Empire – Total War « Intergamer

Empire – Total War

Well, if you have played a Total War game before, then you have a decent idea of what to expect from Empire – Total War. The latest in the award winning series from Creative Assembly, this game takes place in the early 18th century, with the closest to a ‘Story Mode’ being the founding of America, and soon, the founding of the thirteen colonies.

As usual, the game can be split into two sections: Civilisation style turn based game, where you build and manage settlements, make and break alliances, set up trade routes, build armies and so on. The second part consists of a real time strategy game, where you battle it out on land and sea, with the armies ranging from 12 gunmen to a visually impressive and dominating armada.

The turn based section is close to perfect, with the detail on the map bordering on photo-realistic. For the newbies to the genre, or the people who know that their skills will not ensure them to be the ruler of the British Empire, you can have towns and cities automated, whilst you can focus on upgrading diplomatic relations, or alternatively, building up an army for world domination. Just remember that there are no diplomatic victories to be found here. The navigation is easy to handle, with no sprawling menus to get lost in on the first turn.

However, when you do get onto the second turn, you have to watch all the known factions moving, at the same speed as you. Whilst this is bearable at first, when you have places across the entire map, it can become incredibly boring watching every movement every other faction carries out.

Whenever one of your armies and an enemy faction’s army collide, you can either battle, retreat, surrender or let the computer resolve the situation for you. If you choose to surrender you loose your army, you can retreat, and try to escape, maybe loosing a few troops along the way and if you let the battle be autoresolved, and the computer ill work out how the battle will end, with a red bar telling you your chances of success. Luckily, if it’s at 50% or over, you should be safe. However, you wouldn’t buy a game just to let the computer play it for you, would you? No. Well, when you click on the battle option, you zoom in on an incredibly detailed map, with the battlefield looking spectacular on land or sea. After you arranged your troops, you basically go in for a fight to the death, or until somebody runs away.

Even if you choose to strategise a cunning plan to surround the troops against a cliff, or just charge at the enemy, you are guaranteed a glorious treat for both your eyes and ears every time. Every command screamed across the battlefield, and every soldier reloading their powerful weapons, you cannot deny how awesome the battles look. Even out at sea, just looking at the water effects can make a jaw drop. But that’s the problem: yes, the sprawling empires are fun, if not a bit tedious. Yes, the land battles are a joy to play and watch, but the sea battles are…. nice, in terms of gameplay. Just nice. The AI can be a bit weak throughout the entire game, with enemy troops being confused by the simplest strategies, but at sea, that’s where it really shows. You can just select all your ships to attack the other ones, and you can see them sink them flawlessly. In superb graphics. For example, I was outnumbered 2 to 1, but after issuing no more than ten commands, I had scared the few that survived away.

Overall, it is a game that will suck you in after you climb the relatively steep learning curve, but once you settle down, the game will be forcing you to waste hours at a time trying to get just that one territory from the French. A must buy for any strategist, with intricate gameplay elements, a massive world to conquer. Even if you are good at this game or not, it should be fun to play and watch. Once again, total war provides a game that will be a greater success and even more memorable than any of the other games in the series, or even in it’s genre.

Rating: 9/10