The modders are who have made EVERY SINGLE TW game INCREDIBLE. But love CA for their template they put out, without them and the drive to profit, none of those TATW, or RTR would have existed.

    The navies now really help in city assaults (if you don't want to wait to siege a big city, try a sneak naval attack). The naval battles themselves are the most fun they've ever been. I disagree that armies make navies useless, though I do wish the transports would be less effective.

    People don't realize that a game like this is way more resource intensive than ANY of your FPS, due to graphics, and AI processing. If you don't like wait times inbetween turns, don't play this.

    Tons of factions tons of fun, finally, no useless arbitrary 30 faction limit to a TW game.

    As for the AI being stupid. Hi, my name is Ralph, here is your exit. Duh the AI is dumb. What do you expect? Do you know how difficult it is to build something resembling intelligent artificial behavior? It doesn't happen. Yet. Wait for some of those brilliant AI modders who SPEND THEIR ENTIRE LIVES doing that. Even their best work is mneh. I've never had trouble in any TW battle, but being a history major maybe I had an advantage.

    It's a great game, with it's own real problems, which will be resolved in time.    … Expand
  62. Eptesicus
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    To release a game that doesnt run properly on an i5 2500k at 4.4GHZ and two GTX 670's in SLI is ridiculous. The game is unplayable due to the awful GPU usage and terrible framerate when you have more than about 10 units in the battle.

    I havent even played the rest of the game as there is no point if the battles are unplayable.

    Poor show.
  63. El_ZardoZ
    Sep 4, 2013
    3
    This is beta!!! Don't pay for being a beta-tester for CA Anyway if you are real fan of Total War series I seriously doubt that you will enjoy it even after debugging.
  64. Fir
    Sep 4, 2013
    9
    Compared to the original Rome, almost everything has noticeably changed aside from the setting and the staples of Total War games (Real time battles, turn based empire management, controlling regions, etc.). However, compared to the more recent TW games like Empire and Shogun 2, there's a lot of similarities, so if you've played those than a lot of this should sound familiar. Here's aCompared to the original Rome, almost everything has noticeably changed aside from the setting and the staples of Total War games (Real time battles, turn based empire management, controlling regions, etc.). However, compared to the more recent TW games like Empire and Shogun 2, there's a lot of similarities, so if you've played those than a lot of this should sound familiar. Here's a rundown of the differences I've found from Rome 1:
    -Cities are very different. In Rome 1 each region had its own settlement that you could build on and upgrade to infinite, in Rome 2 settlements are combined into provinces, where there is one major capital of the region that gets walls, and the rest are smaller towns without walls. As an example, the province of Italia has 4 settlements that make up northern Italy, with Rome as the capital of the province. Many of the main capital cities like Carthage, Alexandria, Rome, etc. have unique layouts. Cities now have a certain number of building slots, that can be filled with certain buildings, meaning cities have to be specialized (cities focused on army production, trade, culture, etc.), instead of building anything and everything you wanted. Empire and Shogun 2 had similar setups.
    Prepare to think hard about what buildings to build and be ready for a lot more small town wall-less battles, seeing as the vast majority of settlements don't have walls, which was almost unheard of in the original Rome. Personally I really like the city-slot system, as its got much more depth than the "build whatever you want wherever you can afford it" of the original, though I wish more cities had walls because siege weapons are fun.
    The overall game map is also noticeably bigger, stretching all the way from Spain to western India, covering more of Northern/Eastern Europe as well as the entire Arabian Peninsula. The map is a little more streamlined, since armies are fewer and far between (see below).
    There's also a research tree (similar to Civ), that means there's progression in buildings and units as you play, instead of Rome 1 where everyone except Rome had the same buildings/units available in turn 1 as they did in turn 200. The system is simple, with a tree focused on military stuff and a tree focused on economic/empire management (very similar to Shogun 2).
    -Army management has some major differences. Cities now have their own, free defenders based on the level of defenses for the city, meaning every settlement, big or small, has some level of inherent defense. The number of actual armies you can control is based on the number of regions you control and they have to be led by named generals, meaning you have to move and manage your armies with purpose and intent and you can't just throw some units together on a whim when you see an enemy army coming. Also, naval combat is in this one and its freaking awesome, along with the ability to land naval units/transports during battle, meaning armies and navies can co-exist in a single fight.
    -Armies and generals get upgrades as they fight (very similar to Shogun 2), meaning you get to specialize your armies and generals to your liking. The system of traits and retainers for generals is still there, but you have a lot more control over how your generals progress and what retainers they take along, though much like Rome 1 many of the traits feel pretty negligible (+3% skirmisher attack speed, +5% morale, etc). Agents are very different from Rome 1 (no more diplomats thank god), and have a similar upgrade tree to generals. Families play a much less important role in Rome 2 than Rome 1, though each faction has a political "senate-esque" system they have to deal with, which is cool.
    -Unit and faction diversity is comparable to Rome 1, with more of a focus on historical accuracy in this one, IMO. Each faction has different traits, and then there families within each faction that vary the traits and abilities even more, meaning there's a lot of differences in each of the factions (the complete opposite of Shogun 2 or Empire).
    -The battles themselves are excellent, the amount of detail on each soldier's armor and the way they interact with the world is freaking awesome, whether its watching soldiers jump through marketplaces and break things or put up their shields during missile attacks and talk about the enemy's aim. The battles aren't as "flashy" as Rome 1 could be, but the feel and the atmosphere is far superior. The AI is challenging on higher difficulties, but every now and again it totally screws up and that can break a lot of the immersion. The UI is hit or miss, I like the aesthetic but the overall lack of numbers and extended tooltips means it's hard to catch stuff at a glance and is clunky until you memorize what all the buttons and symbols mean. Some people don't like the "faded" color-scheme and overall hue of the game, but it doesn't bother me.    … Expand
  65. Devian
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    Unplayable game too bad, because I was looking forward to it. My game crashed every hour, get black screens when i was in a battles, could not play through the prologue because it was unplayable, sound issues, framerate out of the roof... a real bummer this game. avoid it until it gets better
  66. Antiks
    Sep 4, 2013
    4
    The attempt at simplifying the game not only took away from what made the series great but in some ways made it more complicated/less intuitive for people familiar with the Genre. Over all the game is alright but doesn't really live up to the standard set by the previous Rome title.

    The simplification of the cities takes away a lot from the crowds who like to experiment and specialize    The attempt at simplifying the game not only took away from what made the series great but in some ways made it more complicated/less intuitive for people familiar with the Genre. Over all the game is alright but doesn't really live up to the standard set by the previous Rome title.

    The simplification of the cities takes away a lot from the crowds who like to experiment and specialize different cities in different parts of their empire. Also, armies relying on a general to field and actually being recruited by the general in place takes away from having to manage the logisitics of your empire. This makes the game overall less of a simulation and more of an arcade title of the RTS fights. Research is also taken down to two very basic easily obtainable paths.

    For some these may be welcome changes but as someone who likes the empire building and civilization style large branching tech trees these are significant problems. The title is clearly made for a broader audience who don't want to have to get bogged down with the logistics and economy management of previous games.

    On top of changing the general game play these changes have made some things more difficult; the removal of some of the more detailed city/settlement management tools has made it in some cases extremely hard to understand why your city/province is unhappy.

    The combat remains more or less the same though it seems some what easier to route/destroy your enemies. It's possibly less tactical but I'm not sure if I'm confident in saying that yet only having played about 15 hours.

    There are significant wait times between turns but that is somewhat expected.

    The game has beautiful graphics.

    I would say if you liked the world map part of Rome, research, and auto completed most of your battles you could probably give this game a pass. If all you did was play for battles and were irritated by having to manage your empire then you may like the changes that were made.

    For people like myself and my group of friends I cannot recommend you play this game. Personally I'm more concerned with empire building than doing the little RTS battles, for me they were just the cherry on top that made Total War special.    … Expand
  67. maca
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Disappointing performance from CA. I waited this game so long and now I feel scammed by its shiny marketing. Too many bugs, too many bad things in this game. It seems they made this game for kids and casual players. Stupid.
  68. WALTY
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I am absolutely not happy with all gameplay changes CA implemented. Capture points are awful. Lack of siegable cities on campaign map and simplified economic/building system make gaming experience quite boring. UI is wow horrible design. Shogun 2 was better game in almost all spects.
  69. cnav916
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    Been a fan of the Total War series from the start and this new installment does not disappoint. Plays like most Total War games with a few changes that I don't mind, although the transfer of troops from one army to another should be changed back to the old way, other than that I'm fine with the changes. The graphics look great, especially being run on ultra with my "optimized" setup and IBeen a fan of the Total War series from the start and this new installment does not disappoint. Plays like most Total War games with a few changes that I don't mind, although the transfer of troops from one army to another should be changed back to the old way, other than that I'm fine with the changes. The graphics look great, especially being run on ultra with my "optimized" setup and I have only dropped below 50fps on one siege that I ran yesterday against Athens, so no sure what others are running to be having all these problems. (EVGA 660ti, i7 3770k CPU, 32 Gigs or Ram, BenQ XL2720T)… Expand
  70. BongoAch75
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    After I played 10 hours I would say:

    -Bad AI,
    -Little armies,
    -Awful user interface.
    - Boring campaign
    -LAGS

    55€ on steam is absolutely joke.
  71. Kagemaru
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I'll start out by saying this game will most likely disappoint the majority of people who play it whether old fans or new. Beyond that, I'll just stick directly to the point when stating SOME of the problems. Key word being "SOME."

    No MSAA compatibility anymore despite having it for ages in Total War series. Terrible graphics options. No DX11 options found in Shogun 2. No SLI/Crossfire    I'll start out by saying this game will most likely disappoint the majority of people who play it whether old fans or new. Beyond that, I'll just stick directly to the point when stating SOME of the problems. Key word being "SOME."

    No MSAA compatibility anymore despite having it for ages in Total War series. Terrible graphics options. No DX11 options found in Shogun 2. No SLI/Crossfire support for you PC enthusiasts out there. AI is more mentally handicapped than they were in Shogun 2 without mods. Units do not hold formation pretty much ever once they clash with an enemy. Just try the Spartan Phalanx. It's a joke unworthy of the name Phalanx. I imagine the Roman one doesn't fare much better.

    All the unit cards are terribly close to identical in appearance and name. Most of the stats for said units are too close, making you wonder if they just ran out of ideas or were lazy and simply duped units, slightly changed stats and then changed the suffix to their unit name. The new lighting effects are a joke and glitchy as all hell. I've seen children in the comfort of their homes make better lighting effects for existing games with post processing effects. Creative Assembly is pitiful.

    Back to the problems though Crazy broken bugs like ships sailing right onto land, skating across the landscape and running over your troops. That last one might actually be hilariously entertaining, but it won't distract you from the fact this game runs anywhere from 50% to 30% of the frames of Shogun 2 despite having 20%-25% the graphics quality of Shogun 2 in DX11. It's pitiful that this is the best they could do 2 years later. It literally resembles more so Empire or Napoleon graphics. in some cases Napoleon looks better than this game when it comes to texture work.

    If you think you can have a high-end PC, buy the game, and have it look like it does in the trailers, your optimism will quickly be crushed by the reality of it all. The only way to get this game to look that way is to lower certain settings in the game, or turn them off completely, downsample a higher resolution than the game supports like 1440p/1620p (Good luck keeping fluid frames with 1 GPU there) and then tweaking a SweetFX setup for it on top of that to get some better HDR/Bloom/AA/and shading overall. Even then you'll still find jaggies riddling everything, and inferior graphics quality for what is a game released in 2013. TLDR? "Shameful display." That's all you need to take from this.    … Expand
  72. gladiatorus
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Incredibly bad, nearly non existent AI ensures this game will get a very low score from me. Optimization is a shame. My powerful gaming PC can not run properly this game because GPU load is only 57%. Also game doesn't support multi-core processor. SHAME
  73. cyclopus
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    Yesterday I spent damn five hours trying to finish prologue. It crashed like 30 times. This game is one huge bug.

    Don't buy it people. It is not worth current price.
  74. chivo88
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    This game need serious patching and modding because at current states its just a garbage. I don't understand what SEGA and CA were thinking releasing it now.

    Zero score for such poor performance. Sorry guys but I cant give anythyng higher than this because it is not the first time. Empire was same crap.
  75. AstraL
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I'm shocked, did not expect this from Creative Assembly, game simply is unplayable, 15-25 fps on strategic map on minimal settings...
    CA give me back my money!
  76. Red_Oktoberfest
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    Total War: Rome II is a box of chocolates, you don't know which is the good or bad chocolate each time you reach for one.

    BATTLE; The battle is, to be frank, not great. This is especially bad since one of the main selling points of the entire franchise are the battles. In battle there are no tactics, the enemy just charges straight at you with everything, even missile units. Although    Total War: Rome II is a box of chocolates, you don't know which is the good or bad chocolate each time you reach for one.

    BATTLE;
    The battle is, to be frank, not great. This is especially bad since one of the main selling points of the entire franchise are the battles. In battle there are no tactics, the enemy just charges straight at you with everything, even missile units. Although going into melee combat was typically the only thing you could do back then, but there's no tactics. No flanking, no individual units fighting, no formations, nothing. It's just a giant blob in melee combat that even includes the enemy missile units. It's also uncommon to see enemy generals charging into your lines well before the main line can get there.

    Also in many many scenarios you'll find that yourself or the enemy has a capture point. This is dumbing down the battles considerably, further detracting the game's selling point. You can win the "main" battle (As in two main battle lines fighting) but one enemy skirmisher unit can reach your capture point, win the battle, and your army is destroyed despite a clear victory. It's hard to counter this due to the running speed and how fast a single unit can capture a point. One tactic you can do yourself is have two-unit armies, one unit runs to the extreme left or right, and the entire enemy army chases that unit. The other unit proceeds to go to the enemy's capture point, and the enemy doesn't react due to chasing that unit. Even not chasing any units they typically don't react to anything, flanks, ranged units, nothing.

    I haven't played any sieges yet, but I've only heard bad things about it. Mostly about path-finding, which I've already encountered in open-field battles somehow. The worst thing I heard was that as defenders in a siege, you absolutely have to go out and meet the enemy in the field, or else they stay in place and win due to the timer or you get bored if you got the timer disabled.

    CAMPAIGN;
    The gameplay has changed very significantly in Rome II. Managing your cities is actually important due to the re-emergence of squalor from the days of yore in Medieval II. This combined with the many different building types in four trees (Barbarian, Eastern, Hellenistic (Including Carthage), and Roman.) makes a large variety. Although I wished that there was a difference between the Barbarian building trees, into Britons, Gauls and Germans.

    On the topic of variety, the 500-Units claim is a hype, and tripe. Many of the units are recoloured for other factions, and many of them have no statistical difference. Two examples are the Carthage & African Artillery trees, and the Arabian & Aethiopian Cavalry. There are many more, The Romans also have access to almost every faction unit (Including "unique" units) by constructing auxiliary camps and adding an "Auxiliary" prefix to their names. This brings down the "500 Units" to possibly one-fourth being unique, while still a lot, is still a half-truth and essentially a lie in advertisement to get buyers.

    The faction-count is the same as Shogun 2, but there is promise of free and paid DLC later on. Two of the factions (Carthage and Rome) have families/sub-factions to choose from, which only change which bonuses and detriments you receive.

    GRAPHICS;
    Needless to say the graphics in the game are very well made, and well executed. Even on low settings it is above many similar strategy games. This is made better with the inclusion of "Extreme", going above the formerly "Ultra" in terms of graphical appeal, and melting your computer. One of the most useful features is the inclusion of a Benchmark to see how well your computer can run with the options. But it is rather misleading since battles are more complex than the benchmark, consisting of thousands of troops individually animated, individually fighting, individually dying....

    STABILITY;
    For myself, the game is very stable and I can play for hours on end. But a vocal part of the user-base literally can't open the game at all. This is becoming more and more common with each Total War game, and this is the worst so far. If you thought Empire or Shogun 2 were bad with stability, you should look at the Steam forums for Rome II. For me the game runs well, so I can't really comment on the stability but I won't recognize that it is completely stable.

    I seem to be running out of characters, damn you, 5,000 character limit! So I'll leave you with this mixed review of 5/10. The game is fun, but there's a lot holding it back and it's like Empire all over again, promise things but don't deliver or half-deliver.    … Expand
  77. poerk55
    Sep 4, 2013
    4
    I honestly can't find one thing that Rome 2 does better than Shogun 2. What the hell happened?

    I was so looking forward to a new total war game set in this era, but as it is this game is just entirely unsatisfying and broken in so many ways.
  78. comradeGman
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    Wonderful, takes the place of the first Rome as my favrote game ever. Thank you CA for another eight years of wonderful strategy and I really enjoy the multiplayer
  79. Willowbean
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Maybe this game is really 85 out of 100 but how you are supposed to see it through the damn lags and unoptimisation. Creative Assembly just doing the same game every couple of years and still can't optimize it.
  80. paskaperse
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    I'm loving this game, there are some random bugs with AI. BUT! Creative Assembly always patches their games to a more enjoyable state, that's for sure.
  81. alanas4201
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    Game is good IA is brain dumb soo it makes this game a sandbox best played on multiplayer no lag problems never had a crash its fun to play Interface annoying, but really likes this title!
  82. JoshW
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I've played it for 8 hours before uninstalling it but I really tried to like the game. It should be called Total Wait: Rome II... Seriously, ending turns takes somewhere between 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Terrible AI, boring gameplay. It's got nothing to do with Shogun 2. I've actually played all games, since the original Shogun and it felt like Activision bought this franchise (BlizzardI've played it for 8 hours before uninstalling it but I really tried to like the game. It should be called Total Wait: Rome II... Seriously, ending turns takes somewhere between 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Terrible AI, boring gameplay. It's got nothing to do with Shogun 2. I've actually played all games, since the original Shogun and it felt like Activision bought this franchise (Blizzard someone?). This game has disappointed me as much as Diablo 3 did. Total Waste of 60 bucks...… Expand
  83. tech99
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I have played the Total War series since the first Shogun, and this series is becoming the Madden of strategy games. It seems CA focuses more on graphics and gimmicks rather than creating a better game engine and improving basic game mechanics. Battles turn into huge balls of chaos instead of soldiers keeping their formations, and if the enemy routs they will just stand there doing nothingI have played the Total War series since the first Shogun, and this series is becoming the Madden of strategy games. It seems CA focuses more on graphics and gimmicks rather than creating a better game engine and improving basic game mechanics. Battles turn into huge balls of chaos instead of soldiers keeping their formations, and if the enemy routs they will just stand there doing nothing instead of engaging a nearby enemy. Battles are far too fast, many features like the family tree from previous TW games are gone, and overall the game is an unpolished mess. I feel robbed because the Total War series has been one of my favorites for such a long time, and it was always the pinnacle of PC gaming for me. I am done with this series and will never purchase another Total War game again.… Expand
  84. Styrr
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Last time I ever made a pre-purchase... every game i did this was a mess... and i have to say Rome 2 is the worst of all.
    I really loved the TW series from the beginning and loved it up to shogun 2 (even though I missed the variety of the previous titles) but Rome 2 is just a big disappointment.
    I won't complain about the bugs and the performance issues as I'm pretty sure this will get    Last time I ever made a pre-purchase... every game i did this was a mess... and i have to say Rome 2 is the worst of all.
    I really loved the TW series from the beginning and loved it up to shogun 2 (even though I missed the variety of the previous titles) but Rome 2 is just a big disappointment.
    I won't complain about the bugs and the performance issues as I'm pretty sure this will get fixed in time. I even can live with the crappy AI since I'm used to it. But the casualization is horrible:
    - no immersion (family tree?)
    - battles are absolutely mindless and superfast paced. As soon as the units are engaged there is no tactics anymore
    - who's idea has been the army limit? what a crap...
    - campaign map management is simplified very much
    - pretty sure cash-cow DLCs for things that should've been in a full price title will follow (not that 65eur wasn't a hell load of cash for a game already)

    I'm back to Medieval 2: Stainless Steel and Rome: Europa Barbarorum. The good old days when gameplay was more important than hollywood (and they even messed this one up)    … Expand
  85. Xenophon
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    Horrible UI.
    Horrendously confusing unit cards.
    Poorly optimized.
    Fix the triremes.
    Where is my guard button.
    Make a unit card that covers half my screen.
  86. Duckers101
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    Its a good game but its just not quite there the performance isn't very good and the UI is awful its still fun to play but does not quite take off from where Rome 1 left off, i am disappointed but i hope that patches will fix the issue and the issues are things that patches can fix.
  87. abic007
    Sep 4, 2013
    7
    The fail of Rome: A strategic map without strategy... A tactical mode without tactics

    Skip it. Shogun II is better in every respect, as are several mods for the original Rome: Total War.

    Very bad strategy game!
  88. CaptainThom
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    Initially i gave this game a 9/10 based on my experience in the prologue which i really enjoyed and i would like to apologise for that beacuse that was far from true, since starting the campaign there are a number of glaring issues which has left me dissapointed and annoyed at how broken gameplay is.

    Politics Politics is a new feature in a total war game which makes it all the more    Initially i gave this game a 9/10 based on my experience in the prologue which i really enjoyed and i would like to apologise for that beacuse that was far from true, since starting the campaign there are a number of glaring issues which has left me dissapointed and annoyed at how broken gameplay is.

    Politics
    Politics is a new feature in a total war game which makes it all the more surprising how its completely ignored in the tutorial. Characters have traits which are supposed to effect internal politics and their ability on the battlefield (Gravitas, ambition,cunning etc) However after 12 hours of game play i still have no idea what any of them do.

    Diplomacy
    During my campaign as the Iceni tribes have rejected trade agreements for no apparent reason and anything below high likeness has been rejected. Its almost impossible to get any other tribe to become an ally despite having extremely good relations with them.

    Sieges
    The Ai doesnt defend the walls instead massing all its units at the victory point. On the campaign map a town or city may seem poorly defended only for it to have a massive garrison of hidden units, its especially annoying when you have won an important battle to be confronted by such a large garrison and being forced to retreat from the region.

    Battles.
    When trying to attack the enemy with a phalanx the men all break from formation and charge. All units seem to have throwing weapons which they only use before charging you cant set them to fire at will. Theres pretty much no point in chasing enemy's down after a battle because even horsemen seem to walk along with them instead of attacking them.

    When defending against a larger force theres victory points in stupidly undefendable areas which can lead to you having to give up the high ground or wooded areas. The pace of combat has been massively increased so you have very little time to maneuver taking away a lot of the strategy from larger battles.

    Armies can now randomly walk across water with no cost which is stupid and if their larger than your navy they can properly beat your navy in battle.

    Sadly this is just a list of sum of the issues that i personally have seen and that have really hindered the experience so far for me, there's clearly a great game in there somewhere but it needs a lot of patching and probably a few mods to get it anywhere near the standard that we all hoped for.    … Expand
  89. Dumdas
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. It's very simple...the game simply doesn't work for a lot of people! Currently more than 7000 people seems to be unable to even launch the game (based on the amount of views on this thread in the official forum). CA seems to be in the woods as they have not posted a single reply or comment on this thread yet. Not even a confirmation that they are looking into it...It's like buying a car that doesn't start and then being ignored by the car saleman...would you put up with this?
    I just want my money back....    … Expand
  90. Nymero
    Sep 4, 2013
    1
    Well the developers sure pulled the wool over my eyes. I wish they would of put all that money from advertising into the actual game! This game should be labeled as a "beta". The sad thing being, that it is beyond repair. It will take years of patches, and community mods to make this game worth playing.
  91. RalexSteele
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    I have enjoyed a lot of the TW games in the past, and I have some very fond memories of some of my campaigns. The battles were always exciting, and I felt like every decision I made had a huge effect on the outcome. At times, I even won battles where I was outnumbered 10:1 with tactics and luck.

    Rome II takes that all away. The battles are chaotic, and controls seem sluggish,    I have enjoyed a lot of the TW games in the past, and I have some very fond memories of some of my campaigns. The battles were always exciting, and I felt like every decision I made had a huge effect on the outcome. At times, I even won battles where I was outnumbered 10:1 with tactics and luck.

    Rome II takes that all away. The battles are chaotic, and controls seem sluggish, unresponsive, and ultimately pointless. You fair just as well by sending your troops on a full frontal assault as a tactical skirmish.

    Multiplayer... it's broken. Desyncs, problems with spectating, and save game problems.
    I have a beast of a PC and this game is so badly optimized that my gpu jumps 20 degrees C on menu screens, and runs at 97% load during the game in any screen. Meanwhile, I can run BF3, Crysis, and Metro and stay under 30% load and not have any heat spikes. Not to mention rome 2 seems to like tormenting cores 1 and 7, but refuses to use 2,3,4,5,6, or 8 for more than 2-5%

    The gameplay doesn't save it either: spend 30 seconds managing your empire through ugly buttons in the clunky AI, then end turn and wait 4-10 minutes for the AI to finish up all the turns for the other nations. (Keep in mind, that's 4-10 minutes on a top of the line machine I don't want to guess how long on a mediocre or aging system)

    Spend your money elsewhere hell, buy a nice dinner, you'll enjoy that more and longer.    … Expand
  92. m0ngy
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Well, I've been (trying to) play this for a day and a night, and I can officially confirm this game is an absolute POS. I don't even had too many technical problems, a few, but my opinion is based solely on the experience of the game thus far. Here are some of my observations;

    i. Where the hell are the seasons? Even Rome I had seasons, and that was ten years ago! ii. OK, so the turns    Well, I've been (trying to) play this for a day and a night, and I can officially confirm this game is an absolute POS. I don't even had too many technical problems, a few, but my opinion is based solely on the experience of the game thus far. Here are some of my observations;

    i. Where the hell are the seasons? Even Rome I had seasons, and that was ten years ago!

    ii. OK, so the turns advance a whole year, which means my generals drop like flies. Just when they increase rank and you think they're getting somewhere, boom, they're dead. Awesome... NOT!

    iii. Battle are just blob on blob, there's far less battle strategy than I've ever seen in any TW game, and I've been playing since the original Shogun. They just end up in a huge, blob on blob sh!t fight, where's the strategy in that??

    iv. Do units get tired anymore? Who knows, they've dropped that all altogether!

    v. Do units slow down according to the terrain? Apparently not, because they appear to advance up hills at lightning speed. Gone are the days of having a decent missile squad up the hill raining death, great, how fun?

    vi. The new interface for combining units is appallingly bad, who the hell thought this garbage up? What was wrong with dragging and dropping, how can you go wrong with that? What where you thinking CA, FFS??

    vii. Again, what the hell is up with food? I'm a master of Civ, the only compatible game. One of the best things about Civ is you know what you're going to get when you build something, or neglect to build something, it's all right there in the numbers. In Rome II, indeed most TW games, the 'economy' and 'food' remain completely ephemeral. You don't really have clue what's going on most of the time. Instead of planning your economy and carefully balancing your unit count with building upgrades, you're just running around fixing things after the fact, the entire time. Oh, that cities unhappy and the citizens are rioting, for no apparent reason! Who knows why these things happen in the TW universe, they just do, and there's sweet FA you can do to pre-empt it. This entirely reactionary approach means you're spending most of your time putting out spot fires, so to speak, instead of getting down to business and taking territory.

    viii. The 'help tool' or dictionary isn't very helpful either.

    ix. The unit cards are garbage, just more poorly presented, useless information.

    x. And the AI... LOL, the poor old AI... I actually feel sorry for it, I really do. I'd buy this AI flowers and give it a hug, God knows it needs one. Easily the worst AI of any TW game I've ever seen, and that's saying something.

    xi. No guard mode! WTF? How the hell could they have removed guard mode? So, now my units will midlessly chase down fleeing enemy instead of holding formation with the rest of my army? Great, more micro management, and they're actually saying the AI's improved in the marketing spiel? Can I get my money back for false advertising? I'd upload this crap back to Steam if I could.

    xii. Very limited armies and units. In every other TW game you could field as many units and armies as your population could support, which was a lot. You could also divide up your armies as you liked; leave half to garrison the town, and take the rest out on an expedition to scout around... Not anymore, none of it, it's all gone, everything has been simplified specifically to cater for idiot noobs. What a sick joke.

    I could go on... and on... it's a HUGE step back from Shogun II, a massive, unfathomable dumbing-down for casual gamers. All the years of technical and gameplay innovation and that led up to and was perfectly distilled in Shogun II is GONE. It's just GONE, forget about it, it may as well have never happened.

    You know, there's a reason why EA has 'won' the worst corporation in America award two years in a row. They're greedy scum, and this is a prefect example. They've simply rehashed the old Rome, jazzed-up the graphics a bit, screwed-up the interface (severely), and sold it as something new. EA/CA have clearly attempted to 'casualize' one of the few remaining strategy franchises that had any depth, any soul left at all. Gone are the layers of depth and refinement forged over so many years and various iterations, in favour of streamlining and easy conversion to Xbox One. I mean, really, we all shoulda seen it coming, it was only a matter of time.

    Well, shame on you CA for releasing this un-optimized filth, and shame on me for falling for the unbelievable marketing hype surrounding this absolute POS game.

    Please, don't buy this game. Don't reward CA/EA for treating their customers like mugs and releasing a half finished product simply because they know we'll buy it. I pre-ordered it, but you have the benefit of reading posts and review such as this, honest reviews, not the paid-off drivel spouted by so many 'professional' review sites. Just don't do it, have some self control.

    I'm going to try and get a refund through Paypal. Dispute opened...    … Expand
  93. rook89
    Sep 4, 2013
    10
    While this game does have issues, it is indeed an incredible experience and falls in line with every vanilla total war released to date, the graphics are beautiful and the Ai does a good job of maintaining battle lines and i am yet to see a suicide general, playing on very hard or legendary is indeed a challenge, the battles are however short, but this game is worth getting regardless andWhile this game does have issues, it is indeed an incredible experience and falls in line with every vanilla total war released to date, the graphics are beautiful and the Ai does a good job of maintaining battle lines and i am yet to see a suicide general, playing on very hard or legendary is indeed a challenge, the battles are however short, but this game is worth getting regardless and with the help of mods could be something special.… Expand
  94. Romafar
    Sep 4, 2013
    7
    Looking at some of the negative reviews given to this game I feel that some people need to get their entitlement in check. CA did a great job on this, and I'm sorry your 8 year old pc is having trouble but that's how gaming tech works. There are some load time issues with this as there was with Shogun 2, but luckily they aren't nearly as bad as it was originally with Shogun's issues, andLooking at some of the negative reviews given to this game I feel that some people need to get their entitlement in check. CA did a great job on this, and I'm sorry your 8 year old pc is having trouble but that's how gaming tech works. There are some load time issues with this as there was with Shogun 2, but luckily they aren't nearly as bad as it was originally with Shogun's issues, and they are already releasing a patch for it.

    The game is beautiful and the AI has improved, though its still AI and needs some tweaking. Ive already logged a little over 20 hours into it and I havent had any fps issues except for it chuggs for half a second when I pan over the siege animation on the campaign map.

    As for UI complaints, I really dont get it. It's a great UI. The unit cards are are interestingly designed and the general and legion development is a great additive. You really have to be challenged to not be able to understand this UI.

    Once the patch goes in for fixing the load times I'll give this an 8/10 for now its a solid 7. I put blood sweat and tears into my rig and I'm running ultra at 60+ fps at all times. Have realistic expectations with the machine you work with    … Expand
  95. someguy8896
    Sep 4, 2013
    7
    this game is buggy and imperfect but it's amazing anyway. the long load times and UI I keep seeing people complain about aren't a problem for me. the UI is great and simple to use when you get used to it. and if you have a powerful enough processor the load time and AI turns aren't a problem. it runs fine on high with my Nvidia gtx 550TI and Intel core I7 3930K. like I said it's buggy butthis game is buggy and imperfect but it's amazing anyway. the long load times and UI I keep seeing people complain about aren't a problem for me. the UI is great and simple to use when you get used to it. and if you have a powerful enough processor the load time and AI turns aren't a problem. it runs fine on high with my Nvidia gtx 550TI and Intel core I7 3930K. like I said it's buggy but I found nothing game breaking and it has yet to crash on me. It was worth my money and I expect that like most total war titles most of these problems will be fixed at some point with patches. 7/10 as it is. I'm not disappointed.… Expand
  96. ntkb
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    Go look at Shogun 2 user scores, then look at this game. It's not the fans CA... it's you. Thanks for the Alpha version game. I really wish you pushed the release date back if you still needed to polish and fix the game. I have bought every single TW game since Shogun ONE on release day or preorder. I won't be doing that with your next title. The next title I will wait till theGo look at Shogun 2 user scores, then look at this game. It's not the fans CA... it's you. Thanks for the Alpha version game. I really wish you pushed the release date back if you still needed to polish and fix the game. I have bought every single TW game since Shogun ONE on release day or preorder. I won't be doing that with your next title. The next title I will wait till the modding community fixes your game for you before I buy it. 4/10, 5/10 being average is my initial impression of the game.… Expand
  97. Kazuya
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Don't buy into the hype of this game, it's completely broken. This game has no redeeming qualities, sub-par in all aspects. Game doesn't even detect my graphics card, the UI is confusing, battles last 2 minutes. Rome 1 is 100x better than this junk.

    I feel cheated, i regret buying this.
  98. dbyron87
    Sep 4, 2013
    5
    I'm starting this review by saying that this could have been an amazing game. Truly, it could, but in the state that it is now, it just isn't. The worst part about everything is that some of the problems, i don't even think willl be addressed.

    Let's start with the good, shall we? + I love the campaign map, it is big, awesome and epic, the scope is enormous, and i like that, i also    I'm starting this review by saying that this could have been an amazing game. Truly, it could, but in the state that it is now, it just isn't. The worst part about everything is that some of the problems, i don't even think willl be addressed.

    Let's start with the good, shall we?

    + I love the campaign map, it is big, awesome and epic, the scope is enormous, and i like that, i also like how we can expand our cities and the new way they're developed, make some cities really strategic.

    + The visuals are good, i didn't have the problems, some people had with the graphics, so i could enjoy them, and they're very pretty.

    + The soundtrack, it is...Good. I mean, the original Rome soundtrack was better, the Shogun 2, as well, but it is a good soundtrack.

    Now the things that have a problem, but, may become amazing later:

    +- The diplomacy as it stands is...Insane. The AI tries to negotiate at least, but it's way too stubborn for it's own good, not making deals that would save it, etc...Needs some tweaking, but, it would be nice if some factions continue to be stubborn for the rest of the game.

    +- The political system. Ok, no more families, no problem about that. But as it stands is too artificial, too little control, it's just not fun. With some tweaking, it would be quite cool, but may take some work.

    Now, the bad.

    - The battles. The units move way too fast, not only the light cavalry, that is supposed to be fast, but the heavy infantry is really fast! I like the Hoplites skill that makes them run fast, it reminds me of Marathon, but every heavy infantry moving like skirmishers is bad. Then there is the combat speed, that is fast as well, really fast. I understand when Cavalry Vs. Missile is fast, i understand when Heavy Infantry Vs. Cavalry is fast, but in this game, the combat resolution is way too fast. You coudn't pull a Cannae or Gaugamela in this engine, because there is just no room to manouver. The best way is just too click the units in the enemy and wait, the enemy don't try to maintain cohesion and a battle line, so, no worries. The units don't mantain their formations as well, so your legionaries will be fighting like a bunch of Gauls.

    Conclusion, there is more good than bad, but...The selling point of the TW series is the cinematic and tactical combat, and as it is, that's not in the game. The battle is shallow and unfun, they need to fix those, or the game is lost.    … Expand
  99. Jeicobu
    Sep 4, 2013
    7
    Rome 2 is a good game, but not without flaws. The UI inn the campaign map is good, the UI inn the RTS battles are still a bit easy and never tries to outflank you or do anything to not get flanked. The map is a lot bigger then inn shogun 2 and might confuse thous that joined the series back then. It doesn't look half bad ether the new Province/settlement functions is great for gameplay andRome 2 is a good game, but not without flaws. The UI inn the campaign map is good, the UI inn the RTS battles are still a bit easy and never tries to outflank you or do anything to not get flanked. The map is a lot bigger then inn shogun 2 and might confuse thous that joined the series back then. It doesn't look half bad ether the new Province/settlement functions is great for gameplay and adds a lot to the game.
    The free DLC's is also a pluss, since all the new factions costed real money inn shogun 2.
    What brings the game down for me is the AI and the missing content/bugs. There is no winter season rotation. Some city walls float inn the air and some more i haven't seen myself but heard other talk about.

    Conclution: The game is great and brought me what i expected.. a grand game where i could outsmart my enemies and change history, a not perfect AI and some great battles. what i did not expect was the problems that could have been avoided with a bit more play testing and the cheep solution to some of the problem (refering to the seasons).    … Expand
  100. Thijsor
    Sep 4, 2013
    0
    Never been this disapointed in a game in my life. Been a fan of the series for 8 years but this is just a slap in the face. I don't even think it is fixable, at least not for me.
Page:

Awards & Rankings

4
#4 Most Discussed PC Game of 2013
7
#7 Most Shared PC Game of 2013

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
76

Generally favorable reviews - based on 71 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 49 out of 71
  2. Mixed: 15 out of 71
  3. Negative: 7 out of 71
  1. Worth Playing
    Nov 18, 2013
    74
    The game is far less polished than Shogun 2, and a few more patches will help, but Rome II is still a flawed game that is underwhelming when compared to previous titles in the franchise.
    Read full review
  2. PCGamesN
    Nov 6, 2013
    70
    And here’s the rub: every addition, every sub-system, every mechanic is subservient to War. War is what Total War is really about. Everything else not directly related to conflict comes across as ancillary. Rome II is a game for warmongers, on both the campaign map and, obviously, on the battlefield. When peace is happening, nothing is happening. When war is happening, Rome comes alive.
    Read full review
  3. PC PowerPlay
    Oct 28, 2013
    40
    If you will play literally anything featuring Total War and Rome in the same title and don't value your time, this is for you. [Nov 2013, p.80]
See all critic reviews »