Total War Medieval 2 Unlock All Factions
Florentina Holcombe
Medieval 2: Total War Kingdoms was released to great fanfare despite being somewhat upstaged by the announcement of Empire: Total War the previous week. It received 90% ratings from both PC Zone & PC Gamer so lets see how the expansion stands up to some rigorous playtesting by the TWH staff.
Note: This review is written in stages as I wanted to play each campaign properly to test the differing gameplay rather than only skim through each campaign. All campaigns have been tested briefly to check everything but full campaign write-ups will wait until all the campaigns are completed. First full coverage is of the Teutonic campaign.
Patch 1.03 has been released for general use but it is only a patch to ensure compatibility between M2TW & Kingdoms. All the unit rebalancing & fixes in Kingdoms are currently only available to owners of Kingdoms.
For Lithuania it is even tougher. You are surrounded by an aggressive & deadly enemy but while he is divided, you are centralised. With clever strategic thinking, it would be possible to sign alliances with other nations against the Teutonic Knights and use combined force to eliminate them. You have capable two-handed infantry units and missile cavalry so different tactics are required than for playing with the Teutonic knights.
This campaign really is superb. The factions are relatively balanced and it will require real skill to be able to build up your faction. The religion aspect will be a big bonus to those who enjoyed it in RTW: Barbarian Invasion. Ultimately, it allows the player to explore a period of history as well as geographical location that rarely gets a lot of attention.
The Meso-American factions are a lot more sophisticated so you get options to build things like aqueducts rather than building everything out of wigwams. Their units are also unarmoured but most have high stamina and high attack/defence ratings so they pack quite a punch if used carefully.
The Spanish faction of New Spain is gifted some serious advantages. They get armour and superior weapons. They also get cavalry but the unit sizes are tiny. The game dynamic for the Spanish is different as they must please the Spanish crown by completing missions. If they do this, they get access to higher level cities and thus better troops. Despite their technological superiority, they will need to recruit a lot of local mercenaries in order to prosper.
England do face a challenging start to the game in that they are almost certain to lose large portions of territory but they have the most balanced unit roster and by keeping control of key territories in the south of England, they will maintain an efficient economy to provide a solid base for regaining lost lands.
Ireland have a straight-forward task at the beginning of the game. The English troops garrisoning Ireland are dispersed. Taking Trim castle severely weakens the British position. Once Ireland is secured, many options for future expansion present themselves.
The Welsh begin with their backs to the Irish sea. They have no choice but to fight the English tooth & nail in order to survive and then expand. Their units will require inventiveness & creativity on the battlefield as they may struggle in direct conflict with the heavy infantry of the other factions
The Scots begin the game with the English occupied with their own problems and can concentrate on the threat from Norway. Their heavy pikemen will be required to counteract the heavy shock infantry of the Norwegians. Once the isles belonging to Norway are secured, the Scots can look to advance into either England or Ireland.
The Norwegians are gifted with heavy shock infantry but the dispersed nature of their realm is a disadvantage. Expanding into Scotland is the obvious choice and command of the seas is essential to their progress.
The Crusades were a popular feature in the vanilla grand campaign and CA have taken this and given players a fully realised campaign in the holy land. When playing the Christian, the atmosphere of the film Kingdom in Heaven is very noticeable. This adds considerably to the game experience as CA had the advantage of leaving you to fill the role of the great leader instead of hiring a somewhat wooden & charisma free actor for the role. Indeed, the faction livery for the Kingdom of Jerusalem & the Principality of Antioch consciously ape those of the film. However, this is only a small but significant detail in a smashing campaign. Religion is handled as per the vanilla grand campaign and many of the game mechanics are the same but there are new features. Each faction in the game has access to a general with special abilities. There was a fear that these abilities would adversely affect realism in the name of playability but it is really done quite well. They can only be used sparingly and only one character per faction gets these special abilities. The campaign map covers the near east from Asia Minor in the north to Egypt in the south and extends as far east as Baghdad. The factions are as follows:
The Kingdom of Jerusalem face a powerful foe to the south in Egypt. Saladin himself, commands them in battle. Thankfully you have an alliance with Antioch to the north and they will guard your northern frontier. While Egypt are the main foe, you will also need to be on guard against the Turks to the east. Their heavy infantry & cavalry are not subtle instruments but they have the capability to destroy opponents in straight fights. However, they should beware mobile foes who are not inclined to close combat.
The Principality of Antioch have an almost identical unit roster to Jerusalem but their strategic position is rather different. They are shielded from Egypt by their allies in Jerusalem but the Turks can menace their northern & eastern borders. Further to the north is a resurgent Byzantine Empire who are dubious allies at best.
The Byzantines awe many with their glory & prestige of their capital Constantinople but the upstart factions of the near east are not in that number. The Turks will have to be eliminated to ensure the security of the Empire but the Franks of Outremer are dubious allies at best. Expect to have to either dig them out of whatever trouble they get into or even have to fight them to re-establish your mastery of the region. They are helped by an updated unit roster which includes the powerful & fun Greek Flamethrowers.
The Turks begin with a similar unit roster to that of the vanilla campaign but their strategic situation is different. Firstly, the two halves of the realm must be re-united and then war must be fought on two fronts to survive against both the Frankish crusaders and the Byzantines to the north. This is easily the most challenging game in this campaign.
Egypt starts with a safe position and potentially powerful units to reduce the Christian kingdoms to the north. Their infantry cannot stand toe-to-toe with the Franks so they need to be cunning & resourceful in their tactics.
This campaign is the standout of the Kingdoms expansion pack. It has atmosphere, setting and most importantly a fight to the death for all factions. To win the game, you will almost certainly have to eliminate at least two factions. It is the defining campaign of this expansion and while the other campaigns have their attractions and the Teutonic campaign comes close, this is the campaign that will stick in the mind and call for repeat playability.
A word on the diplomacy improvements in this game. Allies now stay allied to you and while they may/will break the alliance & attack you, they often help you as well. As the Teutonic Knights, I had the misfortune of the Holy Roman Empire annexing my western provinces while my forces were spread out. Polish forces helped me defend Konigsburg and then recaptured the provinces that the HRE had taken forming a buffer zone protecting me from the Germans. I was in trouble when Poland finally decided to attack me now but while the Poles had been guarding my western borders, I was busy expanding in the east, wiping out the Pagans and thus improving my overall position. This is the first time in a total war game (since STW) that an ally has actually helped me in any meaningful way.
My only gripe is that it should be a little more geared to being email friendly. Hiding the saved game deep inside the program files folder is plain awkward. Would some sort of exporting to the desktop tool be an option for future releases?
One thing that unites the four mini-campaigns is the standard of music. Celebrated maestro Jeff Van Dyke and his able team, Richard Vaughan and James Vincent, have put their heads together and come up with more than a few crackers of tunes to match the size and scope of the expansion, capturing the flavour of campaigns effortlessly.
I love the Total War franchise. Every one of the games I've played, since Shogun, was a blast. In fact, Shogun was a total [sic] revolution. It created a whole new book of rules for the real-time strategy genre. You still played on the big world map, but you had the ability to sneak away into the battle mode and engage enemy units in massive combat of unprecedented scale, in real time. No one has ever seen thousands of spearmen, swordsmen and archers clash in a huge display of medieval zeal before. It was beauty and gritty realism combined.
Today, I'm going to tell you about Medieval II: Total War. The name implies there has been Medieval Mk.I. Indeed, the original game continued where Shogun stopped, introducing even more factions, more emphasis on the softer side of warfare, with politics, intrigue and rebellions playing a bigger part of your campaign. The game was tremendous fun to play, especially for fans of medieval warfare. But then, Windows XP SP2 came out and killed the game. Like Caesar III, it would no longer work. Rome: Total War came out next, and it was a little bland. You could play extra nations after completing your first campaign with one of the three Roman tribes, but they all felt fairly identical. But then, Medieval II was released, and it brought the old glory back.
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