The game Rome should have been.
However, M2TW seems to get it right.
Let me say this first, the game is BEAUTIFUL, honestly one of the best looking games in years. The differences in each single soldier, the stunning battlefield landscapes, the hugely detailed cities...if you have a good graphics card you will love the game. The battlefields have to be mentioned further, the original MTW had very interesting and detailed battlefields and there were clear differences between fighting in somewhere like England to fighting in Greece. Rome however, everywhere just felt the same, there was no sense of location or climate...battlefields were bland and uninspiring. In M2TW if you fight a battle in Scotland you will see rugged Highland landscapes, fight a battle in Northern France you will be treated to lush grassland and massive forests, fight a battle in Greece you will fight over Arid grassland and rocky hills etc.
A lot has been made of the improved AI and improved combat system and mostly all the hype is justified, yet for all the new stuff added to the battles it still feels very samey. The AI on both the campmap and battlemap has been improved to a degree, on the campmap rival factions will honour alliances with you for the most part, they also gather up armies and so you don't have one unit stacks bimbling around. Yet at times the AI slips back into its RTW roots. Rival ships blockade one of your ports, declaring war and then the faction itself makes no attempt to attack you. Sometimes one unit stacks do run around the map, in one game I had the French King seige one of my cities ON HIS OWN without any support! At times the AI on the campmap and battlemap really surprises and challenges you, other times it just makes you remember why MTW1 and STW were so good compared to RTW (AI!).
The reduced unit and killing speeds must also be mentioned, you actually have time to admire combats and formulate complex strategies. Something which Rome lacked.
Overall, M2TW is the game Rome should have been, the AI is for the most part much better, it fixes many annoying things from Rome, the new castle/city system is very nice and the game expands on many ideas from MTW1 (even though it leaves out a few things, like titles and full blown civil wars). Yet for all the hype and improved graphics and the supposed 'AMAZING NEW FEATURE: THE AZTECS' (which are just another faction for you to beat up...who cares?) if you played Rome a lot, you may not find a lot of replay value in M2TW. Don't get me wrong, the replay value is far greater than Rome itself and the new options for modders (31 faction slots!) should keep people verrrry busy...yet throughout my time playing the game I just kind of thought "been here, done that". M2TW is evolutionary game, not a revolutionary one and it shows. The basic framework of Rome is obvious to see and really reminds you that the next TW game really needs to change things completely. Maybe through naval battles, better seiges and a reworked campaign game? Who knows?
M2TW and the dozens of mods that will be released for it will keep people playing for years to come, yet the limitations of the R/M2TW engine are really starting to show. M2TW is a solid game however and very enjoyable (even though I will probably abandon the vanilla campaign and just play mods ;)).