Weekend Reading: In Praise of Total War

I liked the new Total War: Shogun 2 very much, as you can read from my review and my set of Gamer Diaries, and I have also gone back and played a bit of Medieval 2 and Rome: Total War during the last few weeks, losing myself once again in the thick historical “what if” situations that the games manage to create.

And for the last couple of weeks, I have discovered that even Rome: Total War, which was the third game in the series and came out what feels like eons ago, manages to offer a very deep and engaging experience as long as the player patches it up and adds the perfect mods.

For Rome, these are Europa Barbarorum and Fourth Age: Total War, two total conversions that managed to make the game much more than it was on launch.

EB is very stable and complete with the 1.2 version and the various submods that are still being updated regularly and allows the player to jump into the Ancient world and play a variety of historically correct factions as he attempts to take over his corner of the world.

EB shines, with its new recruitment system, complex series of traits for generals and its commitment to being as close to history as possible while still delivering the “what if” moments.

Fourth Age: Total War is, on at least one level, an even more interesting achievement, because it manages to deliver a coherent game world and balanced factions by only using the limited information that Tolkien offered on the age after the War of the Ring and some judicious guesses from the team behind it.

The mod suffers a bit when it comes to the depth, but even without the Elves and the Dwarves playable it has still managed to keep me occupied for 20 hours, and I'm still going trying to establish Rohan's dominance over the world.