Could almost be a rehash

“Medieval II” is set in the medieval times, just like the title suggests, where great empires like the Franks, Ottoman, and the Holy Roman Empire ruled. Being another game in the Total War-series, the most of the action takes place on a limited overview map of the world where you take turns against your enemies to try to conquer the world. As a secondary feature you can jump right into the battlefield and take control of your troops when you are attacked by the enemy or they attack you.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as in the other Total War games. You start by choosing your empire, for instance England, France, Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Egypt to name a few. You then have to build up your empire from scratch, expand your borders, wage war on other nations and destroy them, or make alliances. Religion plays a somewhat big role in the game, because along the way you get missions from your religious leader. If you abide by them and make them happy, you get bonuses and money in return, but if you do this they will control who you can attack or not. If you fail to maintain your religious status, your people may start riots and screw up your cities.

Economy and cities are also a big part of the game, but unlike the previous games in the series, you can now choose from two different kind of settlements, cities and castles. Cities generate a higher amount if income and have access to more technology, while castles can hold more troops and are easier to defend. Depending on which one you build or convert to, you get a different selection of buildings to choose from. In cities you must generally keep your population happy by building sewer systems, prisons, churches, and other such things, or they might start a riot. Expect to spend most of your time on the world map managing cities and keeping your citizens happy, while spending a lot less actually battling the enemy, which becomes boring after some time.

The multiplayer part of the game is still lacking, as you can still only play regular skirmish against people, but I think it would be very boring to play through the campaign multiplayer anyway, as it takes ages to do stuff per turn.

Graphically the game looks the same as “Rome: Total War”, so it could really use a complete overhaul, especially the world map. The sound is ok, but after a while you get tired of hearing the units repeating the same thing over and over.

Overall, the game is pretty much the same thing as “Rome”, just set in a different age, even the world map contains most of the same regions and factions as it did. There are not enough new features and the game does not try to raise the bar for the series, so it is certainly not worth purchasing or even playing for too long. I got stuck somewhere between totally slaughtering this game, or just making a mild example out of it.