Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms is the expansion pack for the 2006 Medieval II: Total War.
Although this expansion pack is not brand new, it was recently re-released on White Label, knocking the price down to just less than £10, meaning it could well be that little stocking filler you have been after, or that credit crunch beating treat for yourself.
The graphics are brilliant, just being an add-on it works from all of Medieval II’s engines and everything is extremely well animated, and on the highest settings it is great to see all the small details in battle.
The in-game soundtrack becomes pretty repetitive after a while, but the sound effects for battle with regards to armour and horses etc are quite spot on. You get cut scenes before battles where someone will be giving a rousing speech, and they are usually voiced by someone sounded quite battle-hardened and gruff, a nice touch, and more realistic than some random with a soft voice trying to sound convincing.
The story varies depending on which campaign you choose to play.
For the Britannia Campaign, you start in 1258 during a period of utter chaos across the British Isles. Ireland, despite a lack of funding and resources are posing to be a problem and are on the brink of being able to take it all back for themselves. The Welsh are united against the English and are starting to threaten England’s lightly defended boarders. Up in the North, England’s alliance with Scotland is there, but is on very unstable ground indeed and is likely to erupt into battle at any moment. If all that wasn’t bad enough the Norwegians are hungry for war and not being content with the Isle of Man and the Hebrides decide they want Britannia and their own King comes to oversee its conquest.
You can also play the Americas campaign, the Crusades campaign or the Teutonic campaign, you go into each one in an important and unstable time, and you have to stop the worst from happening as well as getting your empire to flourish.
In terms of controls the game play is very simple and turn based, meaning you can only do so much in your turn before the rest of the AI controlled factions have to react (it also stops you marching all the way cross-country in one day). The real art is how easy you make it for yourself in terms of sending the right units into battle, and making the right political decisions, marrying off the right wench and ending the right (or well wrong) alliances. It can become a very exact science, allying yourself with one strong country may be great for you, but could upset the other five you have relations with, and it can all go belly up very quickly.
Overall this is a great add-on to an already very good game. The new content adds hours more to gameplay, the only problem is the amount of space is takes up. Being an expansion you would expect it to only be a fraction of the full game it is adding too, unfortunately not. So if you are hard up on space it would be well worth making sure you have the room for it. One other thing was the install time, it almost took as long as the full game, and I ended up going to do something else whilst I was waiting.
On the plus side, pretty much ALL the major mods for Total War II found over at the Total War mod site run off the Kingdoms.exe so if you are a bit of a mod enthusiast then for £10 you are given access to some of the most fantastic mods you will ever find for the Total War series. I certainly suggest checking out Deus Lo Volt amongst many others for that perfect Medieval feel that you would miss without this add-on package.
Get this if you have the original game and its starting to feel a bit stale or if you like your mods. It is a very good expansion and you won’t be disappointed with it. Just make sure you have enough room for it and something else to do whilst it installs. Besides, you really can't go wrong for £10.
