Medieval 2: Total War (PC)

The first time you fight these battles it's quite impressive to see this large scale kind of medieval battle in action. But it soon gets repetitive and feels blobby. There doesn't seem to be much depth to it, and all the fight seems to happen rather slow. It's basically archers, spearmen, cavalry, and you must also protect your general. The names of different flavors of these three types of units vary, but in the end they just feel the same.

Campaign map is over complicated and although has some interesting concepts like the use of priest, diplomats and merchants, it's just not fun. City management is dull, and you will just end up pressing auto manage so you don't have to deal with it. Yet you will sometimes want to turn this off temporarily to get the units you want built. What's worse is that you will often auto resolve the battles because as I said earlier, they get tired quickly.

Right what I came here to say if you want to make a huge army and so forth but start running out of money just use the add_money 500000 cheat do this 3 times and you should have enough to last a few turns depending on the size of your military.

I find it best to use the elephant rocketeers to just make my nation what size I want it to be and then leave a couple of them garrisoning the forts and towns the cheat for them is vindaloo.

Another you may find handy is toggle_fow this enables you to see the whole map.

The game good with the graphics of the the battles and unit detail and the music is good when you fight the battles but the armies in any faction will not be very good from the start of your grand campaign.

Here is some cheats for the game you must press the '@ button but don't press the shift button.The cheat console comes up.the cheats are Vindaloo which creates a Elephant racketeer.Madras creates an elephants.Rogan creates a Elephant artillery unit.Istanbul creates a Mercenary Monster Bombard.George creates a Mercenary Monster Ribualt and Houston cheat creates a Mercenary Rocket Launcher unit do not make these to many times because you lose lots of money but if you build lots of farms and roads and ports and trade building and it only gives you 6000 pounds a year use the add_money 90000 code in the cheat console and press enter when you typed it in and press it loads of time to get lots of money.

Medieval 2: Total War is a highly addictive blend of empire management and battlefield tactics. Well designed, the Total War series recipe always has and always will work. This game offers you the chance to control a historical faction during the period AD 1080 to 1532. You need to manage your empire's economy, diplomacy and religion, as well as all military and defence aspects. The interface and game engine allows you to do this easily, and it has enough depth and stats to satisfy any hardcore statisticians. On the other hand, it allows you to smoothly play on without having to delve too much into the minutiae of micro-management if that is not your kettle of fish. You will really feel as if you are a medieval king, and the battle engine is just superb!

The only gripe I have, is that Medieval 2 is not very far different from any previous Total War game. That in itself is not terrible, since it is a very successful family of releases. Highly recommended for any strategy and RTS fans, or players that appreciate historical settings.

Go buy it!

My overall score: 91%