Knights. Cameras. Factions.

The Total War series remains the best movie you can play. For six years, gamers have been able to zoom a camera around a CGI battlefield, planning last stands on hilltops or tracking cavalry charges before they smash into the enemy flank. No scripted encounters or overly dramatic cutscenes can compare with the stories Creative Assembly allows you to write as your armies beat down all who would oppose you. These aren’t just excellent games; they’re compelling cinema.
And, like much cinema today, Medieval II: Total War is a sequel that sticks to a winning formula. Use the real-time battles to hook people on the clash of arms, but yoke it to a turn-based strategic map that gives each of those battles meaning. Add skirmish play and some historical battles for variety, but stick to a single-player experience that is substantially different every time out.
The battles have always been the glory of the franchise, and the ones in Medieval II look even better than they did in Rome, mostly because of the effort to get around the Attack of the Clones vibe that typified earlier Total War games. There is now variation in individual faces and clothing, so each army looks a little more human and a little less robotic. It’s deceptive: If you spend a lot of time up close, you do see doppelgangers and repeated themes, especially in heraldry and headwear. But even a bit of difference goes a long way.
There are also different killing blow animations, so beating down the French or Portuguese looks like a real melee, or at least how you think a melee is supposed to look. This is the sort of thing you only notice if you spend a lot of time zoomed in on the combat, but the cumulative effect of all the tiny improvements is to make the battle look more dynamic and alive.
The graphical upgrade isn’t the huge leap forward that Rome was, but Medieval II has a lot of polish that makes everything shinier. Forests are thicker, flowers are prettier, and the masses of the dead are massive-er. The weather effects are outstanding. Rainstorms, fog, and blowing sand obscure your vision and limit your targeting options. The omniscient minimap lessens the power the inclement weather could have to affect your gameplay, but it’s still an instant cue that your missile troops will need to be nursed a little more carefully.
Though the combat is the big selling point of the series, the real Total War magic is the interaction between this real-time battle stuff and the turn-based campaign. Much of Medieval 2 is just the best of Rome or its expansions. The map, for example, is a sharper and larger version of the European one in its ancient predecessor, expanded to include a few American territories so you can take on the Aztecs. Campaigns come in two varieties—long and short—and each state has its own victory conditions. Holding 45 provinces is the big condition for the long campaign, but you have to capture specific cities for the win. So the English and French need to capture Jerusalem, the Holy Roman Empire needs Rome, Spain needs Granada and Jerusalem, etc. The turns fly by, so you need to be aggressive to make the conquests you need.
Creative Assembly has reworked the unit recruitment system to get you into bigger battles faster. Each settlement can build up to three units in a single turn, so there is a lot less running around with five or six units or armies trying to pretend they are the masters of the Palatinate. The family tree expands rapidly, so you can usually find a leader for every army, too, or at least someone to manage the peasants. More leaders leading more men means a greater chance that you’ll want to take charge of the battle yourself, in which case you’ll be able to see all the work the developers put into the combat.
To keep you from just filling an army with the best units you can afford, there is a city or global limit for some. You may have three recruitment slots in Vienna but be restricted to hiring one feudal knight there. You end up with a more balanced army as you fill those slots.
The variety of armies is further encouraged by the division in settlements. Towns can now be either cities or castles, each with its own advantages and unit lists. Castles provide your best units, especially strong cavalry and armored warriors, but they have a fixed tax rate and limited room for economic expansion. Your cities are the financial backbone of your empire, with an adjustable tax rate and increased commercial options, but they are more limited in allowing you to develop elite armies for conquest. Both can build formidable walls, and you can switch between one form and the other for a price. This system makes the location of your soldier factories an object of careful consideration, especially if you have low coffers or castles too far from the front lines.
For the most part, the computer opponent has been improved. It’s now perfectly content to sit and let its missile troops and field artillery soften you up before charging. It makes sensible deployments right from the start, instead of rushing about the battlefield getting all its troops in the proper place once the shooting’s started. The AI is much more hesitant to give up a strong defensive position and will even wait for reinforcements to arrive before moving out.
There are, however, notable lapses. Sometimes your enemy is too content to stand and get pummeled by archers. An isolated unit will advance, retreat, and then advance again to no clear purpose. This phenomenon is rare enough that it doesn’t interfere with the sense of a real threat on the field, but it becomes obvious when something is going wrong.
Things get worse for the AI on the strategic map. The computer’s approach to army construction means that, by midgame, enemy forces have a predictable composition, often one completely unsuited to field combat. There is no reason why the AI should be raising armies composed of crossbows, militia, and catapults after 300 years of history, but this is the typical make-up. If you opt for auto-combat versus this offense to sane planning, you will lose in a humiliating fashion, but it’s easy to destroy when you take control yourself. The Muslim nations are more likely to build cavalry, but mounted knights will be a rare enemy, the bodyguard units excepted.
The designers have made the curious decision to limit you to a handful of the 17 playable factions at the outset. Win a campaign and all are unlocked, or just conquer them one by one to make each available. The thing is, a tiny text edit unlocks them all, and there is no significant gameplay reason to encourage people to start with a conventional Western European army.
Well, maybe one gameplay reason. The suggested starter nations are all Catholic, meaning you get an early introduction to the power of the pope. In general, religion is just another happiness variable. Your citizens want to have the same faith as their liege. But His Holiness will make demands on his coreligionists, from Crusades to peace treaties. Staying on his good side turns out to be important, since he can excommunicate you, which leads to unrest, diminished loyalty from generals, and maybe an Inquisitor running around burning your leaders at the stake.
There’s a lot more, too. You can build merchants and spies and assassins to carry out missions for you. The Black Death depletes armies and cities of needed manpower. Heretics and witches cause trouble in the countryside. Gunpowder contends with archery for mastery of the battlefield. The developers may not have taken many risks with their prize franchise, but they still show you things other games only hint at.
The word “epic” is thrown around too much to hold much meaning anymore, but it’s really the only adjective that fits Medieval II. As your generals and priests pick up traits and followers, they become characters in a chivalric romance that you write as you go. Just like Lancelot, you’ll be your own worst enemy, since the rival powers aren’t too swift. But you can still get swept up in the tide of history and race the clock to become master of Europe.
Medieval II is a good game a couple of patches away from true greatness. As it stands now, it’s a beautiful, well-crafted experience with some minor balance issues. So long as the single-player game pits you against King Chad the Knucklehead, the full promise of knight-on-knight action will not be met. But fulfillment of even two-thirds of a promise this great is well worth the price of admission.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #194