Game-A-Week Episode 29: Total War: Rome II

[1:18 AM]

This was the other game I got as a gift alongside Mass Effect nearly a decade ago

[1:18 AM]

So... You know the drill, it was Game-A-Week time.

[1:19 AM]

And since this game was published by SEGA and not EA, I'm pleased to tell you that the disc actually installed the game this time.

[1:20 AM]

Good to know some people still know hoe to use discs.

[1:21 AM]

Well, seven years ago anyway. This game came out in 2013. I don't think anyone still sells physical PC games anymore, unfortunately.

[1:23 AM]

Anyway, this game is boring.

[1:23 AM]

Welp, see you next week.

[1:23 AM]

No, I have to tell you why its boring.

[1:24 AM]

Well first of all, thematically, the game is boring. It's exactly what you'd expect from the title. Its just Rome conquering the world. That's it, that's the whole game. There's no imagination, no creativity. Nothing.

[1:26 AM]

Remember when I said western games are rarely ever imaginative?

[1:27 AM]

This game is published by SEGA, an eastern company, but I don't actually know if the developer itself is western or eastern .

[1:28 AM]

Either way, this is exactly the type of game I was talking about.

[1:28 AM]

It's not even historically accurate so its not even interesting in that respect.

[1:29 AM]

It's just thematically bland and generic for no reason other than "Rome"

[1:31 AM]

At least make the units look interesting. I don't give a fuck about my legions of generic roman soldiers. This is exactly the same thing of just having an entire game consist of generic faceless knights or samurai. There's no charm to it. It's just uninteresting.

[1:32 AM]

As for the game play itself, its standard strategy game fare. If you've ever played Age of Empires or Civilization before, then you know what you're in for.

[1:33 AM]

The overworld is turn based where you can recruit soldiers, build things and move around the map. Each action causes time to pass which ends your turn.

[1:35 AM]

The battles are real time. You move your units around the map, they move at a snail's pace and you eventually try to exterminate your opponent's dispatched forces.

[1:35 AM]

And this is the main problem I have with the game.

[1:37 AM]

The battles play out like an RTS but without anything that makes an RTS interesting. You can only get more units or build things in the turn based overworld so the entire army building aspect aka the good part of an RTS is gone. You just tell your guys to go kill the other guys, watch them run into each other and hope you didn't fuck something up .

[1:39 AM]

The battles aren't even cool to watch. You know how I said you watch them run into each other? Yeah, that's pretty much what they do. You want your units trip over your enemies units until one of them drops dead.

[1:39 AM]

Graphics aren't important for a game like this but I feel like they could have done better than GameCube quality

[1:43 AM]

There's a custom battle mode which sounds like a ton of fun since you can pit like 6 massive armies against each other but the game actually can't handle that many units on screen at once and the game drops to like 6 frames per second. Its like the only potentially good part about this game but it didn't even work.

[1:46 AM]

Oh, and the game skips its own dialogue before the voice actors are done talking to give you your quest objective. Not that I care because the writing is just as boring as the rest of the game but its still a gigantic oversight I cannot ignore. The game actively sabotages itself by not working correctly.

[1:47 AM]

And that's pretty much all I have to say about the game. Its not a bad game, its just boring. Which, now that I've typed that out, I realize the main objective of any game is to be fun and a boring game is actually automatically bad. So yeah. Maybe strategy games that don't have RPG elements aren't my thing but I couldn't wait for this week to end.

[1:48 AM]

I feel like this would be a game that would actually be pretty fun to play with friends as there is a multiplayers pvp mode but none of my friends have this game so that's not happening.

[1:49 AM]

I give Total War: Rome II a 3/10. It's a bore. Since I actually own this game, I feel like I should keep playing it at least until I finish the campaign. But like, I don't really want to.

[1:50 AM]

No pictures or clips this time, there really isn't anything worth showing.