I Reviewed EVERY Historical Total War Since Rome 

Empire seriously deserved better than it did, I hope they do Empire justice in a remaster or sequel

I miss the liberty and the realism of the cities system of Rome and Medieval 2 Total War

0:50 Rome total war 12:26 Medieval 2 total war 43:28 Empire total war 55:55 Napoleon Total war 1:10:35 Shogun 2 total war 1:35:45 Rome 2 total war 1:52:06 Rome 2 total war Attila Total war 2:04:16 Britannia Total war 2:11:02 Three kingdoms total war 2:29:21 Unremastered servers. 2:39:28 Troy total war.

One thing I appreciate about Shogun 2 is that regardless what stage of the game you're in every unit is still viable. It's not like how it is in newer titles where units at the early game will never get used again later. People like to detract from Shogun 2 by saying it lacks unit diversity, but I feel like if many of your units are just reskins that aren't useful 30 turns in (such as in Warhammers case) then your roster isn't that diverse

I miss the classic total wars like Rome 1 and Medieval 2, I loved that in Rome 1 you could view the city and see the tangible changes as your settlement grew, I'm glad they kept that in the remaster, I hope they remaster Medieval 2 and bring that in. Also, I don't know the specifics but it was a HUGE mistake to let Jeff van Dyck leave, he is part of the reasons the games upto Shogun 2 were amazing, the work he and others did on the soundtracks were divine, since then the music is pretty lacklustre tbh

Something I LOVED about the Peninsular campaign was playing AS spain almost forced you to adopt guerilla style tactics, especially early on. I'll never forget using my 3 stacks of skirmishers and 2 hussars to ambush a superior force of line infantry, actually utilizing the skirmish ability in the trees to constantly pressure french while my light Calvary harassed their flanks. I utilized the speed of my infantry to constantly reposition whenever the French thought about trying to close the gap. It was such a fun experience that I've never replicated in any other total war and it's why I still go back to the Peninsular Campaign from time to time.

This was probably the first time I’ve seen someone actually give Troy a chance. Which is awesome I always thought it was unique.

if they were to combine all the best features of every total war, you'd have an absolute masterpiece. realm divide, sturdier politics, jeff van dyck soundtrack, an engine similar to the old one that had better combat animations, unit models changing when upgraded, the ability to upgrade generals, naval battles etc.

I think 3 kingdoms feel of 'no real borders, just a giant block of land' helps with the feel of infighting and helps the civil war vibes.

Shogun 2 is my favorite, imho. Some people did not like the lack of unity variety. Personally, I liked how there was not an overwhelming amount of units. Some TW games it feels like there are so many units that it sometimes boils down to just knowing which unit beats which unit. Shogun 2 felt like you had to rely more on other things to win, like terrain, positioning, timing your attack, etc. I know it has its flaws, I wish the campaign had a little more variety and realm divide was just stupidly broken, but overall its still my favorite.

I still feel that the sound design of both ambiance and music are way better in rome 1 than recent TW

I really appreciated the fact that you were openly willing to talk about how little you knew about the Three Kingdoms time period going into the review and didn’t just blatantly criticize some of the game’s elements out of ignorance. The way I see it, Total War Three Kingdoms is really just a love letter to people familiar with the characters and the story. To give you a sense of scale, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its associated media are quite literally ubiquitous in all of Eastern and Southeastern Asia, even outside of China. I have yet to meet a single person raised in those regions who hasn’t at least heard of the period, and many learned it as part of their actual curriculum. Students to this day still study the poetry and essays actually written by the people of the time, such as those as by Cao Cao and his children. Story anecdotes are still told to children much in the way Aesop’s fables are used today. Even my Korean immigrant parents have read the novels and have since imparted their enthusiasm to me. Every single character in this game with a unique portrait was instantly recognizable to me without seeing their names (except maybe some yellow turbans, bandits, and some nanman), and I doubt I’m an outlier on this. I knew their stories, how they interacted with each other, what happened to them in the end. Hundreds of characters, and even more that didn’t get their own portraits. The same went for every province, landmark, and most of the cities. The game’s systems are really good, arguably in my opinion some of the best in the series. But what really carries the game is the immersion. It’s very understandable however that someone with virtually no prior knowledge of the history would get overwhelmed, which I think is fair, but also what I think poisons a lot of the wider western perception of the game, simply because they haven’t been informed of the history since childhood like they were with the Frankish knights or Roman legions. One last thing - the reason why factions in this game are literally just the names of their leaders is for a very good reason, although I do understand the frustration. As the Han Dynasty was falling apart, the factions were basically led by a slew of local governors who went rogue and had private armies, but still largely paraded themselves as loyal subjects of the Han. To call themselves entirely different polities would have damaged their legitimacy and branded them as traitors (this actually happened to Yuan Shu, who decided to declare his faction the Dynasty of Zhou, which lasted for only about a couple years before its destruction by Han-loyalist factions). Cao Cao’s faction wasn’t really known as “Wei” until Cao Cao had declared himself king of his own vassal state (Duchy, which eventually became a Kingdom/Dynasty) and this was only after he controlled over half of Han China. “Shu-Han” was established by Liu Bei in retaliation to the establishment of Wei after the last emperor of Han abdicated, and “Wu” was established basically because Sun Quan didn’t want to be left out. This your Three Kingdoms, some 30 years after 190 AD at the start of the game. Sorry for info dumping here, I hope it wasn’t too much. It’s just a period of history I’ve fanboyed over for basically my entire life.

I find it incredible that people are STILL, to this day, making mods for Medieval 2. I love scrolling through the Med2 kingdoms forums and looking at what everyone is working on. I have a weak spot for the Late Roman Empire mods in particular. The song at 31:44 is my favorite from the soundtrack as well.

Medieval 2 is sooo damn good. One of my favorite aspects of medieval 2 is that when you upgrade farms, farms begin to appear on the map! And as you upgrade armor, the units gain a different skin and look more badass as time goes on! Something I always found truly awesome about that game. And the fact that units had a town cap that regened fairly slowly made it feel more real, forcing you to draw on peasants to fill out your ranks. There were a lot of buggy problems, and the graphics arent amazing, but there are aspects that I really miss from that game, and I've played it often even as we are in the era of WH3.

Three kingdoms was my first total war game as as someone who knew absolutely nothing about the series or romance of the three kingdoms. 1000 hours later I must say the abundance of factions combined with the depth of diplomacy made the world feel so real. Yes, it is a massive pain learning where each faction is but the game rewards you the more knowledge you have of its mechanics and the time period. Faction leaders and their personalities feel real, Cao Cao is almost always a pain if you rival him militarily, whereas other opportunists are far more willing to negotiate but the risk of treachery may or may not be there depending on the individual. You can even get the most powerful factions as your vassal if you know how to exploit certain leaders.

You know thinking on it now in regards to M2TW and the kingdoms expansion pack CA missed a really good opportunity to include the Italian Wars during the Renaissance. I think it would have been neat to have 3 powerhouses like France, the Habsburgs and Spain initially fight for control of the Italian peninsula but then boils over into the Rhineland and Flanders regions.

The amount of mods for Medieval 2 is just insane, most any mod for a campaign, you could find a mod somewhere that would at least somewhat decently work.

Actually for 3K I feel quite the opposite probably because I'm chinese, the mountain ranges and location are basically carved into my mind and the fact that I know the back story to each faction adds much more historical flavor to the game (like which faction was pro imperial restoration, demographics and traits of each region, the six northern expeditions of Shu han which was just as challenging as Belisarius's reconquesta or hannibal's campaign across the alps etc). it's just that the player base is mostly white or at least Eurocentric which is totally understandable. unfortunately Chinese gaming industry has been cripped by censorship and corporation greed so we could only hope for Japan to make historical games set in Asia, or else it'll be colonial era or crusaders all the time.

Three kingdoms citys do have unique buildings but they are inside the city wall so they can be hard to see.

I really love how Medieval 2 allowed you to upgrade the armour and weapons of your troops so clearly. It also made it possible for simple units as spear militia to become mighty opponents on their own right. Hope they bring that back

Something I massively think is missing in newer total wars is your troops actually mattering. In medieval 2 you could dispatch an elite fully armed army to the holy lands but with each victory or a particularly bloody battle it'd be worn down, those men aren't magically going to come back. two powerhouses fighting a war of attrition would leave them vulnerable to smaller neighbors as they wouldn't recover their entire force on the march over to you. I also think gluing all troops to a general totally ruins many layers of strategy such as garrisoning important outposts, or building a fort blocking a vital pass or river crossing and leaving behind a few units to lose or slow down a pursuing enemy. Hell you could even detach cavalry and use them to scout ahead or come in on a flank in a battle. the modern design of total war is to have one primary doomstack you battle the other doomstack with, winner of that initial battle takes the others territory.

3k records is still my go to for a modern historical and runs so much better than WH2/WH3, it still stings how CA killed it before giving us the actual Three Kingdoms period, having 3 large kingdoms starting out with much larger armies would also help it be more interesting to people who dislike the huge faction numbers, awesome video!

I'm so glad you mentioned the medieval 2 main menu. It's weird to have something so forgettable for most games give me such nostalgia for medieval 2, but it's just beautiful. The main menu for the game, of all things, feels like a genuine art piece.

I actually bought Total War 3 Kingdoms, my first in the series, after reading the original book, and it's a masterful adaptation. Every leader is lore accurate, with a lot of references to the plot in their campaign events. Factions feel unique, with different conflicting philosophies just like in the source material. Even overpowered generals and epic duels are straight from the book Please send help I can't stop playing this game

Shogun 2 was the best and the peak of the series. So much content, a wide variety of eras, and with Fall of the Samurai it was the perfect blend of the sword and bow titles with the gunpowder and line strategies of the other side.

Midevil total war 2 needs a remaster with multi-player campaign.

I can't go through communion at mass anymore without thinking of Napoleon Total War because a number of the songs used in the soundtrack for the European campaign are communion chants and hymns that I hear almost every Sunday.

im honestly convinced that empire devs saw "Imperial Glory" from 2005 and decided to make a better version of it (and did) but had too little time

absolutely excellent coverage of all these titles. thank you for taking me down memory lane.

i think the UI of Three Kingdoms is far better than all the other total war games. when i started playing three kingdoms i never had any issues finding what i was looking for because everything was clear and nothing was cramped (especially the diplomacy section in the other games are shit). UI has never been a strong point in total war games but in three kingdoms it's really easy to navigate.

Empire was way ahead of its time and super rushed, but the darthmod made it super fun

This is the Super Bowl of total reviews! Drinking game: take a shot every time he says total war

even tho I wasn't there for old total war games and have played very little of them, I love all them deeply, old and new the amount of care and effort that goes into these games is honestly mind boggling, so many people poured their hearts and souls into every one of them and it shows

Other day went through your channel watching the historical TW reviews. Was wishing you had more content of the type, so thanks a lot for this!

One thing that I I wish they had done better in Napoleon was the general cards and characters. It was an age of such amazing and distinctive characters and I wish they had reflected this in campaign and battle

Great summary. This took a lot of work, thank you!

Incredible detail.. incredible video.. well done Andy.. keep it up..

Thanks a lot for this excellent overview. I was in particular interested in your take on the newer TW titles (Britannia, 3 Kingdoms, Troy) because there are mixed and sometimes conflicting reviews circulating in the web. So, your reviews on them was very helpful.

Great reviews Andy. I've had the same journey as you in total war and agreed with most everything you said and experienced. What a great time to grow up as a teenage history nerd.

Thank you for the long style video your voice is really relaxing to listen to and love the reviews!

30:32 Honestly thought it was an ad for a moment. LOL. Great vid. as always

Thank you for your great work here. These kinds of videos are really important to preserve the history of games and check how they evolved. And also for all fans of the series and new players who want to know what they can find. Thank you very much.

Rome Total War was my first, and Medieval 2 was my second. I was originally put off by how dark the aesthetics of Medieval 2 were compared to those of Rome. Nowadays, I have a much better appreciation of Medieval 2. I played it as recently as last year!

I have to admit as someone who's heavily invested in Chinese ancient history and a huge nerd for anythinf about chinese chronological history, Total War Three Kingdoms would be so frustrating TW enthusiast who didnt invest themselves in those topics. Though heavily lending themselves toward the Romance of 3K, most of the stories and events in the real history were true or at least confirmed by several historians. The major characters that were highly confusing because they shared the same name etc were actually related but has different agendas thus character specific factions, opportunist who carved themselves in the walls of history were written in the records, but those who fought and lose also credited in similiar manner. I hope you can review 3K faction wise after you read a bit about the history since i highly recommended it ! It was full of intrigue, twist and so many opportunities from unique characters, even the major players were highly remarkable people from the early period until the late period

Epic video. You really like this genre. Liked and subscribed.

For the love of God make the next total war Victorian era 🙏

Congrats! Hope to see another historical Total War game for you to review at some point though.

Can we just take a minute to talk about the Rome:Total War soundtrack? Literally makes me cry from the nostalgia.

This was the greatest historical review montage I've ever seen. Make another one in twenty years when we have Empire 2, Medieval 3, Rome 3, and much more.

Great video, what a huge undertaking!

Rome II city icons are amazing and easy to understand.

My only real gripe with the TW franchise is that the diplomacy system always sucks and I wish for once they would get it right without me needing to use mods. Throw away alliances, other factions dogpiling you, enemies choosing certain death over becoming vassals. Granted I haven’t played any of the later games as my computer won’t run them but I’d love to see a TW title fix this in the base game in the future.

As a massive 3 Kingdoms Fan I gotta say I wholeheartedly agree with you when it comes to unit models. Some of them are really well done to differentiate like the Ji Militia vs Heavy Ji Infantry, but dear lord at a glance, Archer Militia and Onyx Dragons for instance are way too similar, both of them look really peasant-y. The only thing I'd really disagree with you on was in regards to how the cities work, where you mention how they should have done it like Shogun 2, I'd argue they kinda did in a sense as far as gameplay is concerned, I think merely a reduction in the size of the banners for towns that aren't the commandery capitals would do wonders. Also when you mentioned the music being really good I literally was able to name the song that was playing at the time... maybe I've played too much 3K.

I honestly crave a Medieval 3. It’s combat and campaign phases all feel genuine and a graphic upgrade would make it even more immersive. Add to that updates to the general game mechanics so it isn’t as rigid and we would have a visually stunning, immersive and accurate battles and none of that bs arcade/esport oriented tw we have now. Not that I hate them. But I also loved that M2TW felt that you could actually have huge power spikes, just like when a crusade happens and boosts your army, your first canons, killing a known king in combat was way more impactful. Last but not least, fortresses actually felt like a tough nut to crack with multiple layers to go through

I admit there is a high bar to appreciate 3ktw. I had to seriously watch guides and lore from Serious Trivia to enjoy 3ktw, so many of your criticisms are solved when your familiarity with the period and game are increased.

1:06:55 "virtually every bug from Empire is gone" **Random cavalryman flies across the bottom of the screen**

I feel like Troy’s Mythology mode would be the perfect basis for a Lord of the Rings mod

I'am one of the few who actually like ToB and still play it😊

Love to hear talk about Med 2. Really miss the old individual settlement building customisation. I like the province idea as a way to view a region and make edicts but I think it would work better containing 8 or so settlements in each province and being able to issue lots of different edicts in different provinces. It would be a massive new aspect to the game. Instead it became some balancing act between which buildings you can build.

Great video i didn´t even feel the 2 hours, i love total war!

I love the gunpowder era. I wish they would do another. Either by revisiting an established time period, like the 18th or 19th century. Or perhaps by making a Renaissance game in which armies increase more and more on pike-men, musketeers and canons.

Honestly it feels like CA should’ve made Napoleon into an expansion of Empire and just revamped Empire with more polish

Blue roman gang here. Dtopping the green guys advancements on the sea taking a sea route monoply, just great fun

I can't believe how awesome the fighting in Shogun 2 looked. The kill animations were so awesome. With the blood effects it looked like real samurai battles. I would burn the world for Shogun 3

Napoleon Total War had such a good intro ngl

11:58 Damn! Good old Bellona's chant! Always sends shivers down my spine

i love your passion also all my taste is like yours! Rome 1 & medieval 2 & Shogun 2 & Empire - Napoleon were the last great total war in order and non repeatative again! (also you didnt add that Rome2 Attila afterwards building mechanic and horrible AI!) + (for three kingdoms you should had played DYNASTY WARRIORS 1-6 so you would love that age and era )

The fact that Rise of the samurai was never mentioned in the video or the comments shows how 'popular' it is.

Thrones was my introduction to Total War and I loved it but everyone seems to hate it. I just started Attila a couple weeks ago and I’m enjoying it

Its still an absolute crime that the second total war engine only got 2 games and 4 years (Rome 1 & Med 2), but the following TW3 engine ("Warscape") has been going for nearly 15 years and countless games. The relative ease of modding and editing, despite the plethora of mods for RTW & MTW2, meant that there were greater heights that could've been reached, imo.

Man, the nostalgia in this video is giving me goosebumps!

This is Total Review!

When you do so many Total War Reviews you compile it all into a single video, nice. A nice Timelapse of how total war has changed over the years. For better AND for worse.

1:38:00 *I really appreciate that you used Paradox's Imperator: Rome soundtrack instead of CA's Rome 2 soundtrack.* The former was brilliant and beautiful; the latter was a poor successor to its predecessor.

Gillar att du fick in en liten förolämpning mot danskarna. En riktigt bra och underhållande video!

Empire the most un-utilized game in the series. We need an Empire 2. It is total war over the total planet. Also its the best starter for anyone getting into TW, it just plays easy!

I remember playing Centurion: Defender of Rome back in the early 90s, so I was so excited, and loved Rome when it came out. I began TW with Shogun and Medieval, but Rome was definitely my top 2.

Rome still holds up imo, you don't need fancy pants graphics, only praetorian cavalry crashing into your opponent's flank.

Subscribed purely for the amount of work out into this video

I feel like the review on tw3k is kinda lack luster due to the lack of understanding of the chinese culture. The game is deep rooted and centred on the chinese culture. The black and white UI is inspired from chinese calligraphy where it is still living art to this day. The five main colors you see on the UI (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple) come from the ancient chinese beliefs that eveything is governed by the fundamental elements (Fire, Earth, Wood, Water, Metal) each having their attributes and personality. This is reflected in the game where you can tell what kond of personality your generals have, your building choice, unit types, techonology and even the faction playstyle based on the color your starting faction leader.

ur reasoning for disliking 3k was very different compared to ur other game reasonings showing how good 3k really is you can see the buildings in cities you just never noticed it the reason your always surrounded by factions is because thats accurate based on the time period the straight forward systen attila has is used in the late start date of 3k the large cities for 3k was because there were many power bases for many different people irl i personally prefer more factions over less and most fans feel this way so im fine with the many factions as long as a good portion is playable edit: even more the people in 3ks factions names are this way because many warlords had the same family(in chinese the first name is the family name not the last name), they all claimed to be china, claiming to be another country in itself would make you lose your claim liu bei, liu biaa, are both family members and actually 1 of liu beis quest is to merge his faction with his family members

I agree to everything except three kingdoms I adore three kingdoms. Great video Love it!

Attila total war is very likely the most realistic altough it has many problems its still my favorite tw game.

2:43:46 this clip shows that Troy wasn’t designed to do big monsters. It always struck me as a desperate attempt to save a sunk project

I'm pretty sad because my Napoleon wont start anymore when i try to launch it, I like Empire because of the map but i miss the more realistic Napoleon battles :(

This'll be my third time watching this video. Super well done

1:32:14 *Wow, that was indeed legendary bad aim.* None of the enemy got hurt!

Third Age Total War Reforged was the best thing to ever happen to Total War.

I initially grabbed Troy when it came out on Epic since it was free, so why not. Felt it was very so so, and didn’t ever come back to it. The Troy section of this video makes me want to go back and give it another chance after hearing how it was changed

Man, we had pretty much the exact same RTS trajectory. I also went from Empire at War and BFME to Total War and Paradox

My first Total war was Rome 2, i'm a newcomer to many but to others a veteran, I have of course played both newer and older games since. I have to say first of all, the reason I got medieval 2 was to play the LotR mod for it, this was a lot of fun but I also decided to play the game itself. Being fairly new to TW I found it hard to stick to as it's graphics weren't as good as R2 which I liked to zoom in and watch the people fighting but the grand campaign was very interesting to me and while perhaps the Rome setting suited me as I like uniform armies with no standout units or playstyle, Medieval history is one of my favourite periods. I played it and realised it may look terrible but it is quite fun. I soon asked my friend who introduced me to TW:R2 what TW he would recommend I get and he told me Napoleon, so I got it and... pretty good. It wasn't anything crazy but the different combat styles and tactics were enough to keep me playing for hours as you'd expect. I then played a lot of the newer games, Warhammer, Thrones of Britannia, even Troy when it came out. They were ok, I liked ToB, the Saxon time period was really cool but still none had 'beaten' Rome 2 as it had been vastly updated and fixed and still graphics were the best in the most interesting time period. I then played Empire and it is still the best TW game I have EVER played. To this day, the setting, the map, there are some great mods for it. All of that, maybe my favourite. Still not sure as R2 sticks with me as it was my first and most played but would recommend to any new players, play EMPIRE.

My dad made my childhood so much better cause he's a gamer and played rome total war when it was new, so I got to play this as a kid and it began my love of war games and history.

Seriously, what a masterpiece ❤

thougth i was the only one 13:42 siting there looking at the animated menu and fabulous sound

Bravo! Great video. You've gained a subscriber. :)

Andy:"Empire keeps the realistic population numbers from the last game" France in empire with a pop of 125 Million😐

Rome Total War 2 DEI Mod is amazing, especially the Alexander the Great Mod.

This video made me want to play every single one of them again... at once !

“Empire plus, but also Empire minus” is probably the best summary of Napoleon I’ve heard

Napoleon intro was the best into of any game I have played. I watched it every time when I first started playing it