29.3.2009

O.k first things first, this is a review based mainly on the game and not Steam or other issues. If you are having trouble running the game you have my sympathies and you are indeed entitled to vent your rage on this site. However I am one of the (seemingly) lucky few, who has not encountered too many problems so I feel like I'm in a good position to rate the game for what it is. So here goes.My mother always taught me that first impressions are essential, and Empire: Total War certainly sets a good one. The presentation of the intro movie and the first menu screen are nothing but spectacular, with special mention to the beautiful music and sound. From the first menu,Total War virgins may struggle to decide which path to take as there are so many different options (i.e Grand Campaign, Battle Scenarios) but I would suggest doing the battle tutorial first and then challenging The Road To Independence episodes. These episodes work as a long tutorial which anyone whose played previos TW games will have no trouble in completing, and which I found a little too easy and patronising to be honest. Once you've succesfully freed yourself from the British rule it is finally time for the Grand Campaign.Now this is the main part of the game and where you'll be spending most of your time. The choice of which nation to control is very impressive and vast, honestly it took me nearly an hour to decide which one I wanted to take to world domination, finally deciding upon Austria. So with Vienna and Zagreb under my control I set out on my journey to make Austria the dominant nation of the world. The first thing I noticed was the great improvement to the Diplomacy aspect of the game. All diplomatic decisions are now made via a single screen thus making the diplomat character completely redundent (this in my opinion is a good thing. Also different is the introduction of a research tree, this plays out exactly the same as that which is featured on the Civilization series of games so if you've played them then you will know what to expect. The only non-combat characters are now Rakes and Gentlemen. Rakes play like a combination of spies and assasins from previous TW games and are mainly used to sabotage enemy bases. Gentlemen are used to help in research, by placing them in research towns you get a major boost.The Campaign map has also had a bit of an update, it is generally more colourful and vibrant. But more important than just a better look is the use of towns and farms (again similar to Civ) which branch out from the main cities, these can be upgraded to produce more trade items such as tobacco or you can choose to build public order buildings such as theaters. The size of the game world should also be mentioned as it is very impressive, it now incorparates areas such as India. Upgrading your cities has also been simplified with easy to follow building upgrades. This is one area I'm not so keen on as I feel it has taken away the individuality of planning your own towns and cities for various uses such as military or cultural. As you progress into the campaign mode you will find that diplomacy plays a very prominant part of the game. This is both a good and bad thing, as on the one hand I enjoy putting my brain to use and trying to out-fox the enemy with diplomatic skills but when the A.I makes such foolish decisions (i.e small nations declaring war with major dominant forces) it kind of takes the shine off when you have out-thought your opponents. So in summary, the campaign map is overall an improvement on past TW games but still has small faults which will hopefully be ironed out. Anyway, I've just declared war on Poland and I'm planning to invade Warsaw....Which leads us to the battle map. This is without doubt the biggest leap the series has made since Rome : TW. The introduction of gunpowder based units means any tactic you used in previous TW games will have to be thrown out the window. The basis of battle consists of getting your infantry within range to shoot your opponents, this sounds a lot easier than it is, and the emphasis is certainly on trying to use the terrain to your advantage with hills being of particular use. There is still a wide range of melee combat (in fact most units have the option of using their bayonet instaed of firing their guns) and the cavalry units are still very prominent. On most maps there are various buildings you can capture to aid your progress and give your infantry some much needed cover, this is something which I'd never thought of before but now makes me wonder why it was'nt included in past titles. So far so good, but the problem of poor A.I rears it's ugly head again, when your units don't seem to respond to some of your commands and moving them about the battlefield can sometimes be very frustrating and problomatic. Also seige battles are so easy to win when defending that it is laughable, I can win with only a handful of units when I'm taking on the might of the whole British army!!!. I suppose that pretty much sums the game up. On the one hand you have the most beautiful and epic game in the series, but a few poor decisions on the developers part and some bugs that need ironing out prevent it from being the classic it so nearly is.To summarise, I would suggest to anyone new to the series that they should probably seek out either Rome, Medieval or Shogun first and then come to this in about six months when these problems should have been erased and to TW veterans like myself, well I suggest if you've had problems with the game then keep persevering because I do feel it will be worthwhile in the end. And finnaly the Steam issue, as I said I've had very few problems myself (apart from some crashes to the desktop) but please don't abuse the people who have had problems and feel the need to express their anger on this site, it is well within their rights to complain and that maybe the only way we get the respect we deserve as paying PC owners.

15.4.2009

The good:1. AI vastly improved compared to previous total war games, especially in battles, yes finally a modest but existent challenge to play against the PC which was never the case in previous total war games.2. Excellent 18th century atmosphere (and first TW covering the period)3. Lots of new gadgets:3.1 new government minister based system giving bonuses and penalties -notice that ministers can change ministries by dragging them with the mouse, thing that can be very useful especially when gaining new particular traits-3.2 sea battles playable3.3 finally TW provided a reasonable tech system covering industry, agriculture, philosophy, naval and land warfare techs - by the way beware,you can research one tech/ university owned meaning that you can research several techs simultaneously if you decided to invest in more than one place of knowledge)3.4 agents can not be recruited at will but appear randomly according to investment strategy and hence became much more valuable3.5 lots of tactical formations for your units in battle when you get the right tech making battles very variedThe bad:1. Game seems too easy despite the improvement in battle AI which certainly did not include hard work on diplomacy AI among others obliging for traditional house rules to make it more playable.2. Still TW does not take into account draining of military man power when creating new regiments or filling ranks left empty by KIA soldiers. Bloody wars or battles should have a big impact in your present and future military capabilities. As in previous games everything depends on money, which is incorrect, money pays wages and equipment but can not generate people of the right age.3. Although the game is based on money, there is incredible amounts of it going into your coffers even at the very hardest level, and the more land the more money you get hence plenty more armies to be afforded making a nice unrealistic cycle. Every country of that time that went into war had an incredible famine of gold and got huge government debts which is certainly not the case in TW and it is actually the opposite and unrealistic: If you want money and more armies you better go to war :).4. The games has lot of serious bugs with plenty of non fixable on reload CTDs, making it quite annoying5. Game seems to need a new generation of PC not yet in existence to the public to run at a reasonable pace from one turn to the next, or when playing battles in hard weather conditions like heavy rain or snow. In any case better be patient than reducing game complexity in my opinion.6. The special edition version is a real scam7. The greatly advertised sea battles are fun to play the first time, one battle, then are very repetitive and boring and is better to play in auto-resolve battle...8. The graphics are low quality (flags and sprites in campaign map appalling, movement of troops in battle maps disappointing = unless you zoom in at high magnification soldiers seem to be sliding in the battlefield not running which was not the case in METW2 so this was a big step back probably to reduce the already demanding GFX card needs)9. Steam is annoyingly slow to start and finish the game.Overall it is an excellent game however with a great historical atmosphere (despite having queen Victoria I taking the throne between in 1702-1714 on every single game I play as successor of King William III so it is certainly not at random) especially when comparing to what it is out there. Yes true the offer is very limited but in strategy games TW, modded CIV and probably modded HOI2 are the only decent options to date.

11.3.2009

I`ve read alot of the comments posted on here about this game, and i too had initial problems using the Steam interface. The biggest of which is the the lack of information about what Steam is up to, and why its taking so long. I feel lucky i wasn`t in the 17hr league but even spending 3hrs like i did just to get a game to install is quite frankly laughable.. no wonder XBox owner are in stitches at us poor PC owners. I`m sure that Steam, as a server for games on an online community is a wonderful resource for those willing to use it, but surely if you buy a game at £30 retail price you should have to right to choose an option on the loading screen, something like "Multiplayer online via Steam OR Single player load from Disc",then use your product key as per normal... I wonder if the Steam setup was the real cause for delaying the release of this game??Ah yes... the game.. nearly forgot.EMPIRE: TOTAL WAR spans the period in history from 1700 onwards taking in the campaigns in France, the America`s and India. The scope is breathtaking! the game is epic and the maps truely represent this now. Total war veterans will at once feel at home with the game`s basic design (its not by someone else, the CA team has really tried hard to listen to you guys and ammend and adapt things that niggled in the previous offerings), its both intuitive and the layout is compact, not encroaching on the game screen too much. Graphic wise, i cannot test this on ultra level, my PC would expire under the strain, but i CAN give you the average-joe-public level... MEDIUM setting. Once set to this, yes you loose some of the graphical splendor, but a few tweaks with the setting (always a welcome feature of TW games) allows for some fine tuning, and before long you have a great looking game without the hold-up`s, glitches and slow-running clock speed of trying to max it out. After all, its the gameplay we are after, isn`t it?The land battles have markedly changed. I was losing all the first time battles i tried until - even for a veteran - i used the tutorials. They really have spun this game into a new age and method of war, much like in the time the game is set. Formation is key, troop deployment crucial - as a General you need to be ever more observant of potential threats or suddenly, like me - you get wiped out very quickly!The much vaunted sea battles are okay... you can see the influence of IMPERIAL GLORY here, the navigation and broadside ideas are identical. The various types of shot on offer don`t really seem to do much difference, and i agree with another poster here that this may need to be addressed in a patch... though hopefully one for direct download and NOT via Steam!! As the sea battles go, i think being able to board ships is a good feature, however i also noticed that the broadside options were locked out if you group your units together.. why? it works on land?Another patch please CA...!Overall, despite niggles with some of the in game features as stated above, the whole game marks a massive step ahead of the competition (what competition though? who else is in the TW league??) and shows exactly what the humble PC can do. Yes Xbox owners.. you may well be able to play your games instantly, but will you still be playing that game in month upon month to come..??This is EMPIRE: TOTAL WAR`s legacy - this is the game all the others now have to look up to as benchmark if they even wish to come close...Next time though boys, ditch that Steam thing... its the new millenium, not the "Steam" age...

7.4.2009

I was not really sure what to expect frm Empire: Total War Special Forces Edition. I had read reviews that ranged from fanatical "I LOVE IT!" oppinions, to ones which didn't like it, to ones which said it was rubbish simply because Steam was not doing its job propperly.Having played previous Total War games, I expected a game to build on what Medieval II had done. Or perhaps be a bit like the "Napoleonic Total War II" modification for Rome. In both these ways, it wasn't. Medieval gave you a vast range of factions, which whilst they shared a great many units, had many unique units and each faction felt overall unique. Empire didn't really manage to achieve this. There are only 10 factions,either european style or indian. Of this, the indian ones do seem unique whereas the european ones seem to be carbon copies of the others. I guarentee that most armies you face will contain generic Line Infantry, but with a different coloured coat.A for Napoleonic: Total War, the battles in Empire seem a little less well done; bayonet melees invariably become a grinding match whereby numbers tend to win, and moral is too high -- i heard someone compare Empire to Imperial Glory. And the balance between some units is not right.Yet despite all this, Empire is still a very good game. The naval battles really do add a whole new dimention to the game, and take a bit of skill and getting used to, but are just as fun as the land battles. The detail and graphics on land battles is outstanding too; soldiers present their muskets to give shattering volleys, they vault over walls, and they collapse in the most realistic fasion i've ever seen in a video game when killed. The effects are gorgeous, and when a team of Galloper Guns arrives at the enemy's flank to unload a volley of Canister at their strongest unit, you can really see the amount of effort that went into the game. The campaign map, though I prefered the map of Medieval II, is still very good and enjoyable to play.Empire is a good game, and I'm glad I've purchased it. If you compare it to the hype it recieved then yes, it is a little disappointing. But as video games go, it is one of the better ones, although it does suffer from a lot of bugs which are being fixed slowly. The game is worth getting, especially when there is an online community that is creating beautiful and more historically accurate reskins for the soldiers, and modifications that make the game far more enjoyable.So to sum up: should you get Empire Total War? On balance, i would recommend it to you. Should you get the special forces edition? Ask yourself: how badly to you want the 6 extra units? They're ggood fun, but not something that is needed to massively improve what Empire has to offer.

15.3.2009

After reading some (the majority) of the reviews on here, I was very apprehensive when inserting the first DVD disk into my laptop to install the game. I already have a Steam account, so wasn't too worried about this aspect (although I can fully understand people's views regarding this method of installing/playing games that we have bought legally - it also means that to play it on multiple PC's we have no less than six!, you have to have Steam installed on any PC you want to play it on).The game and Special Forces extra content, including the patch took around three quarters of an hour to install, which is about right for 15GB of files being added to the hard drive. No problems whatsoever.

11.3.2009

Luckily I only wasted 90 minutes on installation due to Steam. I do have the DVD version. But when you consider this game is 15GB - perhaps 90 minutes is not such a long time. I'm glad I just played the game and didn't bother to read any reviews.I have played all Total War titles - and this is becoming my favourite. The AI is improved; and reminds me of the original MTW, which is a very good thing. The gunpowder age has brought additions to the user interface - now the battle map indicates fields of fire and the effective range for each unit. There are multiple special abilities for units. E.g. pike men can form a hedgehog as well as a phalanx.The campaign map is divided into 3 main regions (Europe,

5.3.2009

The long awaited return of Total war.Although a few people have had a few issues with steam with the demo, the game is just something else, with excellent graphical changes since medieval, Sea Battles added in, finally i have to say, but just simply brilliant, big question is, Special forces or normal edition, if your british the answer has to be YES HMS victory... nice touch, comes with The campaign map in the box aswell. And you get a sence of smugness as you buy it, which is also very brittish.Gameplay. More tactical, although people say you can win with numbers in previous editions i beg to differ, an army of canons (against ai) can beat any amount of infantry (if you have a medieval edition try it,

11.3.2009

Absolutely delighted with the game, received last Thursday from Amazon and had It installed in under 45 minutes. No problems with Steam, it stays neatly in the background.I followed the instructions to download the "Special Forces Units" yesterday and it was easy peasy.So after playing for just under a week I can report I am enjoying this latest edition. The sea battles are magic! You get a real feeling of being there on the ocean. It looks lovely and plays very realistically but I am dreading handling larger fleets as there's lots to learn and do in theses all new sea confrontations, and you need to be pretty hands on. The land battles are very pleasing as well,

8.3.2009

Trust me, it's the best strategy game on the PC yet. Steam is all that prevents me giving it 5 stars, as it requires you to share your account if you want to install it on multiple computers, but this isn't a major problem.Now the game: it requires a beefy graphics card for your viewing pleasure, if you only have a 128 or 256mb one then it won't look good. I personally have a £60 BFG 9500GT 1GB DDR2 PCI-E Graphics Card, and even that beast can't manage the best, but on high for nearly all settings (it goes up to ultra, with some extra effects too such as HDR bloom, and anti-aliasing) it looks fantastic, and it sounds great, when the cannons fired you feel them firing if you've got some good speakers.Campaign is new and fun,

6.3.2009

As I loved Medieval 2 total war I decided to go for it and purchase the special edition of sega's latest total war game. The special edition comes in a cardboard case which unfolds to reveal a glossy map and a small leaflet detailing the special units that can be used in the campaign. But I didnt buy it for the case.The game itself is not for people who are looking for a casual play about. The campaign is detailed and requires a lot more thought then previous games, for example you have to manage your government and your technology and trade. I can run the game on the highest graphics, my pc specs are: intel core quad Q6600 2.40 ghz 4.00gb. The campaign map is huge, the borders into africa have been extended,

20.3.2009

After reading all previous reviews for this title I am a little confused? Are you all reviewing the same game as I am?If you have any knowledge at all of historical battles and tactics used from this era then you will love this game.Having owned all other Total War titles I believe that this is the best by a long way with Rome trailing in 2nd.All other (bad) reviews seem to be experiencing problems with installation where I did not. The installation and updates were completed within 20 minutes and have experienced no problems since.I understand that this game requires substantial computing power so some may feel aggrieved that the true specs were not on the back of the box as the ones stated will not get the best out of this title.I have a 3.2GHZ Intel Core I7 extreme edition processor,

16.5.2009

With the product now properly working I find it time to write a review. Off course, I''ve had my problems with this game too, but with the latest patches almost all are gone. Now for the review:Pros- Graphics, way better then in M:TWII- Gameplay, much added options such as a tech tree, building outside the region capital, easier interface and diplomacy- Battles, they are more challenging then on Medieval or Rome, although not yet perfect- The different campaign modes, from short campaign where you only have to capture like 15 regions, to world domination were you got to capture about 45 of them- The different theatres of war, America, Europe, India, and the trade theatres such as East-Indies- Trading system,

8.3.2009

I recently got this game after looking at the game genre, my favourite time period. The creation of America. So i preordered the SE version of this game for the 6 extra units.I noticed a few reviews that complain about Steams copy protection, or the fact people had to wait 17 hours to download/install the game. Not once did these people actually use the internet "google" supremes here in searching for their answer...If you have issues installing via steam. Follow these instructions, Go to your local STEAM directory, (usually "C:\Program Files\Steam\steam.exe" -install e:) then create a shortcut of steam.exe and Put in this command..-install e: Like the above example!!

9.3.2009

A simply incredible game! The best I have played in a long long time. If you love strategy games and/or TW games you will love this one! The campaign map is more complex than all of the other games combined, and turns can now take hours to complete. With the addition of new theaters of war and trading theaters every move has to be made so carefully! There are also the addition of naval battles now - they look great and play really well. The land battles are out of this world (both in strategy and visuals). The AI is also much improved on previous games, although there could still be some improvements. Further, with the addition of Steam you can quickly join multiplayer battles...the game is also automatically updated!

13.3.2009

Hands down the best strategy game of all time. The single player campaign is excellent, the external towns, ports, plantations etc. make building a lot less complex but add to the strategy of the game. Total war have created naval battles superbly and the land battles are better than that of MedievalII:Total War. While the steam does seem like an annoyance I've found it incredibly usefull. All updates are automatic, multiplayer is immediate. Those who say that DRM is ruining games, tough, the way the indusrty is going most games will have some kind of DRM in the future.I run this on a two year old pc HP A6090 2GB RAM, 2.66GHz dual core processor, with 256MB graphics and it runs smoothly with good graphics at 1280x1024.This game is great,

Empire: Total War - Special Forces Edition (PC) - Reviews

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