Buying a PC game is no longer as simple as it used to be. With the internet crawling with cracks and pirate copies, manufacturers seem to be resorting to ever more elaborate, and in some cases – regarding EA’s securom DRM feature - desperate methods of trying to control the illegitimate distribution of their products online.
Installation
Thankfully, Empire: Total War has nothing as sinister as a DRM or else Sega may have driven their conscientious consumers into a full scale boycott on the game’s release. However the installation process is still horribly complex and slow, not to mention riddled with irritating error messages like ‘game currently unavailable try again later’ which, when trawling dozens of online forums titled ‘Please Help!’ many customers are evidently experiencing.
It was simply a case of try, try and try again and hope to catch a break on servers buckling under the strain as thousands of total war fans began registering their additions on the 4th of March. Usually, after great persistence, the title screen eventually launches, turning those hours of despair into avid anticipation as the game begins loading – the player meanwhile praying to themselves, ‘please, please don’t crash…’
Campaign Map
It has to be said that all those prior hours of torment and pain; the error messages, the curses at Sega, the vows to never buy one of their products ever again, are suddenly eclipsed when first exploring the game and its wealth of new features. Like a screaming child suddenly given everything it wants, all is immediately forgiven.
One of the most striking differences regarding the campaign map is regarding scale. It spans three vast world theatres: America, Europe and India all of which contain, at a glance, similar type regions to the old additions. However although the world map is colossal, the regions themselves are smaller and no longer dissected into four or five segments. They are governed from a capital with additional buildings realistically staggered across the region which provide many new arenas for garrisons, sieges and battles.
Diplomacy and trade also take on a much more hands on approach with dueling gentleman, trade routes open to plunder and heavily armed trade ships warring for supremacy from Brazil to the Indies - a vast improvement on those irritating merchants.
All of this combined with a less erratic, steadily growing economy with clear turnover projections and slightly more generous campaign map moves – it no longer takes about a decade to move a fleet from the South of France to the Middle East – provides a bold and exciting reformation of the campaign map.
Naval Battle Review
However, the most remarkable new feature is the battle map naval battles which open up a new and challenging arena for the player to master. Visually they are stunning; from the light blue of the Caribbean to the choppy dark waters of the Atlantic, the player can only marvel as the vessels slice their way through the water, with waves gently foaming and lapping their way about the hull.
In a total reversion of the graphics of the first medieval, the closer you zoom in the more stunning the graphics become. From a distance, the cannon fire looks less 18th century and more like a broadside of photon torpedoes from Star Trek. However when zooming in and watching shattered masts toppling, the crew firing muskets from the crow nests and enemy ships leaving splintered wood and debris in their wake as cannon fire tears huge gashes in their hull is nothing short of remarkable.
Overall Empire Total War Review
These features certainly give the player a lot of compensation for all that installation trauma, with a game that more than exceeds the total war fan’s expectations. Unfortunately however, it is the technical details which let the game down. It is prone to crashing and clearly experiencing a few teething problems.
Most notorious is the ‘white screen of death’ – as it has been dubbed on Facebook – where the game terminates because of insufficient RAM. However these problems can easily be rectified with a decent patch, and apart from a few minor technicalities, the only problem with the game is that it is actually too good.
Avid fans of Total War be warned. On buying this game prepare to sacrifice all human interactions for at least a few weeks, to lose hours and days and all sense of time, to alienate loved ones, and to have wives and girl friends pleading in desperation ‘please please get off that thing now.’ (Just make sure you remember to eat.) 9.5/10
Marius Goubert - My name is Marius , i am 22 and live in the United Kingdom. I have just graduated from the university of Kent with a degree in comparative ...
