The next commandment: Thou shall play Medieval II!
Medieval II, as its name says, takes place during the Middle Ages, during the time of knights, castles, and epic battles. And Medieval II sure does the battles well. The game can display up to 10,000 individually animated troops, meaning they don't all move at the same time. The sound effects are awesome, so awesome that if you close your eyes and imagine a little bit, it feels like you're in the battle. Medieval II pays close attention to details, such as the fighting styles (the soldier swing their swords in more than one way), the clangs of swords and the screams of someone who just impaled by arrows (archers don't have infinite ammo, to keep things real). Everything is really like what happened during those times.
Off the battlefield and into the turn-based empire management screen, you can build structures in your cities and castles to recruit agents such as spies and assassins, and be able to get better units. You can meet with other factions to discuss things such as trade rights and alliances, or declare war. And speaking of faction, this isn't like your average RTS game where you have a small number of factions. Medieval II has over 15 factions, all of which are unique and have different strategies. Religion also plays a big part. You have to deal with the Pope often. If you don't do what he says, he will like you less and less, as well as other factions who obey the Pope. All of these features add to the realism.
Every game has bad points, but I can only think of a few for Medieval II. This game can be tough on players who are new to strategy, or who just haven't played a total war game before. There is a lot to memorize, such as where menus are, and how to make enough money to stay out of the red. The camera controls also take some getting used to (move the cursor to the edge, and the camera rotates instead of panning), but that's nothing really. The last thing is that Sega, who publishes the game, doesn't offer much support for Medieval II, and the help forums at totalwar.com weren't very helpful in my opinion. I may need to look harder, but whatever.
All in all, if you are a Total War fan, or just a gamer looking for some fun, get this, and wage total war on Europe. And have loads of fun while doing it.
The Good: Fun battles, deep campaign gameplay, great graphics.
The Bad: Bad AI, lack of naval battles, horrible voice acting for most factions, hard to field truely massive armies, battles are fairly similar.