Customer Reviews

Empire: Total War

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(35)
1 star:		(164)

 

 

(For the most recent comments see the updates)
Let me begin by pointing out that I am a HUGE fan of the Total War series. I started with Rome, continued with the Barbarian Invasion, segueyed into Medieval II and the subsequent Kingdoms expansion. Needless to say, I was eagerly anticipating this game. I even bought a top of the line Mach V rig with all the bells and whistles and a 30in monitor to take in the beauty of it all. My machine has no problem handing the graphics settings on Ultra and I can tell you that visually, this game has the potential to be stunning (provided your computer is up to the task).

Now the negative. The game comes with Steam software which introduces its own complications to the process of enjoying ones game. Granted that the auto-patching feature is pretty sweet, but almost everything else about this system is not (See other reviews here for more details). But thats not even the meat of my beef.

Creative Assembly (CA) released this much anticipated game KNOWING that it was a beta version. After reading countless posts on various message boards, it is more than apparent that this game was not ready for release but for some reason they went ahead with it anyway. This in effect made everyone who bought it an unwitting beta tester (with all the frustrations and none of the salary). As I see it, Creative Assembly has spent all of its credibility capital from the prior installments on this piss-poor shell of a game. Thats not fair, it is 90% of a game but that missing 10% makes it unplayable (frequent crashes to desktop, white screens of death, and corrupted save files are the major issues with a few minor issues sprinkled in for good measure).

This will be the last time I purchase a game from Creative Assembly within the first six months of launch and I would advise others to do the same. Not to send a message to CA (though they deserve a swift kick to the junk for this scam), but to save yourself the money and the frustration.

5/21/09 UPDATE: Two and a half months after release, CA is still frantically attempting to patch this game to make it playable. However with every step forward, it seems like they are taking two steps back. The Battlefield AI has gone from acceptably bad to unacceptably bad. Lingering issues related to crashes still persist though the White screen of death and save corruptions seem to have been resolved. The economy system has been tweaked to make the game more difficult, some prefer the change, some do not. Modders are doing their best to put a polish on this game but some fundamentals still remain broken. My original advice to wait for fixes before purchasing still stands, this game is still in post-market Beta testing but should be fun once its completed (probably 3 months from now).

7/01/09 UPDATE: A week after the 1.3 patch, it is time for an update. Personally, the game works much better now than before. This is subjective since some people have had new CTD issues with the latest patch that were not there before. CA released a hotfix tonight to address the CTDs introduced with their latest patch. While the game is generally more fun and playable now, there are still some elements of the game that will likely require an expansion pack-sized update to address (these issues include siege battles being totally broken and unrealistic still, no cross-theater naval invasions, crap diplomacy, and Campaign AI that never retreats EVER even when outnumbered 10 to 1, just to name a few). Adding to my concern is that patch 1.4 will seek to introduce a multi-player campaign (which, if you were paying attention, was supposed to come with the game 4 months ago). That's like building a house on a unfinished foundation, bound for more Failure. Additionally, CA has decided to tweak naval units so that the biggest/tallest ships with the biggest guns and best crews will have a shorter range, lower accuracy, and slower reload times than the smallest/shortest ships with the smallest guns, despite the overwhelmingly negative response from the hardcore community that would like at least some adherence to the laws of physics. CA hears but does not listen to its most dedicated fans.
Despite all of this (which is really just most of the negative points), If you cannot wait any longer, I think its worth the current price.

If I had to rate this game again, I would give it 4 stars for fun, and three stars overall. Too bad it took four months to achieve mediocrity. Oh well, new engine, new problems, I bet future installments will have much smoother releases. Still, I advocate hesitation when it comes to purchasing future CA/SEGA collaborations.

My next update will come a week after the release of patch 1.4.

EDIT (April 5th, 2009): Like many others, my opinion of this game has gone down with time. I only ever made it through one short campaign, which only lasted a few days, and I have now uninstalled it. The more time I spent with it, the more glitches and bugs I came across, to the point where it just wasn't fun any more. They've released a number of patches, but these only addressed the Crash-To-Desktop issues which many people had, and which didn't affect me too much (the game REALLY was not released in an acceptable state). If they ever fix it up it will be a superb game, but there's a LOT to do. Be warned that for now the fun has FAR less staying power than the last two Total War games, Rome and Medieval II.
*************
I've been a loyal follower (and buyer!) of Total War since the first Medieval. Unfortunately, this game, in its current state, is more a step back than forward. Still, I would give it a 3.5 or 4, but when you take STEAM into consideration, 2 stars is the best it deserves. Other people have written about STEAM; I'd just like to add that it's nagware - ads for other games pop up on my PC every couple of days.

Steam aside, the game is decent, but below the Total War standard. I'm running it on a PC which is well above the system requirements (e.g., 2.8 GHz dual core processor; 3GB RAM), but the sound chops on and off during videos, there have been temporary freezes and two complete crashes, and plenty of other minor technical annoyances. Can't imagine what it's like on a PC that merely meets the requirements. There are major gameplay issues. The AI does some really stupid things - among many others, it doesn't seem able to put troops in a ship and put them on your coast, something which didn't hurt Rome or Medieval II too much because they were continent-based, but this is a world-empire game that boasts naval battles. Finances are sufficiently limited that it seems next to impossible to maintain very large armies in multiple theaters, even with high tax rates, cities with all kinds of improvements and 11 Indiamen in trading ports. The game also has long-wait issues, whether between turns or while loading new sections. I'm not going to go on and list all the other annoyances; suffice to say they do a lot to keep this from being an addictive game.

My advice? Don't buy now, but wait a few months, monitor the forums, and wait until they've made it the game it ought to have been. If you're new to Total War, get Rome or Medieval II, which are among the best PC games ever made.

CA has overreached itself - clearly they either needed a bigger team from the start, or another 6-12 months to playtest and debug.

I haven't decided whether I'll buy future additions to this series. Depends on what they eventually make of this one, and whether STEAM, or anything like it, is there next time. I'm quite upset at having to put STEAM on my PC. It does say, on the bottom of the back of the box, in very small print, that you will have to use STEAM, but obviously I didn't read that before buying. Having paid $[...], I feel that for once the people who get pirated copies have something better - they don't have to use STEAM.

Bugged up to the point of unplayable. And it is clear after reading several HUNDRED posts at the Total War fan site that this game was never finished in development much less Beta tested. I am just afraid that it may never be done and will end up like Medieval II: never really finished and several major features left in the air.

I have been thinking about this now for a few weeks and at first I thought, well these guys just do not have the resources and money to finish building the game and must wait until after they have sold a few tens of thousands of copies before they have the cash to pay to get the job done. But now I think that they have moved on to other things and will finish a few of the most severe problems and just let the game go. I don;t know if this influence of almost criminal fraud comes from the Saga people or from some 'new' management ...but in my state ( California, USA ) a vendor who knowingly sells defective product is considered a criminal. If they don't like the game, as they seem to almost have a hatred for the game's fans, or at least contempt, perhaps they will sell off the engine to some of the folks that I see spending hundreds of hours doing the great mods. At least with the mod chaps, you know their hearts are in the right place.

Again the more I think about this issue, the darker my understanding of those behind this sad fiasco becomes. And what a great and sad waist of the best, most beautiful engine in the RTS world...by far.

If I didn't love it, I would just chuck it in the trash and consider it a lesson well-learned about the SEGA brand. I do intend to write cojent reviews to Amazon, Game Spot, and every other sire where I can post to let as many people know about this as I can.

BTW I have thought for a week or so that I would not even post this comment. But the longer I wait for them to get it right and the deeper I think about what has transpired, the angrier I get. I am rather forgiving about PC gaming and have watched it develop for some twenty years. It is more difficult than platform game design because of the variance in PC power and configuration. But this matter and issue is far beyond the pale.

I bought this game for [...] bucks at [...] after reading many favorable reviews and seeing pictures of the beautiful graphics. After moving all of my music, Word docs, doing several rounds of disk cleanup, and deleting other games and applications on my computer to make room for the massive amount of space that Empire Total War requires, I finally installed the game. This took me about a day to get to this point. But once done, I was excited; the game looked well worth the money and the space. I hope that one day, I will be able to know whether it is worth the money and space that I used. I get to the main menu, click on any of the game modes, be it Grand Campaign, Road to Independence, or quick battle; and wait for it to load. Problem is, the load bar gets to about 40% and then jumps rapidly back and forth. The sounds of the game are audible; yells of charge, gunfire, noises of a town. I have downloaded both patches, and they have done nothing. I can't return this useless garbage because of STEAM. I feel ripped off, and after reading many nerd site message boards, I know that my problem is very common. I hope this severe bug will be fixed, but I doubt it. I have yet to even be able to experience a bugged out version of gameplay that others describe. The ship pathfinding may indeed be screwy, and the AI may occasionally run aimlessly, and the campaign map may lag at some points; but, alas, I will never know.

February 7, 2010 UPDATE: Darth Mod is soon to be 6.9 or 7.0 version and I can freely say that ETW should have been Vanilla 1.6 + Darth 6.9 at release. Again to re-affirm my opinion: now that the game can be had for a bargain, I believe it is one of the best RTS/Turn based hybrids ever to exist. We will see how Shogun 2 will do ;-)

April 9, 2010 UPDATE: Great day for ETW community. CA has released 1.6 patch which fixes most of Battle AI problems like instant melee charge, inability to form battle line or constant priority switching. I tested several campaign battles and AI behaves much more sensible and presents nice challenge on Hard/Very Hard settings.

February 17, 2009 UPDATE: With Napoleon Total War release five days away, community learned couple of sad news about new game:
a) It will not integrate with ETW, so any fixes to engine and AI will not apply to ETW.
b) There will be no mod tools. Modders might get some supporting documentation, but CA confirmed that game design will remain closed.
c) Theatre is limited to Europe (no Mid-East and North Africa).

OK, I'm late with my review, that no one will probably read. Oh, well...

Empire Total War (ETW), the game we love to hate. To summarize my review - I recommend this game to anyone, go ahead and buy it, download one of the free mods I mention below and enjoy hours and hours of fun gameplay. Let me begin by saying that I tried going back to Medieval II Kingdoms after all 1.0, 1.2, 1.3 mess and I got bored instantly. Main reason I came back to ETW was that prior series had too much of siege battles and I am tired of them. The game overall has more positives, however it is in human nature to have stronger emotions about negatives. But I felt like it was important to note the issues still present in un-modded game.

The good about ETW:
++++++++++++++++++
+ Campaign map is finally pretty accurate geographically, no more need for Stainless Steel (SS) or Deus Lo Vult (DLV) mods from Medieval II Kingdoms
+ New regions added: India, South (Northern part) and North Americas
+ Naval combat could be fun with mods as long as fleets are small (see mod recommendations below)
+ Economic/industrial buildings are in separate settlements now, which adds more strategic depth
+ 18 century period
+ No need for diplomats to open negotiations
+ Much better graphics, 3D combat runs very fluid (see my PC specs below)
+ Expansion to colonies
+ Trade nodes and pirates
+ You can change government type by setting off actions that lead to revolution
+ Technology research is done in schools and universities
+ Very few siege battles, which is plus in my opinion
+ Cross theater and naval invasions by AI are finally working

Now about the bad:
------------------
- The game was released unfinished, which was confirmed by several developers on their blogs. It took over 9 months to bring it to 1.5, the last patch, and many things are nowhere near fixed. New patches had tendency to break things that older patches fixed. It was nightmare. Most disheartening news was the fact that sometime during late stages of development Creative Assembly (CA) lead Artificial Intelligence (AI) programmer had to leave the team, and what I could gather from CA's blogs, it was very hard to pick up for others and AI was doomed from the get-go. Google "Battle AI - By Mike Simpson".

- Steam required for retail boxed game to install and play even in single play mode. More and more games are following this suite. It sucks, period. If you were not careful Steam would patch your game automatically and mess things up for you big time. My biggest problem with Steam is that I had to pay the same amount for rental game as what I'd have paid for the game I owned and could have sold. Rental PC games should not cost $50, $25 is more reasonable price.

- Battle AI (BAI) in un-modded game is simply abysmal. You will face staggering zombie clusters roaming the battlefield in front of your artillery batteries while they shred them to pieces, they will often cross the lines and fall victims of their own fire. They will always choose melee even if they outclass your infantry in accuracy and reloading skill. Decision making is bad as well it's like AI has ADD - they seem to commit to one plan of attack just within second to switch their priorities, break formations and chase after CA knows what.

- Severely lacking ability to force fire. Your infantry will only commence firing when every single one of the soldiers fall in. They can't save their lives if Johnny Smith stuck while climbing fence and his company is charged by cavalry. Cossacks had this functionality decade ago.

- No mod tools. It was evident when first downloadable content (DLC) was released, that SEGA and CA will milk this thing for what's it worth by making silly new units and selling them $5 a pop. THIS IS MAJOR problem for community, because CA dropped further post-release development, modding community can not improve the game, and it still needs a lot of work. I'm amazed that modders could accomplish what they did without proper support from CA (TROM, DarthMod, APE:TI and others). I went straight to mods, because I could not tolerate vanilla game for four turns. But modders' hands are tied, there is only so much they can get done on the surface. What infuriates me is the fact that mod tools WERE BETA TESTED SOMETIME IN EARLY SUMMER, so they exist but solely for making DLC content. My only hope is that when Napoleon Total War (NTW) is released, CA and SEGA will come to their senses and give community that supported them for over decade what it deserves.

- Since strategic map has so many 3D bells and whistles it tends to run very choppy (see my PC specs below).

- Siege/fort battles are ridiculously broken. To sum it up: Enemy will either try to attack your fort with mounted units only, in which case you just let them come close to the walls and pulverize with cannons and musket fire, or if they are blessed with infantry, those lads will use Batman's grappling hooks and climb the walls Spiderman style. It is so easy to fool AI attacking your fort that modders came out with the mod that removes all forts from the game altogether.

- Unfortunately after several real time naval battles you will choose to autoresolve instead. AI can't hold battle formations for long even if their ships have range accuracy advantage. Battle after battle degrades into furball mess. You will find it interesting that sloops and brigs can transport huge armies across the oceans. Latest patch brought in really senile changes to naval combat. Somehow Campaign Artificial Intelligence (CAI) is unable to produce expensive high quality ships of the line and instead it spams dozens of sloops and brigs. CA can not fix this directly so instead they rebalanced navy by gimping ships of the line and giving extra range and accuracy to sloops and brigs. WHAAAAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Again thanks to modding community that knows how to revert this arcadish approach to things.

- There are no more missions that your government assigns to you.

- From diplomatic screen you don't know the intentions of the counter party. If you share a border with the nation it will automatically declare war on you. If war is declared on you, you don't know what the heck they want especially if you had very friendly relationship.

- Game no longer has grid on the campaign map (which developers hyped a lot), so AI armies often do stupid things and get stuck.

- You can't change the monarch.

- Regime change via revolution is convoluted and does not always work as planned.

- You can not recruit agents yourself anymore, they are spawned automatically based on the number and level of the buildings (school, church, bawdy house).

- If enemy army is severely outnumbered it will not try to retreat neither on campaign map nor on battle field. I understand this makes it easy on casual player, you simply don't have to chase marauding army engaged in guerrilla warfare. But it is simply stupid.

- I sure hope that CA/SEGA will release proper American Revolution campaign. They may also give us Civil War at some point (may be after Napoleon expansion?). Road To Independence (American Revolution) campaign is simply a joke in vanilla. I love that period of US History and I think it was neglected. I will see what folks at American Revolution Mod could accomplish without mod tools.

What gets most folks pissed off about this game is CA/SEGA attitude and buried potential in tangled mess of code and patches. This game also took several steps back from great concepts developed in prior series. Would I buy it again when it came out in March of 2009 knowing all the problems? Probably yes. There is simply no other game out there that almost well combines Real Time Combat with Turn Based Strategy. I'm not going to be so eager with NTW. I sure hope that Paradox Interactive would some day come out with worthy competitor. They have very solid strategic AI track record, now they need to venture into 3D real time combat.

Regards, and Happy Holidays!
- Skeptic.

MOD RECOMMENDATIONS: (generally go to twcenter dot net, then forums, empire total war, hosted modifications)
1. DarthMod. This is mega mod of mods and it incorporates many other submods. Without Darth, ETW would be bland and boring.
2. APE: TI, or fully A Proper Empire: Terra Incognita
3. American Revolution Mod

P.S. My PC configuration: Spectre x32BV-Full HD // GA-EP45-UD3P F10e // C2D E8400 stock // Buffalo Micron D9 DDR2 4x1Gb // HD5850 1GB // Intel Pro 1000PT PCIe // Creative X-Fi // Intel x-18M 2x80Gb RAID-0 // WD1001FALS // TRUE-120 // Antec Quattro 850W // Win7 64bit

Let me first say two things:
1) I am not a Secu-ROM fanatic, or whatever the heck it is.
2) I am a Total War Fan

This piece of garbage is the worst thing I have ever seen. It took my 6 hours to install, with more than minimum requirements, and I received a horrible gameplay.

Then, when I tried to uninstall, they would not let me remove their "steam" engine.

I have to admit, a part of me was skeptical of the people who were decrying the use of these security measures. But, why should we have to have an internet connection to play a non internet based game?

It is almost as if they are saying we have to pay for the PRIVILEGE of playing their game. We are the consumer, we are the ones who support them and they are treating us like dirt.

Check my records, I do not speak up about many things on Amazon, but I have been a customer since inception. I have purchased hundreds, if not thousands of games.

This is a trend that must stop and I shall join the protest. No more crappy games, not ready for release, with install time for 6 hours, with mandatory registration, with internet connection required.

I am sorry, the TotalWar name is not worth this.

Angry yes... enlightened more.

I respect the right to protect your product, but that should not come at the price of the freedom of the purchaser. THEY WORK FOR THE CONSUMER.

I started with TotalWar back with Shogun, did Medevil 1, Rome, and the new Medevil. I look forward to the new TotalWar Game every few years and I always buy a new computer at that time just to play the game. I did this for Shogun, Rome and recently for Medevil. This should tell you that I am a rabid fan.

I have been looking forward to Empire TotalWar for a few years. As much or more than I was waiting for Rome. BUT..........I hate to say this, and I can't believe I am going to write this, DO NOT BUY this game!!!!!!!!!!!

It is terrible. The worst part is, I do not have internet except at work. I do not want it at home. But if you do not have internet, you cannot play this game! You cannot even start the game. I like TotalWar game as I can take it with me anywhere, and play it on my laptop at my leisure. On a plane, train, or other. To download the damn game took me 9 hours!

Creative Assembly what the heck is wrong with you? Do not realize that a large portion of your audience is not the online gaming type? Many of us are old fashioned wargammer types that just want to buy the game and never see you again? I am 39 and not at all unfamiliar with technology but this is terrible.

The next issue....the bugs! The AI is terrible! How hard is it to beat an opponent that shoots its cannons into the backs of its own troops, or in a seige fires cannons to knock down its own walls? The thing that makes a game boring is when it is easy to win.

Creative Assembly, I am sad to say, but my 6+ year relationship, and automatic loyalty with you, to where I would buy every new TW game you release has now ended. It is sad, as I was hoping you would follow up this effort with a TW based on the Victorian Age. But I have no confidence you can pull off any new endeavors and that I won't have wasted $[...] on a game that will not work.

What is wrong with you? How can you destroy such a loyal fan base?

Richard

I have been a loyal follower of the Total War series since Shogun. I purchased Rome: Total War, the expansions and I repeated the purchasing with the following game as well. When this game was announced in 2007 I was extremely excited.

That excitement faded today. I purchased Empire: Total War in a hard-disk format from Fred Meyer in Medford, Oregon for 44 bucks. Upon checking my system requirements, which were more than the minimums, as I normally check with ALL PC games, I purchased it. In VERY small print the games box does say:
"Requires internet connection and free Steam account to activate". This is a outright deception. Folks, it FORCES Steam down your throat, with absolutely NO OPTION to opt out and manually activate the game and download the patches outside of the Steam system.
Now, some gamers already have Steam from playing the Half Life games, but I have chosen to NOT play those games because of Steam. I purchased Empire: Total War thinking I had the option to opt out of Steam as in the previous title. I was wrong. Steam is required, and you must accept it if you want to play the game.
The install is flawed, excessively long and Steam obsessively tries to download the game from Steam, even though you HAVE the hard copies of the game. You can try to circumvent the process but Steam then claims "Steam servers are too busy to handle your request", excuse me? I just threw down over 40 dollars of my hard earned money, and you say you're too busy?

After waiting for *7 hours* for the game to install and patch, I was greeted with a buggy, flawed and corrupted install. The game was unplayable and crashed hard to the desk top several times. After suspecting a bad install, I uninstalled the game and elected to wait on another 7 hour install. I was wrong, now the flipping game WONT INSTALL AT ALL.

Folks, spend your money on something other than this TRASH. If you have purchased it via Amazon, send it back. DONT INSTALL IT, DONT ACTIVATE IT, you wont be able to sell it or let ANYONE ELSE PLAY IT.

Let my lost money be a warning, dont buy this game.

This game is perfectly fine in most respects, although it doesn't seem to alter the underlying principles of the prior games. It basically updates the same package for a different era in time (18th century) and better processing power in the market.

Despite the "replicant" aspect, most people would be pretty happy with this game I think. I would be, I'm sure, but for one small sticking point: it doesn't work all that well. Played on a brand new gaming rig, the game inexplicably crashes repeatedly after the game year of 1750. Particularly, but not only, during the use and movement of naval units. Since it happens often, and has been widely reported in just the short period since the game was released, it reflects very poor beta testing and quality control prior to release.

I hope an update is coming soon; I'd hate to see this game permanently tank because the features weren't tested appropriately ahead of market.

Let me start of by stating that I am a long time fan of the Total War series. That being said, this game is absolutely horrible. Do not waste your money. I only gave this one star because I wanted to make sure you realized that I didn't forget to rate it.

If you still need convincing, please read on.

The Installation
The deployment method chosen is Steam. Although I have no problem with Steam in general, this particular install left me with no choices. Literally. I installed Steam and then tried to install the game. At the time of the install we lost our cable connection (storms rolling through our area). Guess what you can't do if you don't have a valid Internet connection... let me give you a hint... YOU CAN'T INSTALL THE GAME FROM YOUR PURCHASED DVD MEDIA. That's right, the only thing the DVD media saves you is the time for downloading the game from Steam and the sacrificing of the electric fairies that make the Internet work.

Playing the Game
Once my Internet connection was restored I received permission from the installer to install the game from my DVD media. Once the installation was complete I launched the game. After about 5 minutes as the game "unlocked" itself, I watched some pretty pre-rendered content. When I was presented with the menu screen I noticed something missing... my mouse cursor. After a lot of troubleshooting on my own (you know the regular fixing a Microsoft PC gig... re-apply drivers, re-install DirectX, etc.) I decided I needed to see if there was something I needed to do from a configuration / game standpoint.

The Support
OK, I have done my share of PC Techie stuff as it is what I have made my living on... I went to the Total War website and looked for a support section. The only Support I could find was an obscure link stating "Having problems with the installation? Click Here". Well, not exactly where my problem was, but hey, support is support, right?
This took me to the Sega support website. Not a bad thing... Sega has been around for a number of years so I figured that I could get some help from their FAQs. Well, I could purchase another copy of the game if I would like, but I can't get support for the game. The dial-in support numbers are all for foreign countries. I thought this was odd so I thought I would head over to the Steam forums to see if my issues were addressed there.
The only thing I was able to confirm was that I am not alone (as these reviews clearly state) in reporting how horrible of a release / game this is.

The Conclusion
Please save your money or donate a fraction of what you would waste on this game to your favorite charity. Your karma boost will be far better than the frustration and disappointment of your purchase.