Empire: Total War

It's obviously a great game, but I question whether it truly deserves that 10. Brings up that ol' 10/10 debate again.

You buy two dvds hoping to go home and install them in about 30 minutes. It turns out that the dics are nearly empty and you have to download on steam which is clogged up with too many users. The actual game I will never get to play because I hate it so much already that I've stopped the download and wrote 38 quid off as being ripped off by a thief.

Let me be clear from the start I love the concept, I agree with the review,it looks stunning, but it has more bugs than a rain forest, most notably its ability to let you play for hours only to find it will not let you load your saved game!.It appears a bug destroys some of your saved game files, not all mind but buyer beware. That is bad enough but frequent crash to desktops destroys what could be the best game of its type out there, my advice wait for a few weeks till the bugs are sorted out via patches

Ever since Shogun: Total War sparked my love of Japan and Strategy games at the same time. I have been a devout follower of the Total war series. Through Medieval, Rome, and Medieval 2, hell, I even watched Time Commanders. The Total War series has consumed more hours of my life than any gaming series.

So naturally my excite (and probable bias) towards this game meant that I was getting it the very first day it came out, and though I won't mention the painful 2 day and 2 night process that it took. (I believe other reviewers here and there have mentioned it) I can unbelievably say every second of that wait was justified, and more.

Empire Total War is such a vast game, so I will try to be quick. It has added things like separate settlements within a region, an advance trade system, and most shocking of all, Naval combat. That combined with the Map and the battlefield is truly impressive, any one of those modes could be a full game in itself, and the merging of the three makes for a truly incredible experience.

However, and this is the small however that has made me disagree with the 10/10. It isn't perfect, it is as close to it as I think strategy game has come. But it has its flaws, about two or three. The lack of variety in units is painfully clear. Most of the time you'll find little reason to buy anything more than line infantry, and if you are feeling exotic, the occasional cavalry unit.

The second is the lack of choice in playable factions. There are many dotted throughout the world of Empire, but you get to play a very small percentage of them, which is a wasted opportunity. The final flaw is Naval combat, I grant this flaw leeway because it is a new, and impressive feature, and I am sure Assembly will master it by the expansion (or new game, if they are going to deviate from tradition), but sometimes it feels crowded, other times confusing, and I generally just autoskipped it, maybe I sucked? Probably actually.

In conclusion, regardless of who you are, what you like, or what you've played before, I would recommend Empire Total War, it is as close to perfection as Strategy has come, with tutorials for the uninstructed and enough content to keep the veterans conquering the world for a long time to come.

Though I don't have this game reading the reviews and doing some inside research I think that this game, though good, should be worked on for a few more months before being released instead of being constantly patched and upgraded.