My system couldn't handle it, but it didn't stop me from playing 18 hours in 2 days!!!

User Rating: 9 | Total War: Rome II PC
I'm a total war veteran, and with the original Rome TW being my favorite I was very exited to play this game. However, I trusted on the minimum system requirements and was very disappointed. The game was laggy as hell, and the frame rate was so low it was almost unplayable… That didn't stop me from playing 16 hours into the campaign as Sparta, and realizing the game is AWESOME!!!
Yesterday I got a new processor and motherboard (the one I had was 6 years old) just so I could play this game (I needed a new processor anyways).
I'll talk a bit about the new features that make this game awesome and different from other TW games.
Battles now have fog of war, and you can use this to take the strategic experience much deeper. Hidding some units in the woods to ambush the enemy is greatly satisfactory. Land battles and sea battles are merged seamlessly; you can have a battle in the sea and in land at the same time, or land your ships and reinforce your army. It's just AWESOME!!!
Cities are part of provinces now, so when you click a settlement it will show you all the buildings in the province and you can build from there. This greatly decreases micro management, and leaves you more time to make war on your enemies.
Units are recruited directly to your general. Far gone are the times where you had to recruit units in your city and then spend x number of turns getting them to your army. As long as you are in your territory you can recruit units. Depending of what buildings you have in the province determines the type of units you can recruit. If you are in enemy or unfriendly territory you can recruit mercenaries, but the upkeep cost is pretty high, so best use them sparingly and disband them once you no longer need them. Unit replenishment is automatic. As long as you are in friendly territory, your army will replenish fallen soldiers.
If you want to travel your army by sea you don't need to build a ship, board it, and dock it. Just click were you want to go, and the army will automatically board and leave the ship.
Diplomacy is great in this game, it actually works. You can make trade agreements and alliances and you can rely on them keeping their word (at least most of the time). Enemies won't attack you just because they can, and you won't have enemies from the other side of the world randomly attacking you. If you break your alliances it will affect how much others trust you, and affect commerce and alliances. It's a great improvement over previous games. You can plan your conquest strategy using diplomacy, it's so much fun.
Victory conditions have changed. Civilization style you can get military, diplomatic, or cultural victory, with different conditions for each faction. This is refreshing, but personally I still prefer military victory =)
The game has some bugs, and od ai behavior, but the developers are awesome and are responding to our complaints and are going to release weekly patches to tweak the game with our feedback. If you are a TW veteran play on very hard or legendary, if you are a newcomer enjoy it on normal or hard, don't even bother with easy.
This game is great, and you should check it out