I Reviewed EVERY Historical Total War Since Rome

Empire seriously deserved better than it did, I hope they do Empire justice in a remaster or sequel

I miss the liberty and the realism of the cities system of Rome and Medieval 2 Total War

0:50 Rome total war 12:26 Medieval 2 total war 43:28 Empire total war 55:55 Napoleon Total war 1:10:35 Shogun 2 total war 1:35:45 Rome 2 total war 1:52:06 Rome 2 total war Attila Total war 2:04:16 Britannia Total war 2:11:02 Three kingdoms total war 2:29:21 Unremastered servers. 2:39:28 Troy total war.

One thing I appreciate about Shogun 2 is that regardless what stage of the game you're in every unit is still viable. It's not like how it is in newer titles where units at the early game will never get used again later. People like to detract from Shogun 2 by saying it lacks unit diversity, but I feel like if many of your units are just reskins that aren't useful 30 turns in (such as in Warhammers case) then your roster isn't that diverse

I think 3 kingdoms feel of 'no real borders, just a giant block of land' helps with the feel of infighting and helps the civil war vibes.

Something I LOVED about the Peninsular campaign was playing AS spain almost forced you to adopt guerilla style tactics, especially early on. I'll never forget using my 3 stacks of skirmishers and 2 hussars to ambush a superior force of line infantry, actually utilizing the skirmish ability in the trees to constantly pressure french while my light Calvary harassed their flanks. I utilized the speed of my infantry to constantly reposition whenever the French thought about trying to close the gap. It was such a fun experience that I've never replicated in any other total war and it's why I still go back to the Peninsular Campaign from time to time.

I miss the classic total wars like Rome 1 and Medieval 2, I loved that in Rome 1 you could view the city and see the tangible changes as your settlement grew, I'm glad they kept that in the remaster, I hope they remaster Medieval 2 and bring that in. Also, I don't know the specifics but it was a HUGE mistake to let Jeff van Dyck leave, he is part of the reasons the games upto Shogun 2 were amazing, the work he and others did on the soundtracks were divine, since then the music is pretty lacklustre tbh

This was probably the first time I’ve seen someone actually give Troy a chance. Which is awesome I always thought it was unique.

if they were to combine all the best features of every total war, you'd have an absolute masterpiece. realm divide, sturdier politics, jeff van dyck soundtrack, an engine similar to the old one that had better combat animations, unit models changing when upgraded, the ability to upgrade generals, naval battles etc.

I still feel that the sound design of both ambiance and music are way better in rome 1 than recent TW

Shogun 2 is my favorite, imho. Some people did not like the lack of unity variety. Personally, I liked how there was not an overwhelming amount of units. Some TW games it feels like there are so many units that it sometimes boils down to just knowing which unit beats which unit. Shogun 2 felt like you had to rely more on other things to win, like terrain, positioning, timing your attack, etc. I know it has its flaws, I wish the campaign had a little more variety and realm divide was just stupidly broken, but overall its still my favorite.

I find it incredible that people are STILL, to this day, making mods for Medieval 2. I love scrolling through the Med2 kingdoms forums and looking at what everyone is working on. I have a weak spot for the Late Roman Empire mods in particular. The song at 31:44 is my favorite from the soundtrack as well.

Three kingdoms citys do have unique buildings but they are inside the city wall so they can be hard to see.

I really appreciated the fact that you were openly willing to talk about how little you knew about the Three Kingdoms time period going into the review and didn’t just blatantly criticize some of the game’s elements out of ignorance. The way I see it, Total War Three Kingdoms is really just a love letter to people familiar with the characters and the story. To give you a sense of scale, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its associated media are quite literally ubiquitous in all of Eastern and Southeastern Asia, even outside of China. I have yet to meet a single person raised in those regions who hasn’t at least heard of the period, and many learned it as part of their actual curriculum. Students to this day still study the poetry and essays actually written by the people of the time, such as those as by Cao Cao and his children. Story anecdotes are still told to children much in the way Aesop’s fables are used today. Even my Korean immigrant parents have read the novels and have since imparted their enthusiasm to me. Every single character in this game with a unique portrait was instantly recognizable to me without seeing their names (except maybe some yellow turbans, bandits, and some nanman), and I doubt I’m an outlier on this. I knew their stories, how they interacted with each other, what happened to them in the end. Hundreds of characters, and even more that didn’t get their own portraits. The same went for every province, landmark, and most of the cities. The game’s systems are really good, arguably in my opinion some of the best in the series. But what really carries the game is the immersion. It’s very understandable however that someone with virtually no prior knowledge of the history would get overwhelmed, which I think is fair, but also what I think poisons a lot of the wider western perception of the game, simply because they haven’t been informed of the history since childhood like they were with the Frankish knights or Roman legions. One last thing - the reason why factions in this game are literally just the names of their leaders is for a very good reason, although I do understand the frustration. As the Han Dynasty was falling apart, the factions were basically led by a slew of local governors who went rogue and had private armies, but still largely paraded themselves as loyal subjects of the Han. To call themselves entirely different polities would have damaged their legitimacy and branded them as traitors (this actually happened to Yuan Shu, who decided to declare his faction the Dynasty of Zhou, which lasted for only about a couple years before its destruction by Han-loyalist factions). Cao Cao’s faction wasn’t really known as “Wei” until Cao Cao had declared himself king of his own vassal state (Duchy, which eventually became a Kingdom/Dynasty) and this was only after he controlled over half of Han China. “Shu-Han” was established by Liu Bei in retaliation to the establishment of Wei after the last emperor of Han abdicated, and “Wu” was established basically because Sun Quan didn’t want to be left out. This your Three Kingdoms, some 30 years after 190 AD at the start of the game. Sorry for info dumping here, I hope it wasn’t too much. It’s just a period of history I’ve fanboyed over for basically my entire life.

Medieval 2 is sooo damn good. One of my favorite aspects of medieval 2 is that when you upgrade farms, farms begin to appear on the map! And as you upgrade armor, the units gain a different skin and look more badass as time goes on! Something I always found truly awesome about that game. And the fact that units had a town cap that regened fairly slowly made it feel more real, forcing you to draw on peasants to fill out your ranks. There were a lot of buggy problems, and the graphics arent amazing, but there are aspects that I really miss from that game, and I've played it often even as we are in the era of WH3.

The amount of mods for Medieval 2 is just insane, most any mod for a campaign, you could find a mod somewhere that would at least somewhat decently work.

You know thinking on it now in regards to M2TW and the kingdoms expansion pack CA missed a really good opportunity to include the Italian Wars during the Renaissance. I think it would have been neat to have 3 powerhouses like France, the Habsburgs and Spain initially fight for control of the Italian peninsula but then boils over into the Rhineland and Flanders regions.

I really love how Medieval 2 allowed you to upgrade the armour and weapons of your troops so clearly. It also made it possible for simple units as spear militia to become mighty opponents on their own right. Hope they bring that back

I'm so glad you mentioned the medieval 2 main menu. It's weird to have something so forgettable for most games give me such nostalgia for medieval 2, but it's just beautiful. The main menu for the game, of all things, feels like a genuine art piece.

3k records is still my go to for a modern historical and runs so much better than WH2/WH3, it still stings how CA killed it before giving us the actual Three Kingdoms period, having 3 large kingdoms starting out with much larger armies would also help it be more interesting to people who dislike the huge faction numbers, awesome video!