Like I said, the real time battles are amazing to play despite some inconsistencies. It’s a nice way to get that quick fix of fun - because the co-op battles ARE fun.ĭon’t get me wrong, Total War: Rome 2 isn’t a bad game. Just pick a bunch of units from a predefined and limited pool and hit go. This includes the ability to play cooperatively with a friend in naval, land, and combination battles. If you don’t want to waste time with the turn based strategy part of Total War: Rome 2 you can play comp-stomp battles against the computer in a bunch of scenarios and pre-sets. Creative Assembly definitely knows about this stuff and are committed to fixing it, but as of now, be prepared for some quirkiness. Interface quirks, repeating missions, AI troop bugs, and just plain AI stupidity. In fact there are bugs all over the place in Total War: Rome 2. Luckily the game DOES let you save and resume, though we encounter a handful of bugs that took a few connection retries to iron out.

Be ready to sit in for the long haul with a friend. In four hours of play we managed to get to 11 turns in one of our co-op games. Update: As of the latest patch, the speed of the co-op turns have been improved greatly. The problem with this mode is it’s painfully slow, as there’s no way to choose a lesser number of “players.” This means you and your partner will sit there with nothing to do for an average of 4-5 minutes while the computer figures out what to do with the AI players. You each start with a group and city or two and then go from there. A “co-op campaign” is just a normal game where you team up with another person and play to conquer the map. A new addition are the naval battles, which are equally as impressive visually and offer a nice change of pace from time to time.įrom a purely cooperative perspective there are a few ways to play the game. Both graphically and audibly it’s an impressive sight, especially when there are a few thousand soldiers involved at a time. You’ll hear commanders call out orders, men rally the troops for their fighting cause, and the screams as fire arrows break down a line of calvary. If you hit the insert key the game adjusts the camera for a more cinematic experience, following your army into battle to hear the clash of steel.

The troops aren’t just mirror images of each other, there’s a good variety to a group of soldiers and you’ll see individual soldiers break off of a larger force. Visually the real-time sections are amazing to watch.

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