As software it works. As art it falls flat. The short moments of fun are too widely spaced to justify the time expense.
As a software product, the game basically works. Yes, there occasional bugs. Yes, the game does freeze disturbingly often. But that was true of some other TW games, and they fixed those in the end - so I'm prepared to cut them some slack on that. The game mechanics, however, seem to function as designed.
The real problems, however, are that "function as designed" is not necessarily a good thing when many questionable design choices have been made.
What has happened here is that CA has tried to fix several minor / questionable problems simultaneously, and the fixes for each of these problems have combined together destructively to seriously harm the game experience. CA has been mugged by "unintended consequences".
CA has tried to do the following things simultaneously:
(1) Increase the size of the strategic map and number of countries
(2) Increase the size of armies on the tactical map
(3) Import as much as possible from Shogun 2
(4) Keep the hardware requirements of the game fairly low
So...how does the implementation of these design choices combine destructively? The worst example starts with one VERY questionable design choice,
QUESTIONABLE DESIGN CHOICE: Limits on # of armies on strategic map. Each country has a fixed (very small) limit on the number of armies and navies that they can have simultaneously. This is probably intended to remove the old problem of dozens of tiny armies and navies wandering around, as well as keeping the hardware requirements modest. BUT, there are several immediate consequences to that design decision:
=> Countries are painfully easy to wipe out. They can only have so many armies, and if those armies don't happen to be near their cities the country is helpless. => No reinforcing garrisons for cities. You get a variable (based on buildings) garrison in each city, but you cannot add to it unless you put one of your own very few armies there. Effectively, you cannot garrison cities.
On top of that, there are several other design decisions that exacerbate this poor design decision. These include:
=> Countries don't die when you conquer their last province - they die when their last army/navy is destroyed. So, when you take out a country's provinces, their armies and navies fan out in all directions and attack all over the place. And, of course, since you have no real garrisons it is insanely annoying to try to chase all these guys down and defend your cities in the rear areas.
=> You can wander into enemy countries without repercussions. You get a little pop-up message that says "trespassing", but that's it. So when attacking an enemy country you can march an army next to each of their cities, then declare war and take every city in one turn. Since they have a limit on armies, there is not much they can do.
=> Strange AI behavior. When you attack a city, if you find out that it is too tough to take in the first turn because other enemy armies are close by, just lay siege. GUARANTEED, in the next turn ALL supporting enemy armies will march away to some random destination allowing you to autocalc the city without worries.
=> No need for tactical battles. Since there are so few armies, the actual number of times two relatively evenly matched armies slug it out is VERY small. I've gone 70-80 turns without a tactical battle before. If every battle is a massive mismatch, then autocalc is really all you need.
This is such an intrinsic design element of the game, it's hard to see how they could ever fix it. I usually have a pretty good idea of how I would fix things "if i ran the zoo", but in this case I think there is no solution.
Other design issues, in decreasing order of importance:
* Tactical Battles are Pointless and Ugly. First, they do not look very good. Due to a series of questionable design choices, TWR2 has the worst looking battles we've seen from the series since Medieval 1 and Shogun 1. Just huge featureless blobs. But then again, you rarely need to fight actual battles. And the battles you ARE forced to fight are just stupid (more below).
* The "end of turn" process takes forever. There are a LARGE number of countries, they all have things to do, and running through the end of turn process takes several minutes. And you can't just let it run. Refuge armies from destroyed kingdoms wander around and attack your cities and other countries from 3000 miles away want you to pay them crazy sums for non-aggression pacts - each of which stops the end of turn cycle. My suggestion is to have your kindle or iPad handy and pick out a good book. I watched two seasons of "F Troop" on my other computer.
* Agents are just a pain in the rear. CA imported the agent system directly from Shogun 2, with minimal changes. That was a mistake. Why? Because in Shogun 2 the game lasts a couple of decades - in Rome 2 it last centuries. The agents - and generals - DIE a lot. So you spend endless amounts of time assigning skills to agents and generals who are just going to croak in a few turns anyway. VERY annoying.
* Land - Sea battles are flawed. Navies can attack cities just like armies. Ok, that makes sense. On the tactical map the boats come ashore and troops jump off. Ok, cool so far. You can only fit so many boats onto a stretch of beach. Sure, that fits. BUT, when a massive fleet attacks your city, only a few of the boats can come ashore, so a very tiny army can defend the city without any problems - as long as you fight the battle tactically. If you autocalc you autolose. So you have to fight each of these stupid battles where massive floating armies can't quite seem to figure out how to get ashore and attack.
* Construction / City Balance / Buildings are (is?) flawed. The entire city management process is a continuing effort to balance food production and happiness. This is very key since garrisoning cities is difficult (see above). You will rapidly learn that only the buildings that give the maximum food and happiness benefits are worth building, and EVERY OTHER BUILDING is just a waste of space.
* Difficulty management. The only real difference between easy and hard seems to be how much base happiness your cities start with. Since balancing happiness and food in your cities is pretty annoying, "harder" means "more annoying".
* Provinces and Cities and Walls. Each province has one major city, and 1-3 minor cities. Minor cities cannot have walls. Why not? Just because. So, you can't garrison them because you don't have enough armies, and you can't building a wall because you just can't.
* Diplomacy. Minor countries rarely make alliances, which makes them very easy to knock off. Opening the diplomacy screen also causes the game to occasionally freeze.
* Technology tree. There is a military branch and a civil branch. Since 98.5% of the game can be played without fighting a tactical battle, don't bother with military technologies. It really doesn't matter what types of troops you have. Just don't build any...
* Missile troops. Don't bother with building them. The AI usually chooses to make massive armies of slingers, and in the few tactical battles you fight you will quickly see that missile troops do little damage and die like flies.
* Odd tactical map decisions. Phalanxes don't seem to line up correctly, there is no guard mode, missile troops don't run away fast enough in skirmishes, enemy unit flags are hard to see, fleeing units don't show up on the tactical radar, phalanxes turn into mobs if you accidentally give a run command, units get hung up on single fleeing enemy soldiers when advancing, armies assault walled cities without siege engines, etc., etc., etc.
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And so...is the game terrible? No. It's sort of entertaining to watch your empire expand. And expansion is guaranteed, since the game is so easy.
But the game does not deliver an acceptable ratio of "fun per hour". It takes a LONG time to play, and is frequently annoying, frustrating, and tedious. The short moments of fun are too widely spaced to justify the time expense.
EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT
Okay, I had to add this edit. Here's a perfect example of utterly senseless design choices by CA.
In battles, most of your troops have a few spears they can throw. Evidently, the preferred tactic of the ancient world was to stand behind the front line and slam your javelins into your own men's spines. Who knew?
You. Can't. Turn. Off. The. Javelins. So the guys in the back always massacre their own troops. You'll lose more guys to friendly fire than to the enemy. RTW1 let you turn off the javelins. RTW2 does not. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
And it's not like you can just cunningly position your men to overcome this glaring design flaw. The little virtual schmucks don't move when you tell them to. You tell them to charge into the enemy, and instead they ignore you and just stand there flinging spears into their own side's kidneys.
You can also win battles by exploiting this against the AI.
Whoever produced this mess needs an involuntary industry change to fry cook or Wal-Mart greeter.
And yes I was intensely annoyed when I wrote this.