At last, almost a decade after the original  Rome Total War – Rome 2 returns to your PC. The game is famous for combining both a turn based grand strategy on a campaign map and glorious real time tactical battles.

After using the useful Steam pre-load feature to install the game before release, I leap straight into the grand campaign as Macedon. The year is 272BC and Macedon is still trying to recover from the break up of Alexander the Greats empire. First impressions are good, the campaign map is beautifully detailed, looks fantastic and is absolutely huge. There are now hundreds of different smaller factions alongside the main ones. The first thing I do is expand a city and I watch in delight as my old wall is knocked down and new buildings leap up out of the ground. Cities expand randomly in any direction and it never gets dull watching it.

It takes a while to get used to the new user interface but eventually I did. Turns now last a whole year which is a bit disappointing since it was nice to see how the campaign map change in winter. I really liked the new diplomacy system. It’s quick and easy to see who’s allied and who’s at war. You can now see in detail why a faction doesn’t or does like you. The AI is a tough negotiator. As Macedon I start off at war with a small town to my east. A couple of turns in and the enemy AI offers me peace but demands money, a few turn later and with my army massing near his border I’m able to bully the AI and he accepts not only peace but he also now pays me a hefty sum. I set off to attack his neighbor instead. It can be a bit tricky to set up trade deals (the AI often demands huge payments) however if you work at it, for example by starting with a non-aggression pact first, you can get them done. As you go further into the game and become more powerful smaller nations will come to you begging for trade agreements and alliances.

Its a positive start but sadly the longer I play the game the more apparent Rome 2’s flaws become. Most of them are with the Rome 2 battle engine. Unfortunately Creative Assembly has completely dropped the ball with this and it feels like a real step backwards for the series. Battles are stupidly quick. Men die in seconds and armies of thousands are lost in a couple of minutes. There’s almost no time to properly position and manoeuvre your troops. It takes all the fun out of the game. Worse still units struggle to maintain any formation or cohesion. Most battles result in one big brawl. That’s fine if its a bunch of barbarians but when my Hoplites abandon there beautiful phalanx and sprint towards the enemy its very frustrating. It’s the total opposite to the joy of of a Hoplite phalanx battle in Rome 1.

There are other major issues with battles. Some bright spark has decided to place capture points on battle maps. It’s beyond stupid. Deploying your troops to defend is now pointless. In old games you could retreat to high ground or some woods to use the terrain to your advantage, not now.  If you lose the capture point you lose the battle. My entire Macedonian army of 2000 men is destroyed despite only losing 11 men in a battle because I didn’t realise there was a capture point.

There are other problems as well. Battles feel arcadey, many of the unit abilities feel manufactured and fire javelins and fire camel archers just seem over the top. What’s upsetting is that almost all these problems could have been avoided with even a small amount of testing or feedback. What’s clear throughout the game is that Creative Assembly’s decision making process is flawed. The battle AI is another weakness. The AI is especially poor during sieges although that has always been the case with Total War games.

Another example of poor decision making is the removal of faction family trees, so beloved by fans. It means you now don’t really care who’s head of your faction much less who might take it over. It’s not helped by some very poor character portraits.

You now choose to upgrade your generals in the way you want. This is not nearly as fun as in Rome 1 where the game would automatically attribute your generals and governors new abilities based on their performance and your actions. Win a load of defensive battles and your general would become a great defender and get a bonus defending, recruit lots of mercenaries for a long time and your general might get a discount in the future. Leave a governor to rot in a small province and he would become a corrupt drunk. Now I win a land battle and I can upgrade my generals naval abilities if I so choose. It makes your generals feel less like real people and it makes you less attached to the game.

Army traditions are great new feature. Armies now develop abilities over time with the more battles they win. Again though this would be a lot better if it was automatic rather than the player choosing the upgrades. The new unit cards have divided opinion but they have really grown on me. They look like units might have done on ancient pottery and they look absolutely beautiful. In some areas the game is overly complex such as with spies, emissaries and champions. The roles of these specialist units are still very unclear to me. Simpler defined roles would have been better.

I don’t want to come across as overly critical. The game is fun too play and there is a lot that’s good about it. It’s clear that CA has some very talented people and I feel for those in the team who’ve done their jobs extremely well. (Not least the marketing department who have done a fantastic job with trailers and rally point etc.) There’s some fantastic work in this game (The great animations, sound track, huge number of detailed units to name a few), and some good new ideas and features as well. The trouble is there are also some basic mistakes and the battles are just wrong at the moment. It’s more than just poor execution and polishing its about fundamental errors made at the decision stage and you get the strong impression that the game lacked any strong leadership from an overall designer who new what they were doing. It’s a real shame because there are clearly incredibly talented people at CA

You can’t help but think that if you could take the best bits of Rome 1 and Rome 2 you could have an incredible game. All hope is not lost. Creative Assembley are promising a patch on Friday and subsequent patches after that. There is tremendous potential here but you might want to hold off for the moment to see if things get fixed or until the modders start to fix what CA couldn’t.

Overall Score 7/10 (but could be 9/10 with good patching)

The Great

Epic Map
Unit Stances (force marches, building forts etc) adds a lot to campaigns
Huge number of Factions and Different Units
Expanding cities
Bringing in fleets – particularly to help with sieges is awesome

The Good

The tech trees and there diversity across different factions
Army Traditions – Great new feature
Diplomacy
Provinces and Edicts – I like the way cities are now broken down into different provinces. It takes some getting used to but it adds an interesting new dynamic.
Campaign AI – It’s early days but it seems to be doing a pretty good job so far

The Bad

Politics – has potential but lacks clarity and feels like your just trying to stop bad things from happening. Huge error to not include Faction Family Trees.
No seasons (1 year turn) – Should be at least every 6 months
Battle AI is weak especially during seiges

The Terrible

Battle Gameplay

Capture points in battles – No need to explain this