Osiris Fraternal Order

Rome Total War II Game Review
Written by: Vac Mikaelson

Rome Total War II. The future emperor's dream, where we live out our fantasies of ruling the Roman Empire... with a few kinks in it.

First I'll start off with the good. The game has possibly the most amazing graphics ever. Even on low settings the graphics are damn good, it gets so intense that I saw a guy from my army tackle a guy from another army, pick up that guys shield, and beat him to death with it, and that happened on LOW settings, and I have played on all settings to see how it works and it just gets more intense with each performance level that you go up. I personally tend to play on lower settings for the sake of lowering the amount of lag that happens especially during battle. They also vastly improved upon siege warfare from Rome Total War. They finally got rid of the glitch where the troops all clump up at the bottom of a tower and start running around in stupid little circles. They also did the ladders very well in which they can now BURN to embers and collapse and any troops that happen to be on it at that time well, they're screwed. They also did the campaign map very well with intense 3d graphics for the World Map Terrain. I also like the way city management is done on this game. You can access all cities in a region simply by clicking on one of the cities. Makes for quick easy access and faster management so that you can get to what everyone wants to do, open up a can of woop-ass on the battlefield. In terms of troop recruitment it is absolutely amazing. You don't have to be in a city in order to recruit troops which I like, it is a lot more convenient not to mention historically accurate. Which on that note, the game is ridiculous in terms of historical accuracy, everything from city placement to what we believe would be the geography of the time. Now for navy's, I really like how they did navies, particularly being able to control navies in battle which is a huge improvement from Rome Total War. Also the naval recruitment like the army recruitment does not require you to be in a port just in territory that you own. Now navies in battle is awesome for this reason, if a navy is in range of an army and the army goes into battle the navy will support the army considering that there is a beach for the troops to run the ships ashore and then disembark and help out an army in battle which can turn the tide in battle and turn certain defeat into victory.

Now for the bad. The load times even with the updates are somewhat ridiculous though they have gotten better. The wait time in between turns is also kinda ridiculous even with the patches which did help a little bit. It is still such that I can go and make a double-decker sandwich and then eat it. Now on the navy's I have on qualm. For Rome something that the Romans invented historically was not included, they don't use ropes with massive hooks on the end of them thrown to another ship where it then latches on, and the Roman sailors would then pull the two ships together and fight it out on deck. All you get is two ships run next to each other and the ship that initiated the attack command take the offensive and board the other ship though it does show you how the fight on a ship boarding is going with a bar on top of the ship showing faction control over the ship. Now I would have also liked to see you be able to take control of another factions ship like in Shogun Total War which I very much enjoyed. Other than these things the game was absolutely incredible, gotta give the producers a big thank you for giving us yet another grand slam home-run of a game.

Now on to my ratings. I am going to give it an 8.9 on our points rating, I much enjoyed playing it so I am going to give it a thumbs up for my personal like of the game and to sum it up I am going to say most certainly buy it.