Empire: Total War
Tags: Empire, Total
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August 1st, 2010 at 5:29 am
(For the most recent comments see the updates)
Let me begin by pointing out that I am a HUGE fan of the Total War series. I started with Rome, continued with the Barbarian Invasion, segueyed into Medieval II and the subsequent Kingdoms expansion. Needless to say, I was eagerly anticipating this game. I even bought a top of the line Mach V rig with all the bells and whistles and a 30in monitor to take in the beauty of it all. My machine has no problem handing the graphics settings on Ultra and I can tell you that visually, this game has the potential to be stunning (provided your computer is up to the task).
Now the negative. The game comes with Steam software which introduces its own complications to the process of enjoying ones game. Granted that the auto-patching feature is pretty sweet, but almost everything else about this system is not (See other reviews here for more details). But thats not even the meat of my beef.
Creative Assembly (CA) released this much anticipated game KNOWING that it was a beta version. After reading countless posts on various message boards, it is more than apparent that this game was not ready for release but for some reason they went ahead with it anyway. This in effect made everyone who bought it an unwitting beta tester (with all the frustrations and none of the salary). As I see it, Creative Assembly has spent all of its credibility capital from the prior installments on this piss-poor shell of a game. Thats not fair, it is 90% of a game but that missing 10% makes it unplayable (frequent crashes to desktop, white screens of death, and corrupted save files are the major issues with a few minor issues sprinkled in for good measure).
This will be the last time I purchase a game from Creative Assembly within the first six months of launch and I would advise others to do the same. Not to send a message to CA (though they deserve a swift kick to the junk for this scam), but to save yourself the money and the frustration.
5/21/09 UPDATE: Two and a half months after release, CA is still frantically attempting to patch this game to make it playable. However with every step forward, it seems like they are taking two steps back. The Battlefield AI has gone from acceptably bad to unacceptably bad. Lingering issues related to crashes still persist though the White screen of death and save corruptions seem to have been resolved. The economy system has been tweaked to make the game more difficult, some prefer the change, some do not. Modders are doing their best to put a polish on this game but some fundamentals still remain broken. My original advice to wait for fixes before purchasing still stands, this game is still in post-market Beta testing but should be fun once its completed (probably 3 months from now).
7/01/09 UPDATE: A week after the 1.3 patch, it is time for an update. Personally, the game works much better now than before. This is subjective since some people have had new CTD issues with the latest patch that were not there before. CA released a hotfix tonight to address the CTDs introduced with their latest patch. While the game is generally more fun and playable now, there are still some elements of the game that will likely require an expansion pack-sized update to address (these issues include siege battles being totally broken and unrealistic still, no cross-theater naval invasions, crap diplomacy, and Campaign AI that never retreats EVER even when outnumbered 10 to 1, just to name a few). Adding to my concern is that patch 1.4 will seek to introduce a multi-player campaign (which, if you were paying attention, was supposed to come with the game 4 months ago). That’s like building a house on a unfinished foundation, bound for more Failure. Additionally, CA has decided to tweak naval units so that the biggest/tallest ships with the biggest guns and best crews will have a shorter range, lower accuracy, and slower reload times than the smallest/shortest ships with the smallest guns, despite the overwhelmingly negative response from the hardcore community that would like at least some adherence to the laws of physics. CA hears but does not listen to its most dedicated fans.
Despite all of this (which is really just most of the negative points), If you cannot wait any longer, I think its worth the current price.
If I had to rate this game again, I would give it 4 stars for fun, and three stars overall. Too bad it took four months to achieve mediocrity. Oh well, new engine, new problems, I bet future installments will have much smoother releases. Still, I advocate hesitation when it comes to purchasing future CA/SEGA collaborations.
My next update will come a week after the release of patch 1.4.
Rating: 1 / 5
August 1st, 2010 at 7:07 am
EDIT (April 5th, 2009): Like many others, my opinion of this game has gone down with time. I only ever made it through one short campaign, which only lasted a few days, and I have now uninstalled it. The more time I spent with it, the more glitches and bugs I came across, to the point where it just wasn’t fun any more. They’ve released a number of patches, but these only addressed the Crash-To-Desktop issues which many people had, and which didn’t affect me too much (the game REALLY was not released in an acceptable state). If they ever fix it up it will be a superb game, but there’s a LOT to do. Be warned that for now the fun has FAR less staying power than the last two Total War games, Rome and Medieval II.
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I’ve been a loyal follower (and buyer!) of Total War since the first Medieval. Unfortunately, this game, in its current state, is more a step back than forward. Still, I would give it a 3.5 or 4, but when you take STEAM into consideration, 2 stars is the best it deserves. Other people have written about STEAM; I’d just like to add that it’s nagware – ads for other games pop up on my PC every couple of days.
Steam aside, the game is decent, but below the Total War standard. I’m running it on a PC which is well above the system requirements (e.g., 2.8 GHz dual core processor; 3GB RAM), but the sound chops on and off during videos, there have been temporary freezes and two complete crashes, and plenty of other minor technical annoyances. Can’t imagine what it’s like on a PC that merely meets the requirements. There are major gameplay issues. The AI does some really stupid things – among many others, it doesn’t seem able to put troops in a ship and put them on your coast, something which didn’t hurt Rome or Medieval II too much because they were continent-based, but this is a world-empire game that boasts naval battles. Finances are sufficiently limited that it seems next to impossible to maintain very large armies in multiple theaters, even with high tax rates, cities with all kinds of improvements and 11 Indiamen in trading ports. The game also has long-wait issues, whether between turns or while loading new sections. I’m not going to go on and list all the other annoyances; suffice to say they do a lot to keep this from being an addictive game.
My advice? Don’t buy now, but wait a few months, monitor the forums, and wait until they’ve made it the game it ought to have been. If you’re new to Total War, get Rome or Medieval II, which are among the best PC games ever made.
CA has overreached itself – clearly they either needed a bigger team from the start, or another 6-12 months to playtest and debug.
I haven’t decided whether I’ll buy future additions to this series. Depends on what they eventually make of this one, and whether STEAM, or anything like it, is there next time. I’m quite upset at having to put STEAM on my PC. It does say, on the bottom of the back of the box, in very small print, that you will have to use STEAM, but obviously I didn’t read that before buying. Having paid $[...], I feel that for once the people who get pirated copies have something better – they don’t have to use STEAM.
Rating: 2 / 5
August 1st, 2010 at 7:27 am
I bought this game for [...] bucks at [...] after reading many favorable reviews and seeing pictures of the beautiful graphics. After moving all of my music, Word docs, doing several rounds of disk cleanup, and deleting other games and applications on my computer to make room for the massive amount of space that Empire Total War requires, I finally installed the game. This took me about a day to get to this point. But once done, I was excited; the game looked well worth the money and the space. I hope that one day, I will be able to know whether it is worth the money and space that I used. I get to the main menu, click on any of the game modes, be it Grand Campaign, Road to Independence, or quick battle; and wait for it to load. Problem is, the load bar gets to about 40% and then jumps rapidly back and forth. The sounds of the game are audible; yells of charge, gunfire, noises of a town. I have downloaded both patches, and they have done nothing. I can’t return this useless garbage because of STEAM. I feel ripped off, and after reading many nerd site message boards, I know that my problem is very common. I hope this severe bug will be fixed, but I doubt it. I have yet to even be able to experience a bugged out version of gameplay that others describe. The ship pathfinding may indeed be screwy, and the AI may occasionally run aimlessly, and the campaign map may lag at some points; but, alas, I will never know.
Rating: 1 / 5
August 1st, 2010 at 7:38 am
Bugged up to the point of unplayable. And it is clear after reading several HUNDRED posts at the Total War fan site that this game was never finished in development much less Beta tested. I am just afraid that it may never be done and will end up like Medieval II: never really finished and several major features left in the air.
I have been thinking about this now for a few weeks and at first I thought, well these guys just do not have the resources and money to finish building the game and must wait until after they have sold a few tens of thousands of copies before they have the cash to pay to get the job done. But now I think that they have moved on to other things and will finish a few of the most severe problems and just let the game go. I don;t know if this influence of almost criminal fraud comes from the Saga people or from some ‘new’ management …but in my state ( California, USA ) a vendor who knowingly sells defective product is considered a criminal. If they don’t like the game, as they seem to almost have a hatred for the game’s fans, or at least contempt, perhaps they will sell off the engine to some of the folks that I see spending hundreds of hours doing the great mods. At least with the mod chaps, you know their hearts are in the right place.
Again the more I think about this issue, the darker my understanding of those behind this sad fiasco becomes. And what a great and sad waist of the best, most beautiful engine in the RTS world…by far.
If I didn’t love it, I would just chuck it in the trash and consider it a lesson well-learned about the SEGA brand. I do intend to write cojent reviews to Amazon, Game Spot, and every other sire where I can post to let as many people know about this as I can.
BTW I have thought for a week or so that I would not even post this comment. But the longer I wait for them to get it right and the deeper I think about what has transpired, the angrier I get. I am rather forgiving about PC gaming and have watched it develop for some twenty years. It is more difficult than platform game design because of the variance in PC power and configuration. But this matter and issue is far beyond the pale.
Rating: 1 / 5
August 1st, 2010 at 8:27 am
Let me first say two things:
1) I am not a Secu-ROM fanatic, or whatever the heck it is.
2) I am a Total War Fan
This piece of garbage is the worst thing I have ever seen. It took my 6 hours to install, with more than minimum requirements, and I received a horrible gameplay.
Then, when I tried to uninstall, they would not let me remove their “steam” engine.
I have to admit, a part of me was skeptical of the people who were decrying the use of these security measures. But, why should we have to have an internet connection to play a non internet based game?
It is almost as if they are saying we have to pay for the PRIVILEGE of playing their game. We are the consumer, we are the ones who support them and they are treating us like dirt.
Check my records, I do not speak up about many things on Amazon, but I have been a customer since inception. I have purchased hundreds, if not thousands of games.
This is a trend that must stop and I shall join the protest. No more crappy games, not ready for release, with install time for 6 hours, with mandatory registration, with internet connection required.
I am sorry, the TotalWar name is not worth this.
Angry yes… enlightened more.
I respect the right to protect your product, but that should not come at the price of the freedom of the purchaser. THEY WORK FOR THE CONSUMER.
Rating: 1 / 5