Ben's Gold Code Day Report
When I arrived at SEGA Europe HQ, I met Phillistine from AoEH as well as Lusted and Laverick from TWC, who had been running a similar competition. We also met Richie Skinner (The Shogun), Mark O Connell (Who runs the totalwar.com site for CA), Alex Friend and Mark Sutherns from SEGA who were all there to show us around the game and answer any questions we had.
We were given a computer each and let loose to try what we liked and see what we thought. I tried out some custom battles first, and they look and play fantastic. As it's my personal favourite, I started with a siege, Holy Roman Empire vs. the Venetians and Milanese. I'd seen cannons in the demo already and the other siege engines, especially the trebuchet are just as spectacular, if not more so. As well as rocks and flaming ammo, they can now hurl rotting meat at the enemy to lessen their morale. The missiles' impacts are amazing, too - missiles that hit buildings will leave a hole in the roof and start a fire exactly where they hit and can knock over specific parts of buildings that they land on, rather than the whole building itself. Walls are smashed in and collapse very convincingly, giving all the siege equipment a real feeling of power. The AI seemed very responsive to what I was doing, shifting its forces around to re-enforce anywhere I tried to attack. When it was clear that I was through the walls, they both retreated to the square so that I would have to attack a prepared defence once again. I also tried a historical battle where I had to climb a steep path, while being fired on by the enemy javelins and catapults, before taking a huge, multi-walled castle. The whole game just feels on a larger scale than it ever was before - castles are bigger, better and more detailed. The siege engines feel more powerful. The slightly slower combat and less routing than before make battles feel more like a grind.
The castles are huge, sprawling beasts, and the siege engines have grown to match.
Another big improvement, I think is that you can set the teams' money separately in a custom or multiplayer battle. This means that we should see the more interesting maps being used much more (Less Grassy Flatland - Hooray!). And they do look very interesting. At one point, me, Lusted and Laverick set up a LAN game and just picked a random map. (Redoubt) When we got to place our troops though, we realised that this was much more interesting than most of the maps from Rome. There was a large forest between me and Lusted, and a large hill leading up towards Laverick, defending the hill and the palace on it, with Lusted on his other side. I started moving up the hill, hiding some cavalry in the forest. Unfortunately, Lusted saw them and decided I must be out to get his horse archers, so I killed his cavalry and he killed mine. I noticed that as caused a couple of units to rout, they formed up again quite quickly and ran back to join the battle, which is a very nice touch. If you don't chase routing units, the chances are they'll come back to get you. So, cavalry down, I charged up the hill and managed to pin most of Laverick's infantry with mine while my cavalry took out his archers and attacked from behind. However, Lusted charged in all his troops and managed to mop us both up.
For me though, it's the little things that make Medieval 2 so fantastic. As men fight, they get bloody and dirty. On the campaign map, trees sway in the wind. Burning arrows keep burning, whether they skewer an enemy or simply stick into the ground. And it never stops. It's not just that they have some fantastic little features to show off with and the rest are simply slapped on underneath, everything seems to have had an incredible attention to detail given to it. The event movies, for example are each a work of art in themselves. The success and failure videos start similarly and you can watch how everything unfolds - it makes loosing a spy all the more devastating when you have to watch the guards catch and kill him. There's a sprinkling of new abilities, too - spearmen can form a defensive circle, for example - covering all sides. Useful when you're outnumbered.
The weather and scenery all look fantastic!
Overall it was a fantastic day with a fantastic game. We all had a great day and really enjoyed ourselves. Thank you HeavenGames, Creative Assembly and SEGA for this fantastic experience!