Nothing can best this game~ Medieval 2 gold just raised the total war series to a new level!!
First of all, I'll like to run through the gameplay, which consists of turn-based strategy and real time strategy. The turn-based is complexed, and many things are needed to be taught by the tutorial before getting the hang of it, or you'll just go bankrupt in a few turns, or get crushed by opposing factions. After going through the basics of the tutorial, its all out war on the grand campaign, and most of the gameplay is on managing your cities, the trades, diplomacy and espionage, building up army, keeping your population happy, and manages the taxations in each city and of course, maintaining your good terms with the Pope. Managing cities and your ever expanding empire is a complex task as one wrong step may caused you greatly. So many thoughts are to be put in before taking your next step forward, which might make it hard for players new to the series, and might proof frustrating some times because of the complexity, but not the frustrating enough to have you quit after a while as theres so much to discover. And also there's the cardinal of Pope, which you can turn them to your side ally and have your conquest slightly easy as you can request for a crusade at will on a particular city of a faction that you want to wage war on. When not on good terms with a particular Pope when you did not accomplish too much tasks that was assigned to you or did not vote for him to be elected, your favour on the Pope will drop, and will be exocommunicated and so on. Although automanaging the city with the help of the AI is possible, but it is much worth the challenge with managing everything yourself as this is what the game is all about. And I think that much of the focus shouldn't be put on the turn based, but on the real time battles which is what made the game in the series stands out from other strategy games.
So on to the battle, it is as glamorous and graphically enhanced than the previous total war. More combat sequences are added in, and you can see your soliders fighting one another to the death on the field, archers raining flaming arrows onto their rival factions, and most of all, thousands of soldiers, just like in previous total war games can be field onto the battle map at every one time, and it's as if you are watching a fight unfolding just like on a movie screen. The chaos in a battle are felt when thousands of men charged into the opposing formations, and fighting one another, steel against steel with their foes, until one of them was forced into submission, and the death blow delivered upon them.
So when you wanna take a break from the bloodbath, well get on to more bloodbath by taking on factions on custom battles which you can use to experiment on certain units and coming up with different strategies when on the campaign battles, and also, the historical battles are also as engaging as they presents countless challenges, and some are too challenging that I had yet to beat them all yet. And also theres this quick battle, which peaks you against an AI army and your own army which is randomly field by the game itself, and will present a better challenge to those who want to stretch their skills to the limit as you can't really know what unit to expect, and a sudden tune in strategy has to be made to accommodate for each situations. And when you feel that you are already good on Medieval 2, mastering all of the strategy on offensive and defensive, go online and face real human players as they are bound to be more challenging as the AI that you faced in the game itself. And basically, it's like 5 games for the price of one, and with the expansion which proves a more detailed campaign featuring the Britannia, the Teutonics, the Americans and the Crusades. All presenting their own sets of challenge for seasoned players, its another 4 games in one pack which makes it really worth it.
So all in all, Medieval 2 Total War is definitely a must have for strategy gamers, and definitely worth every single cent which you spent on it.