4. Rome: Total War 2
The Original: The 4x genre was young in 2004, when Rome: Total War debuted. At the time, the genre was largely dominated by games like Sid Meier's Civilization series and others that focused mostly on the building of empires, leaving the combat to the computer. Hot on the heels of Sega's first Total War game, Shogun: Total War, R:TW hit the market like a trebuchet launching a golden calf at the Empire State Building. Before R:TW had even hit the stores, there was enough buzz to reignite the Apollo program. And, when it did start getting reviews, it was picking up
nearly perfect scores, and being hailed as one of the
best strategy titles ever. The 4x genre never was the same. Total War's completely unique mixture of turn based strategic city building and army movement with real time tactical control of armies was never seen before, and never really duplicated since.
What made it so great? Everything, puny mortal. Everything. See that's how you talk after playing R:TW. It made you a god. Players chose a civilization from the 2 dozen or so ancient cultures available, chose a victory condition (conquer JUST Rome or man up and conquer the whole known world), and got dropped into a war zone. Up to that point, Total War was much the same as the Civilization series, but it was set apart by the fact that Total War thought peace was for pansies, and didn't even pretend to think otherwise. Players not only built and developed their cities and armies, but they commanded their armies and defended their cities on the battlefield. Unlike Civilization, in which entire armies would be shrunk down to 10-15 guys on a map, duking it out simply by clicking on each other, Total War put players in the mud with their army of 2000 firmly under their command. And in an age when most games could barely get a sword to look right, Sega spent what I can only imagine was infinite money making sure that even on a battlefield of thousands, you could zoom in to a single unit engaged in combat and see him fighting for his life, up until a sword strikes him and he dies. In essence, Rome: Total War gave us exactly the experience of being a Roman Emperor, the infinite responsibility of overseeing construction and politics in an entire empire, and the necessity of taking to the field personally to ensure victory in combat.
So Why Did They Wait? Because the age of Roman glory wasn't the only time in which war was rampant. Turns out, that human history has got plenty of different time periods to choose from that were just chalk full of war and killing. Sega went ahead and released two titles based in Medieval times, a second title based in feudal Japan, a title that takes place during the age of western imperial expansion, and a Napoleonic version. And while each of these games was good in itself, none of them ever really captured the perfection of Rome: Total War.
It's Finally Here: After official announcements of an intended 2013 release date, and what is probably the
most impressive video game trailer since........um......well damn I can't think of anything more impressive, so let's just go with "ever", Sega is well on their way to hyping Rome: Total War 2 as the biggest, baddest strategy game ever released. Sega has poured a massive amount of money into the game, and it's
starting to show. With an entirely new engine online,
Sega is promising to make R:TW2 both the most visually impressive strategy game ever made, and completely playable
on any computer that could run Shogun: Total War 2. That in and of itself is already a pretty impressive claim, considering that Sega intends to somehow INCREASE the number of units on the field to the mid thousands. Gameplay is also getting a massive growth spurt in this edition of the Total War series. Sega has stated that they want to totally revamp the way micromanagement is handled, so that players can have the option to control every little aspect of their empire, let the computer handle everything, or anything in between. The plan is to set up "regional capitals" that act as both management centers and political/strategic hotspots, making the game much more focused on protecting "important" cities, as opposed to every little village. And in a seriously bold move, Sega plans on making the first strategy game which will allow navies to be a serious threat on both a strategic and tactical level by using them to invade coastal cities. All in all, it sounds like Sega is doing two things: finally giving the players the one game they have been clamoring for for almost a decade now, and promising to make a very large number of seemingly positive changes to the game, without screwing up anything that made it great.