14 DAY TRIAL // One of the biggest releases of the first three months of 2009 is Empire: Total War from Creative Assembly and SEGA. The game blends a strategic layer, where you can take charge of the entire running of a kingdom in the XVIII century, complete with diplomatic action, espionage, research, city development and tax management, with a tactical layer, which kicks in when two armies or two opposing navies meet on the battlefield.
The Total War series is pretty old at the moment, beginning with Shogun, where the strategic layer was very much underdeveloped, and continuing with Medieval: Total War, Rome: Total War, which included a more detailed strategic map, Medieval 2: Total War and now Empire. With each new iteration of the series, the developers at Creative Assembly have ramped up the complexity level of the game, adding new layers of decisions for the players to make and fresh factors that they need to take into account while making short term and long term plans.
And now, after the release of the game, the most talked about aspect, aside from the variety of bugs that plagued the initial release, has been the fact that it's just too complex for most of the players, even for those who have touched Total War games before. I must take issue with this accusation and refute it. Empire: Total War is intuitive, clean coherent in its complexity. The only problem is that we, as gamers, have become accustomed to simplicity and short games. We must shed our ways and come to accept the beauty and complexity of long games.
Empire does a lot to teach you the mechanics. There are tutorials for all the aspects and there is a single player campaign, called the Road to Independence, focused on the Thirteen Colonies and their transformation into the United States of America that further allows players to experience all the complex elements of the game one at a time, getting a handle of how everything works. For the Grand Campaign, both on the strategic layer and the tactical layer, players have a system of help, both spoken and written, offering more details on how things can be used in the game. If all fails, there's a manual attached to the release of Empire. Yes, it's not as detailed as some would wish, but it's there.
The problem is that, these days, players seem to want instant gratification, instant action, instant complexity that can be easily understood and mastered. Empire requires some patience. This is not F.E.A.R. 2, which you can blow through in 10 to 12 hours on the hardest difficulty and which details all its complexity in just half an hour. This is not even Dawn of War II, a game that can take 40 hours on the single player campaign and that details its complexities, both tactical and role playing, in about five hours. Empire: Total War has been created for the dedicated player who understands the period and likes his/her choices and tactical battles, can play for one year, maybe two (considering the inevitable expansion and the work that modders will put out). I still have Rome: Total War with the Europa Barbarorum mod installed and I give it regular play time. So, it can be nice to have on your hands a game complex enough to take a few Grand Campaigns to see everything it has to offer.
What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't complain about something being too complex. Especially if this complexity is well explained, makes sense as far as gameplay mechanics go, and is enjoyable. Empire: Total War makes you think, question decisions, regret them and remake them. And this is the direct result of its complexity.