Empire... again, and some arena!

Well I wasn't able to return Empire: Total War. So... I'm still playing it. Though it's gotten even more boring as I've wrangled the remaining vestiges of fun from it. I recently downloaded a campaign mode mod that lets me play as any faction I want. That actually adds a good deal more fun to the game. Honestly, campaign mode is all about the first 30 years. Can you survive? Can you get a solid hold on your territory/ocean space? And then once you've done that it's rather cut and dry repeat repeat. Each nation in the first 30 years on the other hand is very different, and that's nice. Just the number of territories, starting location, etc. The mod is nice, though I can't remember the name of it at the moment, I want to say it was called "grand campaign"... but I think that's also the name of the campaign setting in the game... so anyway. I even got to play as the pirates. But since all the mod does is make different factions playable, a good portion of the factions still aren't all that playable. The Native Americans don't have access to higher technologies or units as the game progresses, because they were just never put into the game. The pirates can have a maximum of 6 units... and they're melee only... lol, so they're pretty much impossible to proceed with.

Did more 2v2 arena last night. We're up to about 70 games played or so for the season. Maybe it was 60. 54% win ratio. Not amazing, but much better than the first two weeks. Playing Sunday morning at 7am seemed like a good idea... until our 1800 MMR team went up against a 2400 rated MMR team. Obviously we didn't lose any points for that loss, but it was interesting. We lasted a good while, but I wasn't able to put out enough damage on the DK, nor reach his holy paladin healer due to the crazy amount of CC, and when the DK is sitting there doing practically aoe damage through disease spreading it really takes a toll on my healer. Though I suppose the best strategy would be to follow my healer till we get to a corner break, hof myself, turn and rotate onto the dk's healer, and then when hof wears off switch back onto the DK. I think I'll try that next time.

More Empire

They just don't respond. You tell them to line up and shoot, and when they do it, they won't shoot. And that's only if you actually manage to get them to line up. I cannot tell you how many times I have used a group of infantry and put them in line and they end up facing BACKWARDS. Huge bug. This game is so incomplete I cannot believe I'm still playing it.

Planning on returning this game today.

A complete review of Empire: Total War

So my last two posts have dabbled in Empire: Total War, even giving them a score, but neither of them was a true review. Rather than write out a large article I'm going to attempt to bullet and summarize points.

Campaign Map -
1. Very fun. This has always been the selling point for me with Total War games, granted I've only ever played Medieval: Total War before. Not even the 2nd one, because it ran so horribly when I demo'd it that I decided I wouldn't buy it. Turn based strategy empire building sim, great.
2. Very buggy. The gaming industry seems to have fallen into a problem. "It's okay to ship something with a few pieces broken, because we can patch it later." What they seem to forget over and over is that you can't just patch something later, not without testing it, not without running into unexpected bugs that require yet another patch, and another, because you keep breaking things every time you try to fix them. No, E:TW will Never be a good game. It was shipped still as a piece of crap, it will forever be a piece of crap. The amount of bugs is horrendous. Even after 4 or 5 patches. Game companies wonder why people don't spend money on their games? This is one of the reasons. I will never buy another Total War game again after this one. All the reviews you might read on gaming sites? Pure crap. If you want to know about E:TW, then go to google, type in Empire: Total War forums, and go to them. Players still manage to have fun, but if you go to the bugs section, or even the game play section, all that's discussed is bug after bug after bug.
3. Mods. Apparently E:TW wasn't expected to be a finished product by many people anyway. The number of mods available that tweak AI, tweak unit numbers and length of the campaign, are all out there. You would think that these bug and balance fixes wouldn't be necessary since they had QA test it, but apparently Sega can't manage that.
4. Sound - Decent, but quickly dull. Sound hiccups when you pause then resume battles. As in, you get a really loud burst of sound for no reason.
5. Sea battles - Gimmick. A huge, worthless, gimmick. Then again, I'd prefer if the battles weren't in real time but turn based.

Overall? DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Not for another 6 months at least. I would return it, except I lost my receipt :( This is a bad, bad, bad game. Rating: 3/10. Is it Total War? Yes. Is it worth it? No. Go pick up Medieval: Total War, and play a quality game. Not M:TW 2, that one was bad, get the first one. Then you can enjoy what a TW game should be. E:TW is just... it is just bad. It is an unfinished product, lacking any sort of polish, it's like the Age of Conan of... whatever genre it is. Seriously, it is just like Age of Conan was.

Edit: Well I suggest not buying it anyway, because I don't really enjoy it as a purchase. If you love Total War, you might want to buy the game, but if you're new to the series you probably won't enjoy it as much if you haven't played any other games in the series.

Arenas, Empire: Total War

Well, I'll have to amend my Empire: Total War score of 6/10 and knock it up to a 7.5/10. The replay ability is there. There's a large number of broken issues, but the combat aspect of the game is slowly getting a little more fun as I play it more. I haven't played too many games where one of the key features was so unnecessarily messy to work with. That's probably a lie. I haven't played many games that were like that Recently. I was kind of expecting a game released in 2009 to not have the same issues as games I used to play back in 1995.

Can't wait for Diablo 3, just because it's been too long. I probably won't even play it for more than 2 weeks once it comes out. I was never one of those hard core people to actually hit level 99.

Did 2v2's today. It's rather ridiculous out there. The new concept from Blizzard as "earning" your way higher? Complete fail. It feels like a deluge of worthlessness. And it only feels worse because I'm not even to 1000 yet despite our MMR going up with the number of wins we've had over 60+ games. MMR used to be about 1700, it's wavering around 1800 now, but our rating is still just a measly 700.

I thought that games were going to get slower in season 6, but boy was I wrong. They've gotten faster. In TBC you could spend 6 to 10 seconds thinking about what to do next and come out okay. In S5 you could spend about 3 to 5 seconds. In S6... you have about 1 to 2 seconds. Otherwise you just lost. It doesn't really feel like I'm playing a game that involves any ingenuity or thought anymore. It feels like arenas are a game of wrote and memorization. Yes, heavy strategy, but it's all strategy that is applied outside of the arena. You don't think up strategy on the spot. You might get some crazy idea and try to pull it off, and it might work, but that's not strategy, that's more like deciding to turn left instead of right. So far this is probably one of the most disappointing seasons I've played in. I didn't think Blizz could make it worse, but they managed.

This, that, and the other

So the rogue/priest duo for 2v2 has gotten some slight nerfs. Problems? Probably not enough. The mana burn change should help more than the blind sharing DR with fear change probably. At least for me since I run with a disc priest/ret combo and with two trinkets I can afford to break up CC chains that little bit easier. Will Ret/Priest dominate the charts? I doubt it. There just aren't enough of them compared to rogue/priest teams.

I'm done raiding so I don't have to worry about updating about that anymore. I went and bought Empire: Total War. I'm a little bit disappointed. The combat part is still ridiculously confusing, and honestly not worth my time to try and learn how to play. 1 hour limit on a match against a computer?! No thank you. I spend the entire time stuck in slow mode anyway since I'm trying to order troops around. And no, micro managing is not fun. I should probably just spend a little more time on it, but I love the campaign mode too much. Or at least I did in Medieval: Total War. 3d was a bad idea. Or whatever they call this wax figurine look. Honestly, the campaign map just looks confusing. The controls are still iffy as well. This is supposed to be a strategic game, but when you move a unit, you've moved a unit. Even if you didn't mean to. And there is no quick 'cancel/stop move' button either. You hit escape and nothing happens but the menu asks you if you want to quit the game. I give it a 7/10 honestly. It gains +'s because I love the context, but -'s for how horrible the interface is. The tutorial doesn't explain anything either. So yeah, 6/10, because after 10 hours of playing I still don't know about half the boxes. And what the hell happened to being allowed to tax places separately?! I can either not tax them at all, or I can tax them the same as the rest of the theater... honestly, what the hell were those developers thinking. That doesn't add realism, it adds retarded.

I'll still play the game, but 6/10. Which is sad, because Medieval: Total War was so good, but then they just screwed it up more and more with everything after it. I don't mention naval battles at all because TBH, I haven't felt like trying it after the Land battle is still the same mess it's always been. I'd much prefer a turn based option for land battle, then this real time waste.