Hey I am I pretty big fan of Civ and RTS's like starcraft and all the age of empire's but I have never played any of the Total Wars. All this weekend Rome II is on sale for $29.99 and I am just wondering from some veterans of the series, is it worth it? I really like the idea of the whole Roman time period too so Shogun 2 isn't applicable, unless it is THAT much better. I have heard some not-so-great things about the stability and performance of this game though, is it better to get Rome I?

I can't tell you if you're gonna like it or not but don't go in expecting anything even remotely resembling starcraft or age of empires when it come to the real time battles. It plays nothing like those. Your best bet is to try a demo of any of the games in the franchise if there is any available to get a taste of the gameplay.

I got lucky and managed to avoid most of the performance issues, but from what I hear they have mostly been patched out. If you do get it I would check out some of the popular mods on the steam workshop. I really like the game but I haven't played it without mods in months.

actually I just heard bad reviews about, videos of people showing off it's crazy glitches. A lot of people considered in the top 10 worst games of last year.

Rome 2 is fucking awesome, man. It had a shitty launch but it's been fixed forever now. If you like Civ its a great total war to play because it's the first to have economic and cultural victory conditions.

It runs real nicely since ages ago too, it's a shame people who have never played it keep echoing secondhand horseshit. Definitely get it

@hayt I will trust you! Half off is too good to pass!

The Rome games and Civ will make me buy a steam machine. I have no interest in pc gaming outside of those two franchises and keyboard gaming doesn't click with me. Can't wait. In short, I think its totally worth it.

Is this a joke? Those are the games that need a keyboard and mouse the most.

Nope, just core things about it are bad, front and foremost are the AI and the UI which are the most atrocious pieces of shit ever. I haven't played since maybe a week after launch so I'm still sour on it but I would say wait till it's 75% off.

EDIT: have some videos.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but Rome 2 was the first and only time I cancelled a Total War preorder and did not buy. Medieval 1 was my first TW game, and Rome 2 is a huge step backwards and an unusually shoddy product from CA. The release may be worse than Empire's, and they seem to be more focused on pushing DLC out the door rather than trying to fix the game. Or maybe it is mostly fixed by now, but I doubt it. I got a chance to play it after a couple patches were released and though it was pretty bad. Just look out how they dropped Empire and turned the Napoleon expansion into a separate title, and never bothered to update Empire's engine with the improvements made with Napoleon.

Now take into account how it seemed they were more focused on marketing and producing videos pre-release, and the broken game customers got... sheesh, CA is making it harder and harder to like them.

So if you want some of the best of the TW series, Rome 1, Medieval 2, and Empire are my top 3. When getting into a game series you've never played, don't just go with the latest title. It's not necessarily the best.

On sale, definitely.

As a long time TW fan (see my icon) I was disappointed when it first came out but still enjoyed the hell out of it. Have been meaning to get back into it.

Am I only the only person who enjoyed Empire? I thought it was really good, there were definite problems but the setting is a rare one. Rome is ok, it had a lot of problems at launch but they are mostly fixed. Personally I think Shogun 2 is the worst of the Total War series because it was so boring to play. There were no real differences between any of the sides and the map was quite small and dull.

@arabes: I enjoyed the shit out of the turn based part of Empire and also loved the naval battles. That said after only a short while I had to start skipping 95% of all land battles and stayed away from fort sieges like the plague that they were.

@hunkulese: Nope, not a joke. This may be shocking to you, but not everyone has the same opinions about things. I don't like gaming with a mouse and keyboard so I don't play pc games.

I preordered this bad boy

I've played under 1 hour, I have a GTX 670 8GB Ram Intel i7 pc and it ran like hot garbage... and the game was a fucking buggy mess... I will go back to it in a year or so when it might actually run properly.

I can tell you now that the TW franchise will not be fun to play with a controller. It's all about micro and requires rapid consecutive mouse drags to position your troops every couple of seconds - not to mention constant scrolling and zooming in and out.

@mest30: Hey dude, haptic feed back or no, forget about playing TW or Civ with the Steam controller. Those games need a mouse. You also need to be pretty close to the screen to play them, they really benefit from a traditional PC setup. I play them on my TV sometimes and the screen is just too big or something, it's hard to see what's going on.

@mest30: Hey dude, haptic feed back or no, forget about playing TW or Civ with the Steam controller. Those games need a mouse. You also need to be pretty close to the screen to play them, they really benefit from a traditional PC setup. I play them on my TV sometimes and the screen is just too big or something, it's hard to see what's going on.

It's not really an opinion. The majority of PC games work fine with a controller, Civ and TW however do not. There's a reason they overhauled everything when they released Civ Rev.

Do you prefer typing with a controller over a keyboard?

Sorry man, but there is NO WAY you could have fun with this game using a controller. There's just too much going on at once.

As for the OP:

If you enjoy Rome 2, try downloading the original Rome and installing this mod. I would say it's for the "hardcore" strategy fan.