Long-time Total War fan reviews Rome 2
Ever since the original Shogun sucked me into the series and real time strategies 15 years ago, I've been a fan of the Total War series. I still am, in some ways. In others? Not as much. Rome 2 is partly the reason for this.
In many ways, the game is gorgeous. In others, it is a stark, dark reality of ugliness and mediocrity. There are a few things that save it from being an absolute disaster. There are also a few things that save it from being absolutely amazing.
Let's start with the gorgeous. Firstly, the aesthetics and UI are very good. The UI, not as much but the overall feel and atmosphere of the game are great. When viewing the campaign map or in the field of battle, you feel like you're right there in the general's chair. Diplomacy is well-done in this game as well and the AI advisers are pleasant sounding and not long-winded enough (most of the time) to be annoying. The atmosphere of the game is great.
The rest of the game is either bad or good mired in badness or mediocrity. Let's start with the ugly. While patches made great improvements to the AI, the AI of this game continues a downward slope that got skipped in Shogun. Creative Assembly fell off what was their strengths in the first two games and has now become a clusterfuck, for lack of a better word, of piss-poor proportions. I can't rightly mark this as mediocre and not ugly since even after patching, the AI is well below sub-par. The type of AI you'd expect in a game like this is non-existant, really. Oh it's very improved from vanilla. But the vanilla AI was the type you'd expect from a B-ranked game that was produced and developed in a small, leased office building and sold at a Sav-Lots for $4. So anyone claiming that the AI is even decent in this game are only fooling themselves.
Now we'll move onto the mediocre. It's important to remember that I do not have a weak PC. I have one of the top 10 processors and video cards for desktops on the market. No, I don't have an SLI or super Titan set up, but my PC is nothing to merely scoff at. I have a i7 3960x, 32 gigs of RAM and a nvidia gtx 780 as well as plenty of cooling... it's important to take this into consideration for this next part of my review.
The graphics. The graphics *look* amazing. But, as with the AI, the utilization of these graphics have become somewhat of a dual-Achilles heal (I know, ironically appropriate for the review)... in that the utilization sucks bad. The game will run at 60fps... on low and sometimes on medium. On High, Very High or whatever is after that, it runs from 30-45ish. Sometimes below 30. Really poor utilization. Especially when considering that the recommended requirements are a gig video card, a 2nd gen i5 and 4 gigs of RAM. My computer should be able to Trojan horse this bitch into quick submission... *not* hover at 35fps. Just another way the Creative Assembly advertises on something they can't deliver. Then they rake in a lot of profit. Why? Because the game *looks* great. In screenshots, on their workstation computers (which are running graphical versions of the game not even available to consumers, false advertising?)... but can't run well on even the biggest enthusiast's computer. They've even stated for people playing Attila that the highest level of graphics settings can't be achieved smoothly on current hardware. Anyone's hardware. Why are they selling you shit you can't even play?
Welp, now that I've covered most of what I can, I'll summarize here. Good atmosphere. Good graphics but shitty utilization. Improved but still crappy AI. I am torn between giving this game a 1 or a 2 star rating, but I'm hoping in giving it what it deserves, people will start to take notice.
... and if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it jumps.
