Medieval II: Total War™ Kingdoms
WARNING: ABOUT THE GAME’S DISAPPEARANCE FROM YOUR LIBRARY
The game is not gone from your library, they simply merged it with Medieval II. To find it follow these steps:
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Install Medieval II
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Go to your steam game library
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Right click on Medieval II
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Below the “Play Game” option there should be 4 new options with the Kingdoms campaigns.
And now, after that prologue, LET THE REVIEW BEGIN!
Kingdoms is the expansion pack (yeah, not DLC, for 20 bucks you can buy actual, sturdy, nearly endless content) of Medieval II: Total War.
– Real player with 384.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Historical Games.
Don’t let my playtime fool you, i’ve played this game for over a decade ever since 2006 and probably sunk thousands of hours into this game on disc. This game features a combination of RTS (while in battles) and TBS (displayed on the campaign map), you move your armies around on a fully 3D map authentic to the terrain of Europe and Asia, Risk style.
There are many troop types from Horse Archers to Knights to Longbowmen even Elephants and Native American braves! this game is a perfect example of a well crafted Total War game. Yes it is old, even on max graphics a graphics snob might brush this game off right away but this game captures the atmosphere, lifestyle, turbulance and religious strife of the Middle Ages wonderfully.
– Real player with 237.0 hrs in game
Total War: MEDIEVAL II – Definitive Edition
This game is the best Total War game in existence. This is by far my favourite. Not only are the vanilla and expansion campaigns a lot of fun, but the almost infinite fantastic mods adds the replayability of this game a thousand fold.
Pros
- Campaign experience is awesome. Lots of depth. Plenty to do. Complex enough that its not difficult to learn, but not easy to master either. It’s so easy to get immersed into your kingdom and care about your subjucts. History is your oyster. You become what you want. You can be a benevolent king who’s people adore, or a bloodthirsty tyrant that rules with an iron fist, a bumbling general that doesn’t inspire his men at all, or the greatest commander alive who even peasants will fight to their death on his command.
– Real player with 1377.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Historical Games.
Despite it’s old age, it’s a masterpiece.
Medieval II: Total War is one of the best strategy games I’ve played. It’s both enjoyable in a strategical and personal sense.
Lets just straight get into why.
Gameplay
- The game manages to be detailed with their strategy, forcing you to actually flank and position your troops. It doesn’t just account to how large your force is or whose troops are more disciplined, though, those two are factors to consider as well. In multiplayer, you might even be able to factor in Psychological Warfare! It gets pretty in-depth. And I love that.
– Real player with 586.4 hrs in game
Knights of Honor
Knights of Honor is a classic grand strategy game, quite different from any other in the genre. Everything happens in real time, including the battles that can be fought manually and the campaign map really feels alive as a lot of things are happening at the same time.
There are a few things to manage, like your town construction, your royal court, armies and diplomacy. These things are fairly simplistic (compared to the modern games) and are easy to learn, but very fun to play with once you understand them. While the manual battles can be fun and dynamic, they aren’t the strong part of Knights of Honor. The actions on the campaign map are definitely where the main entertainment comes from.
– Real player with 124.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Grand Strategy Games.
Before I start, I want to mention one thing: this negative review is not about the game itself. Knights of Honor is a great RTS game, and you should definetly play it. My problem stems from the fact that this game is a prime example of a developer being lazy and just dumping the original game, unpatched and unoptimized to Steam for a price that seems very steep, considering the performance quality of this game. To first start off, this game’s major fault is the fact that it cannot boot into its default resolution properly. No matter what you do, it will only show 3/4s of the image (in some cases, the game will also force your monitor resolution to 640x480) that can only be fixed via the HD patch. The main issue with the HD patch is that for some people, it will not work. I have had friends who purchased this game and were unable to get the patch running, leaving them with a game that was a waste of money and time. The game also still has a major issue that I’ve experienced even on an old XP machine as a kid with an original (now lost) disc copy; Random crashes. These seemingly have no real trigger, they will happen often after 1-2 hours of play, and while not annoying due to the ability to set frequent autosaving, preventing loss of progress, its insulting that this issue still persists years later, with the developers never addressing it or releasing a patch. Overall, I don’t recommend the game due to the aforementioned HD patch issue some people I know have had, otherwise if you’re lucky enough to get it working, it is possibly one of the most addicting strategies out there.
– Real player with 115.8 hrs in game
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
Before you all read my review I want you to know I’m basing this review purely on the multiplayer aspect of this game as that has been my main way of having fun on the amazing Mount&Blade franchise over the last 10 years.
Be it on Warband, With Fire and Sword, Napoleonic Wars dlc, or many of the mods we saw over the years, it’s always been the multiplayer that kept me interested and gave me so many great moments.
Look I know what most people are thinking…
“But Walja, you have over 1.000 hours played on Mount&Blade 2: Bannerlord and still you don’t recommend it !?”
– Real player with 1112.7 hrs in game
Most of the negative reviews for this game are people who bought it early on and saw how little this game progressed through the passing of months, positive ones are the ones with few hours, because I indeed agree, it feels like a new game completely, which is good (as there was already plenty of content for Warband through great mods).
However, what surprises me the most is that they say this game will be released June next year? (sourcing themselves: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/261550/view/4509778749610642532) . How come? Game is far from finished and absolute snail’s pace of development will for granted not finish it in a few months, when this game has been going on for years and since they launched it on steam on early access prepurchase, they have mostly been doing minor fixes and balancing. No new features, quests or dialogues since I last played to this day
– Real player with 316.0 hrs in game
Stronghold Crusader 2
Stop, dont go any further. If you were considering this game wether it is worth a purchase. Ill tell you right now, it is definitely not.
Its a piece of trash garbage game that was forcefully defacated unto the faces of its true loyal supporters and fan base, the people who brought you the orignal Stronghold that was beloved and missed were long gone during the unholy birthing of this atrocity.
I have played and deconstructed every stronghold and dozens of rts games back in the day and know what it was about each game that people adored and what it was that people despised.
– Real player with 185.6 hrs in game
The StrongHold series has always been one of my favourite ones, and this game at the end of 2018 like every other game of this series still is one of the best from FireFly Studios.
The core of the game stays the same - build castles, gather resources, control peasants as a king, keep their happiness and work going, train your troops, harvest taxes and money, and of course build tons of structures - there are really dozens of them, from the farms to churches, fortifications and army building; of course, given the desert/crusader setting of this game, you’ll have lots of weapons and armies too - both offensive and defensive.
– Real player with 142.4 hrs in game
Crusaders: Thy Kingdom Come
This game is reallny bullshit doesn’t work correctly on Windows 10. Game was really good on Windows XP but the troops has came from the fantastic world simillar like a Lord of the ring not XI century definitivly.
– Real player with 28.7 hrs in game
A great surprise by a unknown developer. I bought this game through a Christmas sale one year but didn’t play it right away. I finally got around to playing this and I’m extremely glad I did. It’s a solid game and it doesn’t try to be more than what it is, a great RTS. I thoroughly enjoy the time period in which this takes place and the true history behind the story within the game. It plays really well and I never once had any issues with crashes or glitches. I did also enjoy the option to restart a mission without a penalty against me. I actually “cheated” a little in this game to earn extra gold at the beginning of each mission (editing the .sav file through a hex editor). Even with doing this I fould the game still very challenging but very rewarding. The last mission was diffcult but I feel it really capped off the game well. It was what your army was fighting for throughout the game and it was a very satisfying end to a solid game.
– Real player with 27.7 hrs in game
Egg of Empire
when i first saw this game on steam i was with my friends and we thought the name was so funny we had to buy it we saw it would be coming out in 2 days so we had a sleepover waiting for the game to be released and we were not disappointed. this game is every thing i want in a indie game its funny has good game play and its fun to learn. when you get into to game it does not tell you how to play so it is trial and error and it feels rewarding like you did this. the only problems i had were i wish the select was not a on screen button and instead assigned to a key or mouse button, as well as the hit boxes might glitch out were every thing is no clip only happened once to me tho and with a quick restart it was back and since you can save it wasn’t a problem. but i only played for about a hour so idk how often or if it is a recurring thing at all over all 8/10 aslo if you dont want to do the trial and error type learning the creator made a Tutorial which i will link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln6YMH4Fdos&t=187s
– Real player with 31.3 hrs in game
Knights Province
Knights Province is intended to be an old-school RTS game. Unlike many modern RTS games, which are fast-paced and often are more about tactics, KP planned to emphasize on “strategy” component. Slower-paced gameplay, base-building, resources collection and processing, in-depth strategic choices, variety of resources and units, attention to details.
Middle Age Conquest
Game is very fun, just a little too fast and easy. Wish it were longer and you actually got better rewards for conquering other fields.
– Real player with 5.9 hrs in game
It is a great game to spend time, it is easy to learn and hard to master. It really worth the price.
– Real player with 4.9 hrs in game
Real Warfare 2: Northern Crusades
2020 : con la targeta grafica gtx 1060 no hay manera de tener una buena imagen nitida durante la partida , se ve oscuro , hay que aclarar la pantalla desde las opciones del mando de la pantalla , ponerla mas clara . Solo se puede jugar en condiciones climaticas de verano al medio dia, el resto se ve muy oscuro . Hay quienes hacen multijugador con nieve para soslayar esta dificultad .. Es posible que el juego se lleve mal con targeta nuevas .
En la campaña los asedios estan llenos de bugs . Por lo tanto lo mejor es ir haciendo libremente sin hacer caso a los asedios .
– Real player with 266.3 hrs in game
This is a super awesome game, it’s a mix of Mount and Blade and Total War but with none of the depth of the two. In my opinion this is a good introduction for combat tactics if you want to get into the Total Wars series - Rome 2 in particular or Shogun 2. The story is kind of meh, sadly they ditched the voice acting that they had in the first game, which is a shame. The RPG elements and progression level are a super welcomed addition. But there is no real impact in your dialog choices or what you want to do in the world. Trade is useless unless you invest heavily in it.
– Real player with 19.3 hrs in game