Home

News

Reviews

Games

Hardware

Downloads

Medieval 2: Total War Kingdoms

User Rating:

ESRB: Alcohol Reference,Blood,Language - Mild,Sexual Themes,Tobacco Reference,Violence
Publisher: Sega
Genre(s): Strategy
Home Page: http://www.totalwar.com

Game index

System Requirements

Review

Preview

Screenshots

Downloads

By: Jarno Kokko Sep 12, 2007

Solid Expansion

Medieval 2: Total War Kingdoms is a very good expansion pack, offering great value for money - it's effectively four new Total War games in one package, each being different in their own way, yet based on the tried and true Medieval 2: Total War core game. The campaigns are smaller in scope when compared to the base game, but in my books this is a big improvement. While it was great that M2: TW offered the full complexity of the whole Europe and nearby regions, it was just so large and complicated that late game situations tended to get out of hand. No such problems here - the restricted area and limited number of factions keep the game manageable throughout the campaign.

The expansion also adds hotseat multiplayer, an oft-requested option, but to me it felt pointless, as the 3D real-time battles are lost. As there is no way to do a two-player real-time battle on one computer, the game resorts to auto-resolving all battles in this mode; all you are left with is the turn-based boardgame portion of the game.

Siege Towers are handy when the locals refuse to let you in.

Crusaders lined up for a night battle.

The expansion requires Medieval 2: Total War to play, and it should be noted that retail copies of the expansion do not work with the digital download versions available from services such as Direct2Drive or Steam. The same is true the other way around - if your Medieval 2: Total War is a retail copy, it won't cooperate with a digital download version of Kingdoms.

In short, the expansion is a massive load of new content for those who already love the Total War series. It concentrates on further evolving and refining the tried and true formula, and the only thing that may possibly draw new players is the fact that the new campaigns are more manageable in size. There is still tons of content here - so much that I'm freely admitting that completely exploring everything offered by the four campaigns in the confines of our review schedules together with the hardware testing YouGamers does was simply unfeasible in this case, but even in the limited time available it became abundantly clear that the Total War series is as strong as ever, and Kingdoms will keep you busy for a long time - probably until Empire: Total War appears, scheduled to arrive late 2008.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	Intel Celeron 1.8 GHz or equivalent AMD Athlon 64 Processor	Pentium 4 2.4GHz or equivalent AMD Athlon 64 Processor
Memory	512 MB	1 GB
Graphics Card	128MB DX8-class video card (Shader Model 1.0)	128MB DX9-class video card (Shader Model 2.0)
Graphics Card Example	GeForce 4 Ti-series / Radeon 8500	GeForce 7300 / Radeon X1600
Free Disk Space	9 GB	9 GB
Net Link	Broadband	Broadband

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz / AMD Athlon 64 3000+	Intel Pentium 4 3.8 GHz / AMD Athlon 64 3700+
Memory	1 GB	2 GB
Graphics Card	NVIDIA GeForce 6600 128MB / ATI Radeon X1600 128MB	NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT 256MB / ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB
Free Disk Space	9 GB	9 GB
Net Link	Broadband	Broadband

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	88	A solid expansion that fixes the major problem of the original Medieval 2: Total War (too large map) with four smaller and more diverse campaigns.
Graphics	86	The engine is starting to show its age, the strategy map can still get bit cluttered and unclear, but the main part - massive armies hacking each other to bits - is still fairly pretty.
Audio	92	Music is as superb as it's always been in the Total War series. Excellent tutorial voiceovers but the only problem is that voices from generals have not been customized for all the new factions, and sometimes you get accents that feel a bit out of place.
Technology	87	Scales pretty well on the visual side, but still requires plenty of CPU power, especially with large four-army battles and when fighting in huge cities.

OVERALL

Four major campaigns extending the Medieval 2: Total War, each with a couple of with new twists and features, all at a suitably low price - definitely a valuable addition to the Total War legacy.

If you wish to comment on this review or discuss the game further, then please head over to our forum - click right here (registration not required).