An expansion for Medieval II: Total War
Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms is the official expansion to last year's award-winning Medieval II: Total War, presenting players with all-new territories to explore, troops to command, and enemies to conquer. Kingdoms is the most content-rich expansion ever produced for a Total War game, with four new entire campaigns centered on expanded maps of the British Isles, Teutonic Northern Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. In Medieval II, you were only given a tantalizing glimpse of South America, but in Kingdoms, vast tracts of land in both North and South America have been opened up for you to conquer. All-new factions from the New World are also now fully playable, including the Aztecs, Apaches, and Mayans. Along with the new maps in the Britannia, Teutonic, Crusades, and New World Campaigns, there are 13 new factions to play, over 110 units to control, and 50 building types, adding up to 80 hours of new gameplay. Kingdoms also offers new multiplayer maps and hotseat multiplayer, a first for the Total War series, allowing you to play one-versus-one campaign games on the same computer.
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Americas: Easily the weakest campaign, the only remotely interesting faction to play as is the Spanish in their yellow map-painting endeavors, but it soon falls out once the Aztecs and friends are dealt with. The issue with the Americas map is in its design: outside of fighting against other factions, it is the Rus experience all over again from vanilla Med II. Fighting rebels as the Apache and Mayans is no fun either, but at least the religion mechanics and the setting are interesting.
2/5 stars, no wonder I paste mods to this folder.
Teutonic: the Teutonic campaign has a weird gimmick, where you fight over lots of small villages meaning to be sort of border villages, but having to deal with so many small homlets when the fun is in actual carnage can only be so distracting: faction balance is fun, tight and the map, outside of Scandinavia, is already occupied by factions. Playing as either the Teutonic Order or the Lithuanians can drastically change the approach and no time is wasted, only war matters.
4/5 stars.
Crusades: we're getting closer to the meat of the expansion. Crusades and Teutonic both show that the game focusing on a small map can only do good to its mechanics, its factions and its flavor. Each and every side has their own strenghts and migraines to deal with, from Byzantines having to deal with the Venetians to Jerusalem having to babysit Anthioc and having to deal with Mamluks, Turks and Mongols. All of this makes for an eventful campaign whatever faction you choose to play as.
5/5 stars.
Britannia: What a joy to play. Aside from Ireland's troops being mercenary reskins, Britannia has a lot of love for every single faction you choose. Not only, but having to deal with management, riots, culture and forts all across the Isles makes the game quite intense despite its supposedly small scale. Britannia is able to showcase the best of Medieval II roleplaying and tactical gameplay to its fullest. It is simply fun and exhilarating, may you be playing as the Danes knocking on ports left and right, Scotland taking norhtern settlements away from England, and so on and so forth. Truly the Kingdoms were the
5/5 stars.
Kingdoms to this day is considered the epitome of Medieval II, from its flourishing modding community to its ease of play and different perspective to waging war. No wonder people play this game after 15 years, with the way CA has been treating its customers and workers; something like Kingdoms happened once, maybe twice if you consider Fall of the Samurai, and never again will. Let's savor it, yeah?