This is clearly one of the games of the Total War Franchise worth celebrating
Like its predecessors, Medieval II has 2 phases, the campaign and battle phases. The game campaign allows you to control a faction and use all your skills and intelligence to achieve your goals and get to the top. You can change the difficulty of the campaign and the battles according to your preferences but mind you, the campaign will take its toll on you even on easy. A new innovation in Medieval II is that there are now 2 kinds of settlements: castles and cities. As the game tutorial will tell you, you will need a proper balancing of your castles and cities. Castles are your troop-producers whilst your cities generate most of your income. Again, tasks of properly managing your economy is easier said than done coupled by the fact that economy and battle strategy goes hand in hand all the time. Hence, it will appear that building a castle in an isolated island is as stupid as building a city on a hot frontier. The campaign has new exciting twists this time. Agents now range from diplomats, dreaded assassins, princesses and priests. As we are already familiar on how the first two work, we focus on the latter two. Princesses can marry foreign generals hence bringing him to your own fray. Its success will rely on the princess's charm. Priests on the other hand are also central to yet another powerful force governing the Medieval II universe, religion.
As religion was central in those times, befriending the pope will be one of your priorities. Priests generally keep religion strong in that certain region and can cause insurrection in areas of other religion. Once they gain more and more piety, your priests can be promoted into cardinals. Getting your clergymen in the college of cardinals will give you a chance that your man will get elected as pope. Be careful though because incurring the wrath of the pope will get you excommunicated. Chances are, you will be the target of inquisitors and possibly a crusade.
If you think that the campaign part of this game is brilliant, the battles can make you drool. Battles have been hyped up to give you a sense of realism and immersion. The phalanxes and neatly organized legions of the previous Rome Total War might trigger nostalgia but Medieval II gives us more variety of troops that we simply can't miss. Each faction has certain units exclusive to that faction. The physics and fight animations have also been tweaked such that when you zoom randomly on a hot battle, you will see a soldier bury his sword in its opponent's chest. And in a huge battle taking place, such scenes bring a feeling as if the battle was real. Survival in battle doesn't merely rely on shear numbers however. Extensive planning and troop variety will save turn the tides to your favor. Logic can also be the key to victory. You will find out for example that charging your handsome cavalry headlong into spearmen will put a frown on your face once you see the results whilst peppering an occupied enemy unit with missile units might prove to be effective. Siege battles are also challenging to play and lengthy at the same time. Medieval II will never fail to keep you occupied.
Overall, this game is a simply a work of art which present history and religion in a brilliant, convincing way. There might be some minor glitches in the game but those don't take away the game's inborn charm. Playtime won't be a problem because a good campaign will take you weeks and months to complete. Medieval II Total War is definitely a game you'll want to keep as part of your collection.