As the Chinese general and military strategist, Sun Tzu, once said, "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win". Intelligence gathering, logistics, and other preparations are crucial if you want to be successful in the art of war. Positioning of your vanguard, center, and rearguard units can spell victory or defeat and it is necessary to cover your flanks and rear, or you will have a catastrophe, waiting to happen. Equally as important, is the use of terrain for tactics such as decoys and ambushes to your advantage. There is a great deal more to it, but you get the idea. There is nothing more satisfying than having your enemy show up thinking he has won, because of superior numbers, only to find out that he is cleverly outmatched, due to superior understanding of what it takes to wage war and win.

In this game, you start off as the ruler of a kingdom in a cross between turn based strategy (campaign map) and real time strategy (battle map) style of game-play. As the ruler of your nation, you will need to raise armies, build infrastructure and buildings, improve farming, manage taxes, and deal with diplomacy. One new feature that was added, is that you can decide whether a settlement will be a city or a castle. Cities can grow very large and give a tremendous boost to your economy, but are harder to defend, while castles are used to build elite military units, yet cannot sustain themselves economically. In addition to this new feature, you are given the ability to convert castles and cities back and forth, although it can be very expensive to do so. One example of using this feature to your advantage, is to convert the earlier inland castles to cities, once your borders have expanded, and convert your perimeter cities to castles, for strategic and efficient positioning of your forces. You will also, order agents to do your bidding, whether it be an assassination of an enemy general, espionage in the form of sabotage or intelligence gathering, diplomatic negotiations with rivals, directing a princess to seduce a rival general into joining your side, converting heathens to your religion, or simply sending a merchant to establish lucrative trading opportunities.

When two armies meet, the game zooms down and then initiates the battle map, in which all fighting takes place, unless of course, you use the automatically resolve button. Individually animated soldiers ranging from, calvary, knights, spearmen, and archers, to siege units like battering rams, siege towers, ladders, and catapults are all displayed in total war glory. The attention to detail is quite impressive, in that the grass, trees, and even lit torches will sway against the wind. Weather conditions and terrain can seriously affect the outcome of the battle. Thousands of soldiers, all appear on the battlefield at the same time, which is an amazing spectacle to witness.

An obvious medieval influence is quite apparent in everything from the soldiers, armor, helm, shields, and weapons, to the architecture of the tremendous buildings and castle walls that you will construct. With out a doubt, "Medieval 2: Total War", has some beautiful eye candy to feast on, as the graphics are certainly, done right!

I have always been interested strategy games and medieval warfare, in particular. Needless to say, I was ecstatic, when Creative Assembly came out with "Medieval: Total War", back in 2002, because it gave me a chance to test my skills in strategy and tactics. While this game had many weaknesses, it was still the best, medieval war strategy game, ever released.

With that in mind, it is understandable, why I had high hopes for "Medieval 2: Total War", but other than a graphics update, the game plays, pretty much the same as "Rome: Total War" does, except it is riddled with bugs and inherits a sub-par A.I. Although, there are a few game-play features added, they are minimal and disappointing, compared to my expectations. That is not to say that this title is a poor effort, on the contrary, "Medieval 2: Total War" is a good game, it just doesn't add very much to what previous installments, had already offered. If you are new to the "Total War" series of games, you are in for an absolute treat, but if you are a returning fan, the graphics update, is the only significant change, that you can look forward to. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing. I am sure most of us have a dearly loved, yet antiquated game in our collection, that we wish could be updated with modern graphics. If that's true, then I'll testify, that the game does look pretty and once patched, it might even go from good to great. Having said that, let me start off with the good and bad points, this game has to offer:

THE GOOD: Things they did right.

- The tutorial was done, very well. There is even audio guidance from your advisor!

- Firearms and cannon cause a shock wave, shaking the screen; cannonballs roar and rumble as they fly by.

- Return of event driven videos, like assassination attempts, espionage, papal elections, etc.

- The clone armies are a thing of the past. Each individual has a different looking, armor, helm, shield, and weapon. This makes your army look a great deal more realistic, because it doesn't look like one soldier was copied ten thousand times.

- The battles look amazing. The new animations, ranging from individual soldier attacks, defenses, and deaths to the flaming arrows and cannonball fire, shaking the ground and sending shear terror through your ranks, provides an amazing visual treat.

- Attention to historical detail.

THE BAD: Things they did wrong.

- The Campaign map is almost exactly like "Rome: Total War", in function and display, with the exception of new resources, like wine, wheat, gold, etc.

- New agents are more of a pain than they are worth.

- Repetitive missions. Block this port, convert this provence, etc., over and over again.

- Endless castle sieges.

- Stupid A.I.

- The A.I. sits idle, while being pummeled with arrows.

- Crusades are a real pain. Your armies will desert if you do not travel in a straight line, even if going by boat shortens the trip, immensely. Illogical and very frustrating!

- Some missions from the pope are impossible. The pope will tell you to convert a provence to your religion in 8 turns, even though you are 25 turns, fastest route, away! Then you get penalized for not doing what the papacy ordered and illogically, he'll send an inquisitor to wipe out your family, which you can do nothing to stop! WOW!

- Only a few, out of a whole group, will engage in the fight, while the others just stand there and watch.

- Diplomacy is still unrealistic and disappointing. The A.I. does not follow any sort of logic, when dealing with diplomacy. You can aide your friends in time of war, but for some stupid reason, all of a sudden, they will betray and wage war on you, even though you saved them from certain defeat. Huh? On the other hand, you could be the most powerful nation in the world, have your enemy near total destruction and they will demand cease fire, a city or two, a large cash payment, and other unbelievable tributes. What? Not only that, but the A.I. will often start a war, that it has no hope of winning or even surviving. The list goes on, suffice to say, diplomacy in this game, is pathetic!

- Squalor is unbalanced. Even with all of the happiness buildings, low taxes, luxuries, etc., sometimes the only way to deal with it is to let your citizens rebel, then retake the city and slaughter them all. Completely unrealistic.

- Ancillaries and Traits are random and ignorantly bestowed. If you leave a governor in a city, he will always end up with bad traits, which means you need to move them out and back every turn. Bad traits are needlessly aggravating, to avoid, especially in the late game, when you have many cities and governors to deal with.

- Inquisitors are extremely over powered and just plain out of control. I've had kings and generals with high piety executed, even with all of my lands being 99% faithful. It just doesn't make any sense. Ignorance! Rubbish!

- Bugs that were fixed from "Rome: Total War" are replaced with more irritating ones.

- Lame units that will not attack, even if the enemy is right in front of them.

- Ranged units will not fire from the top of walls into enemy city.

- Firearm units will not angle over friendly units in front of them, so only one row can fire at a time. This should work the same as the archers, but does not.

- Agents and armies will not go around enemy cities, when told to do so, instead they get trapped, as if they were involved in the siege. If you direct your agent or army, to go around the city, they should not be prevented from doing so, unless an enemy intercepts them.

- In a siege, you can wipe out nearly the entire army, less 3 or 4 peasants and still end in a draw!

- Naval Battles are pathetic, as usual.

- Battles are repetitive.

- No Multi-player Campaign.

- Too many nations locked at the start.

- The pope will excommunicate you for defending yourself against attacking enemies!

- Mounted units on an incline are skewed and stretched.

- Bad pathing, units running in place, units facing the wrong way, terrible animations (Calvary make 180 degree turns instantaneously). This is not the work of a professional.

- "Click to attack, then watch", get's boring after a while. More interactivity during those attacks, would be nice.

SPECIFIC INFORMATION: Other details about the game.

* Game-play
- Strategic military game-play that has you managing cities, castles, agents, generals, and armies. It's a game of conquest like all of the total war games, with a fresh coat of paint.

* Fun Factor
- Fun and addictive at first, but it will seem repetitive and even boring, by the end of your first, full campaign.

* Difficulty
- If you have played "Rome: Total War", it's pretty much the same, so you shouldn't have any trouble, but even if you are new to the series, jumping into a custom battle or starting a new campaign is really quite easy, because the excellent tutorial and campaign advisor, do an amazing job of guiding you through the game.

* Modes of Play
- You can create custom battles, where you choose the factions involved, which and how many units will participate, what the terrain will consist of, and whether it will be a castle siege or open field battle. Although, I found the main campaign to be the most fun, to experience.

* Re-playability
- You will start off with one of the 5 easiest factions, so if you feel like challenging your skills, you can try out any of the 12 other factions after completing a mini or full campaign, to add more difficulty.

* Depth and Length of Game
- It can take you days and even weeks to finish a full campaign, depending on how long your play sessions are. The depth is reasonable, but could have had more micro-management of the cities. You can set the taxes in degrees of low, medium, or high and build some happiness, economic, religious, guild, and military buildings, that's pretty much all there is to it.

* Audio
- Voice Acting: The voice acting is pretty good. You'll hear different accents coming from the varying factions on the battlefield, which adds to the immersion.

- Battle Sounds: Decent Battle sounds. The rumble of the calvary charging is very exciting and the cannon fire is quite believable and awe inspiring. You'll hear the clanging of swords and whistling of arrows going by your head.

* Movie Sequences
- The effect they have on your experience, is that you can watch the missions being carried out, success or failure, which adds to the immersion. However, these movies do not add anything to the game-play, even though they are quite entertaining.

CLOSING REMARKS: This is a good game, but it is in dire need of patching.

I cannot say that the minimal additions to game-play, are worth the investment of $50, for a title we have all played before. "Medieval 2: Total War" is so similar to "Rome: Total War", that it seems more like an expansion, rather than a new game. Not to mention, that it is so full of bugs, that it damages Sega's integrity, to release it, before it was ready. However, if you loved Rome and always wished it had a graphics upgrade, then I would recommend the purchase, because I am sure they will fix the bugs, eventually. Similarly, if you have never played any of the "Total War" series of games and are interested, you will not go wrong, by purchasing "Medieval 2: Total War", because it is the best there is, with regard to medieval war strategy games.

The Game-play and value score of 7, is due to the numerous bugs that plague this game's quality, but once they are fixed, that number would be an 8 or 9, which would change the overall score, considerably. A potential overall score of 8.8 is possible.