Reviews - Total War: Rome II

EDIT 2014-08-02 : 5
After 14 patches, some issues have been fixed or are less annoying.
+ :
CA added 4 seasons mechanic with CiG and then add it to TW:R2
Performance have been optimized, still some issue but far better than after release
CA removed the "capture the flag", should have create a system similar to NTW3 multiplayer
CA rework the transport fleet vs Naval fleet, a bit more balanced now even if not fully satisfying.
CA release the Assembly Kit, but still incomplete
CA find an agreement with Wwise to use its tool to allow music modding

- :
Poor diplomacy, still not enhanced
Still no issue for walls, limited to province capital
Still no campaign nor battle map tool

To conclude, a good game but not a great game.
Most issue come from game design now and I doubt they will be fixed (too much work, too costly for CA).

PREVIOUS REVIEW : 3
+ :
Battle AI having a slightly better level than in S2TW
Line of Sight System for battles
Combined air-sea battles
Graphics

- :
very bad optimization, bad performances (lag, etc.) even with high end computer
1 army = 1 general : problem to reinforce army with new troops
1 army = 1 general : didn't really suppress the "unit spam" problem, only limit it. A bad solution to a real problem.
impossible to exchange region, even during peace negociations
1 turn per year system destroy immersion, it look like if time is "suspended", no seasons in campaign
User interface not always easy to handle, sometime quite confusing
Only provincial capitals having walls, probably to avoid the "siege feast", but now we have "city attack feast", certainly not better.
Army can destroy a fleet... with transport ships
etc.

no AI improvement for more than a decade. Even the original ROME seemed to have better AI. I never thought AI could get any worse than ROME. No point in playing the game when there is no AI. Thanks to bad coding the interface causes extreme stutter/freezing even on lowest detail, making the game unplayable. Even if there was no stutter/freezing, i wouldnt be playing this game anyway. i hate dumbed-down game mechanics!

1) "Capture the flag" mode is just plain stupidity - whichever developer came up with that should be fired and bannned from ever developing a line of code again...he doesnt know what TW is...
2) battles are a horrific experience overall...all the "magic" of actually seeing the micro-engagements when 2 units colided are gone...if you try, you will probably miss the battle as it will be over that fast...i.e. 2 armies of +3,000 men each were over and done in about 6 minutes...this is NOT what Total War is about...any strategy or tactics are gone; phalanxes dont maintain formation, even against a unit of "mob"...there's no command to "guard" or "stand ground"...typically every battle ends up being a complete mosh pit, over in under 3 minutes...units move too fast (never had my "artillery" fire more than 2 rounds before the lines meet...
3) AI is a joke...i won a battle with zero casualties (YES, ZERO!) against 2,400 men...all killed/routed with ballistas and a line of 4 units of archers (playing as Macedon). I was outnumbered and they simply wouldnt charge...just stood there being killed until they routed.
4) Diplomacy sucks...you basically cannot have a decent treasury or the smallest faction will ask for at least 10% to even CONSIDER negotiating...
5) The star of the show (Rome) appears to be the AI's worst enemy...they get rolled over every time by whomever comes their way...never even seen them getting legionaires out - unless i played as Rome...you would expect them to be realistic when handled by AI and start expanding - talk about falling short on expectations...
6) The new settlement management piece is actually good...though squalor feels like it was decided with a coin flip! every building gives squalor!!! even when the populous are complaining about lack of food, if you expand your fishery or cattle ranching, you get squalor!! come on CA, you can do better than that...
7) Agents might as well not exist (AI rarely uses them)

Overall, BIG disappointment

Full of bugs, ugly camera colour filters, main map is too zoomed in.

The game is interesting, but not much more than that.
I've played most former games and have enjoyed hundreds of hours playing them.

This release was first of all a BETA, it should not have been released in the state that it was.
The in game campaign AI is terrible, even in hard/ very hard modes. It isn't aggressive, it's not challenging, it bankrupts/ starves itself to death making a conquest very easy, and it makes ridiculous decisions towards the player and other npc factions. The diplomacy is less advanced than Medieval 2 for example.
The lag (along with a plethora of other bugs) still exists even after three extensive updates. Mind you i bought a new machine JUST for this release, with a setup where I should be able to max it, but cant even play on Ultra graphics.

There are too many flaws to point out quite frankly; but suffice to say that this game does not deserve more than a 5 rating.

I will give them this, however, the game "LOOKS" great, but even there not even close to the "screenshots" presented in the pre release PR campaign.

With the pass of the time the game was fixed of tons of bugs and weird things. very late but well, thankfully is operational.

is not bad, but not the best of all the games.

I put 3 negative points on the game:

1.- On battles the arrows are veeeery OP, and mostly the towers on the city, so you need going carefully with it.
2.- The naval ships are epic... but too fast, really fast, in 1 minute you can screw the enemy or maybe screw you if you don´t have careful. well personally I don´t enjoy a lot as the combats on Empire .
3.- The icons of the units. I liked the idea of the icons, looks nice and maybe cute, original, artistic, but are useless, is hard to difference if you don´t pay attention or if you don´t know the units, you can confuse very easy the units.

Ugly unit and building card tiles, horrifying bugginess and unoptimised graphics (well, once, before the Emperor Edition), still broken and frequently crashing multiplayer even after the inglorious Emperor aka Sega deemed it worthy to fix some of the singleplayer issues... also visually inferior to Attila. The only advantage over Attila is that it is set in a less threatening, less intimidating and yet more epic setting, the rise of the Roman Empire.

Cons and issues:
- bad DLC policy, rationing content
- a new DLC pack to revive a dead horse instead of porting a full campaign of ancient Rome over to Attila
- still tends to be buggy
- crashing multiplayer
- game settings sometimes reverting back (really?), seems to be a safety switch to fix the game after it has crashed but well, CA is to blame for it crashing in the first place
- no full total conversion moddability, no campaign map editor

Rome II is playable now. The base game has more factions to choose from than Attila or Warhammer too. Some issues were fixed. Recommending it only when it's on a huge sale. Well... as of now... €54.99 for the bare, base game is not justifiable at all. It's been more than four years since the release of the game too. What the heck is going on?

Pretty much what everyone else said. Game deserves about a four. Diplomacy is a joke and consists of you paying other countries so they won't attack you even though you're five times stronger than them. The bugs in siege are absolutely atrocious (they can't climb ladders for ****.) Turns take a year in-game time so there are no seasons and your generals die before they can go halfway across Europe. Slaves are stupid and just give you ridiculous negative modifiers. (You can't loot a city without taking them either.) The tactical map, while pretty to look at, is not practical because you can't zoom and place units how you want them.

This is the usual Creative Assembly hyping up one of their "Total War" games and having it fall flat on its face with no chance of recovery.

it sucks ITS DEVELOPERS WERE SMOKING WEEDS WHEN THEY WERE MAKING THIS GAME G

The game is broken down to the most basics of level. The entire engine is not suited for this style of game (one on one fighting? Really? The Romans were a bunch of genocidal warriors, not noble movie samurai) the spear units are broken and the lack of any sort of good AI is outstanding.

I am amazed that anyone could rate this so highly.