Medieval: total war is a great old game which i would recommend if you are a fan of the total war series. the main problem with the game is that the game crashes a lot. to fix these crashes i would recommend putting the resolution to what you monitor displays as and not using auto saving. After this the game should stop crashing.

Medieval Europe was the only sensible option for a follow up to Shogun: Total War –nearly 400 years of unremitting war, social, cultural, religious, and technological change, during which any of the featured factions might have prevailed to steer the course of history. Like any good sequel, Medieval: Total War builds on the foundations of Shogun, greatly expanding on characters, sieges, religion among other aspects. But with ambition comes a chance of failure and, although not a true failure, Medieval is, at best, a slow and tiring experience.

The most important addition to the gameplay is the expansion of the character system. Unlike Shogun, characters are not merely generals but fully developed personalities with new traits. A character’s loyalty, dread, piety, command, and acumen ratings all determine their capabilities as governors as well as generals; they also develop “Virtues and Vices” with further effects on their traits. Bestowing titles and positions in your court is key, as disloyal generals can initiate civil wars if they reckon their chances are good enough, forcing you to choose between backing the “loyalists” or forging a new dynasty with the “rebels”.

Securing the future of your dynasty is a critical task in your campaigns. Ensuring you have princes of the blood to inherit the throne is critical as without heirs you lose the game automatically. In this quest you are joined by the princess, a new agent who can marry into factions; in doing so you can secure alliances with greater chance of success, continue the royal line of your faction by marrying a foreign princess, and even lay claim to another faction’s lands should they be destroyed.

There are other additions you would expect from the medieval period. Sieges are bigger and bloodier, with new siege engines available to help batter down the many-walled castles you will encounter. Naval warfare is introduced with fleets able to transport armies and create trade routes across sea zones. Religion is fleshed out with the many competing faiths of the medieval period and their holy wars – crusades or jihads can, theoretically, be a great expeditor of your conquest, especially against opposing faiths.

Otherwise, the game operates much as it did in Shogun. The campaign map remains as a 2D setup (fittingly rendered in the style of a parchment or tapestry) and so requires the same cautious approach, risking battles only with the forces and infrastructure to back it up – battles are just as punishing and ill-controlled as in the previous game. But the expanded scope of the period (366 years vs. Shogun’s 70, or 366 turns vs. 280) really starts to drag out the process of development. It takes 8 turns to build a tier 2 castle in addition to the 4-8 turns for any other building in most of that tier, and since many units still require a combination of buildings to unlock, you’re spending 20-24 turns before you can even start to recruit decent units for your armies.

In the meantime, you’ll observe the vagaries and vicissitudes of the character system, which I find over- and underwhelming all at once. The “Vices and Virtues” system, in practice, feels frustratingly arbitrary. At the very least, it’s a “one virtue-one vice” situation for new princes who come of age, but the system really does feel partial to negative traits; generals who just fought hard battles can suddenly get “Lazy” next turn, and almost everyone, it seems, turns out to be an inbreed if they live long enough. In fact, non-family characters have no age and are effectively immortal – unless they up and die within two turns of their appearance.

Yet for all their difficulties, characters don’t seem to have all that much impact in the long run. I never found provinces or armies to suffer for lack of good leadership in any noticeable way, and their loyalty was all but certain with very little effort. That is until, as England, I finally began my first major war with France, 120 turns in, and the whole damned country suddenly rose up in civil war against me with no indication of why.

Yeah. No thanks.

The presentation is strong but not as consistent as in Shogun. Dirty, unsentimental character portraits and gloomy, Gregorian chanting dominate the main menu, suggesting a grotesque, Dark Ages interpretation of the period. Jeff van Dyck’s soundtrack certainly upholds this with chanting and pounding war drums. Yet the battlefield graphics themselves are shockingly colourful and many graphical aspects, from event notifications to many unit models bear a more lighthearted “storybook” aesthetic – not a bad thing in and of itself, but another illustration of a confused effort.

Medieval: Total War is probably not a bad game. It’s an ambitious sequel that expanded Total War in the obvious directions and did everything to add depth to the experience. But many of these added mechanics feel underdeveloped, or at least inconsistent, and that’s the word I would apply to the game as a whole. If you enjoyed Shogun and are looking for added challenges or want to experience older games as a series veteran, by all means try, but this is the first Total War I would be unlikely to revisit anytime soon.

My first game was Empire and my second was Rome II. I believe this is the best Total War game.