Recent reviews by Logan

After 55 hours of gameplay and two victories on very hard with the High Elves (Tyrion) and the Lizardmen (Kroq-Gar) I have to say that this is one of the better Total Wars.

Positive:

1) Better AI army compostions with a balanced roster of infantry, calvalry, missle units, anti-large, monstrous, and siege weapons. I feel I have had to actually think more often with who I want my troops to engage with.
2) I hear people complaining about the auto-resolve, but I think it isn't that bad. I found myself having to fight battles manually because the auto resolve said I had poor chances, I like that. Personally I never really liked auto resolving, but it was clearly the better option versus manually fighting because it gave a better outcome. I like having to fight more battles manually, because that's what this game is about.
3) The Vortex Campaign is carnage. My first game as the Lizardmen I didn't even conquer the entire island I was on because of how difficult it was to maintain settlements with all the doomstacks spawning. I thought that was really fun. I liked having to viciously defend my lands, and try to recapture my lands.
4) Legendary Lords and Lords skills are better in TWW2. It improves upon the old format with better choices than the previous game.
5) The Climate system TWW2 introduces is a great way to allow the player to conquer all provinces with balanced drawbacks. If you conquer a land that is uninhabitable you will have harsh public order, growth, and other negative effects that make sense.

Negative:

1) Naval battles are non existant which could end up with disastrous auto-resolve results.
2) After playing so many manual battles I was able to find the AI's weakness. If you send your Lord or heroes (or and single unit for that matter) the AI will send most of its troops to that individual (unless their formation is spread real thin). This allows the palyer to send barrages of missles down on the bunched up mess quickly ending the battle. When I was playing as the High Elves it was best to have multiple Bolt Throwers and alot of archers with only a couple of line infantry units, because you would kill the AI before they can make it to your own troops. When I played as the Lizardmen I would send Kroq-Gar into the enemy by himself, let them bunch up and unleash magic on the enemy (My skink priest would end up with 800+ kills every battle). The only time this doesn't work is if the AI has a lot of calvalry where they will go to your flanks (which is very rare). In summary the AI bunches up A LOT and this is not that fun or strategic.
3) Magic seems a lot stronger in this game, and while I love using it I find it to strong. 1 cast of some spells would find over 100 kills easily sometimes. Given that the AI tends to bunch up quite a bit, it is easily exploited.
4) Sieges are terrible and are easily exploited because the AI doesn't understand that sending troops outside the gates is possible. Fixing that would make sieges a little better because you would have to actually think instead of corner camping. Every single battle you would take out the towers with siege weapons. Then' you would take out the AI's ranged units with your own. Finally you would mop up whatever is left. I often finished sieges without even entering the city. Sieges are to linear and don't promote strategic gameplay for anyone. If you play with AI you exploit, if with a real player you just bum rush the city because the towers are to strong and can reach the entire map. There is no thinking in sieges and they are incredibly boring.

Despite the negatives I find this game incredibly fun because each race is unique and interesting with incredibly different rosters. I can't wait for the mods and especially the compined map. I just hope CA fixes sieges and if they could possibly program the AI a little better to not bunch up as much as they do now, this would be a better game.

Love this game, still do, this won't be deturring me from buying any other DLC, but I am honestly underwhelmed with the textures. You'll see a lot of blood on the troops themselves, but barely any on the terrain itself. The blood you see on the terrain just seems to be a copy paste of the same blood pool. Still recommend this DLC, but it's probably a 4-5/10 compared to Attila's blood DLC.

Started to play this way back when, and thought it was alright. I kept playing it for a time, and then something random happened. I got a hat.

- Went broke
- Lost all previous relationships
- Dropped out of school
- Was homeless for some time
- Almost died

But hey atleast I got that unusual right?