Medieval II: Total War Reviews

The game was basically set up in mostly the same way as Rome: Total War, even though ancient Rome and medieval Europe were *very, very different*. And, basically this game recreates most the most stupid and frustrating things about Rome: Total War, and without most of its good things. Additional difficulties include the map, for example, which was *way too small* (because it was *way too similar* the R:TW map) so that you could conquer a medium-to-large sized kingdom like Spain or England by taking two, three, or maybe four cities--if medieval campaigning had really been this easy and simple, I guess the Holy Roman Emperor would have conquered all of Europe in about five years, and made it all the way to China in another three or four....also, I personally found it pretty perverse that the game gave you only one thing to do--conquest, there was no other challenge the game gave you, and yet when you tried to do this one thing you were allowed to do, the Pope excommunicated you and all your armies defected. Theoretically, this sounds like it alleviates the conquer-the-world-in-an-afternoon problem. In reality it just makes the whole thing that much more absurd...I'm going to stop now before I start spitting.

(4/10)