Not only the best game this year and one of this gens best games, but the best coop game since Diablo2. Best in series.
The only negative aspect of the game is that DX11 features are coming in a patch in a few weeks, this does not bother me though when I am doing coop with a friend or family member online. You can now share units in battles with your friend that you are playing coop campaign with. What this means is that you play the whole campaign with a friend and do battles together for both of your if you want. Doing Seige Battles defending the castle with your friends is just awesome, alot of teamwork is needed and its just an epic time to be had.
The gameplay is top notch and as I said above the AI is vastly improved and will give a very good challenge to even the vets of the TW series. The pathfinding is also alot better which is another long lasting issue I have had with the series, but CA really brought the AI and pathfinding to another level.
The game also runs very well on the computer I have been playing Shogun2 on. Long games of Coop Campaign with my cousin for up to 7 hours at once didnt cause any slowdowns or lag, just tons of fun and excitement.
The graphics and especially the art design are also very good, evne without DX11 for now. It is a sight to see when you have battles of 2k vs 2k going at it, with arrows flying all over the place and swords clashing, its just an amazing accomplishment.
If you have not played the series before this is a good time to get into it, as it has some great tutorials to show you how to play the game. Basically the series has always reminded me of RISK mixed with Civilization for the MAP/turn based aspect and then a RTS sort of for the fighting of the big battles.
This is as near a perfect game as you can get, awesome coop, top notch AI, beautiful graphics and very good performance. Not to mention there is a huge multi-player versus mode with clans that I have not played much of yet, but that is very deep and alot of options.
One more thing, the music is another aspect that is as good as you could possibly hope for. After HUGE battles there is epic music and the sound effects are also very well done to.
Do yourself a favor and get this game ASAP. I am not a huge strategy or RTS fan, but this game is top notch and hands down the best of the series, improving vastly over Empire and Napoleon (the last games in the series).