Total Disaster: Rome II

[El Mano]

The game is abysmal.

It's not just the ubiquitous bugs, gliches and performance issues that plague the game. We know Creative Assembly will (mostly) work them out and the game will eventually run fine, or at least better. There are a few game breaking bugs that are avoiding some people to progress or even play, but they are just a few and you can skip some of them by just reloading a previous saved game (whichs a PITA since that will involve losing progress but anyway). I'm confident Creative Assembly will iron them out.

The real problems, the problems that really worry me when I think about this, one of the last AAA PC exclusive games, are:

• Some features have been removed. They were present in previous games but they are no more. Videos, speeches, intros etc. Gone with the wind. They didn't affect the game play but helped make the game feel like a much more cherished product.
• * Rather disturbing: Rome 2 has been dumbed down in a hard to believe way. No more tactis, units fight in a blob. No fire at will button for hastati: when you want to help a friendly with your hastati (or any other melee armed with javelins) your hastati will shoot their missiles want it or not, and they will hit the friendlies. Besides, they seem to carry a ton of javelins.
  * There is no more guard mode, so once you engage, your army loses formation and turns into a mess.
  * Troops run too fast. Some guy calculated than some troopers would run at 30 MPH.
  * Morale drops down in a matter of seconds, which makes battles hardly ever last for more than a few minutes. By the time you want to make a change or take another tactic, combat is over and your troops are routing.
  * The user interface is awful, ugly, disfunctional.
  * Hold fast: you can now make your armies walk into the water. They will turn into cargo ships you can use in combat. And they are far from being ineffective: they can destroy another ship just by ramming it.
  * The AI is stupid beyond reason.
• They removed the Avatar conquest. Probably the best new feature on Shogun 2, we all were waiting for a new avatar mode. If you wanted to build a Spartan badass general, forget about it. Right now, multiplayer has no ladder, no rankings, unlocks, bonuses, incentives, anything. It is boring.
• And all this because... Sega wants it on consoles too. Yes, consolitis has infected our beloved Total War saga. Check this out:
  http://n4g.com/news/1287918/sega-con...4-and-xbox-one
  This one is a definite hint:
  Our console team...
  

The game has lost over 30% its starting players in three days. It's been out for only three days and a 30% of its players has already quit the game.

Metacritic user score has gone to a dismal 4,3 points. Check here: http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/total-war-rome-ii

The community is really pissed off.

Creative Assembly, what did you do. Shogun 2 was a gift from heavens. Why was it so difficult to keep the cool features? Why did you dumb down the game?

TL, DR: Don't buy the game, don't touch it with a laser pointer attached to a 100ft pole.

[Buckeye]

WoW that sucks, this one looked real good to me and I almost picked it up. Total War is a really good game but I didn't think much of Shogun, just personal preferences is all.

[STEvil]

Consolitis strikes again

when will gaming companies learn? Hopefully never, so all the crappy ones die off..

[Linchpin]

Shogun 2 was in my opinion god awful, series has been going downhill since the original Rome was released. Last one I enjoyed was Napoleon but that was because I really like the time period it was set in.

[donitsi]

Disappointing. I waited this game for like 7 or 9 years. It looks worse and performs worse than previous games. I have gone back gaming Rome1...