A worthy add-on to the acclaimed original, successfully recreating the immediate pre-medieval era
The new campaign map now boosts a scenario starting at 363 AD until 476 AD - the Fall of Western Rome involving all the barbarian migrations. It's still two turns per year, so the new game is much shorter than a long vanilla imperial campaign - though you don't have the choice of a ''shorter'' one this time. The sole victory condition becomes very specific to each playable faction ( non playables have each one coded too ), ranging from 10 to 34 settlements. Needless to say, playing as the imploding Western Roman Empire harness the greatest challenge of all by far, to the contrary of the original Roman families from the republican era which were easy to pick. The developers have successfully recreated the darker feeling of an embroiled Barbaricum raging across Europe........Depending of the faction played, the ''official'' limit ( 476 AD, around 225 turns ) is now a winning race to tackle with. Of course, we still have the option to continue after that.
If you're reading this, chances are you know well the first - so let's go to the new features:
---Night battles: aesthetic, think about the night bombardment of Jerusalem in the movie Kingdom of Heaven! But really useful if attacking/defending with a general having the ability and the AI hasn't. If you bring too many reinforcements, it would still be better to wage the battle normally in the daylight.
---Swimming: cool if managing to encounter enemies adjacent to rivers & bridges.
---The variable victory conditions: specific to each faction. No longer the choice between a long and short campaign, as the limit now requires the player to speed things. Yet speeding things in BI can be very hard considering the resources and measly gold brought by the early trade.
---Training Warlords: 5th level barracks. Very cool addition, though the player might just need 2-3 additional ones to complete a successful thriving in Barbaricum.
---Hordes and faction emergence: probably the feature that may alter the most your gameplay experience. When a horde enters your territory, be prepared for several turns of challenging hiatus to the expansion, even conceding temporarily one or two settlements to weaken the horde in the meantime, at the expense of the frontier campaign.
---Religion: herald the arrival of Christianity, thriving alongside Paganism and Zoroastrianism. Nice, yet not that crucial to deal with for the experienced players. The conversion process is easy and may take a few turns.
---AI improvements: Neat overall, both strategic and tactical, ensuring the franchise to stay on top of the hill ( there will always be some hardcores and fanboys who will complain about it not being able to mimick ALL the moves a human player can do...).
---A semi-cheat is now tweaked: ''abandon settlement-give it to an enemy-recapture it the same turn-exterminate''. Partly fixed, now only under certain circumstances the AI will accept your ruse ( settlement gift in order to quell an unbearable disorder ). The player must deal with civil disorder in huge cities the hard way, as it should have been intended from the start.
Fear not, RTS addicts that might not welcome all the new micromanagement options, the game offer tactical battles as marvelous than before, plus some lighting effects added and thousands of units maneuvering at the same time - which make it, with Rome, the most demanding strategy game in the market at the release.
From a technical standpoint then, BI displays the very same engine than Rome's. One year later, critics may scrutinize deeper some minor caveats, yet both the strategic map & the impressive RTS battles remain a visual treat, enriched with the same audio track ( add-ons within the latter wouldn't hurt our ears a year later ).
Now to the ones complaining about the naval battles becoming even more ''abstract'' ( quoting Jason ), well it seems the developers at Creative Assembly made the right choice. They had to consider the historic accuracy ( though we might argue a game is not about realism ). Admittedly, around 300-500 AD warfare was most entirely inland - except for transport - as very few naval encounters were reported. So.....better luck next time, with a hypothetical Napoleon: Total War!
In short, Barbarian Invasion targets the hardcore community and brings to them, Total War addicts, what they reasonably expected. The title brilliantly recreates the atmosphere of a fascinating yet darker era of human history, much neglected in the past . Unfortunately, by being such a challenging recreation of Barbaricum released in Fall 2005, this expansion is poised to be totally inundated in the civ waves brought by Civilization 4 and Age of Empires III.