Medieval Total War 2

First off, Medieval Total War 2 (PC,$12-29.99 depending on the combo) , now I enjoyed the other Total War games, and figured this one would be an instant favorite. However, the game-play and the improvements from the previous game smashed my expectations to pieces and said it was better than that. Starting off in the game there are only five playable factions: the English, French, Germans, Spanish or the Venetians. Once a game is finished in one of these factions, it opens the remaining 12 factions up for play. This is when the fun begins, as you can play not only Catholic factions but also Muslim and Orthodox factions. Each faction starts with a few provinces and the goal to be the largest and most powerful faction in the game. Each game, the difficulty and advice level can be set to what you would like. Certain factions seem harder than others, but it is mostly how they are played and what the faction starts out with that will decide the difficulties. The fact that every game is different allows for maximum replayability, which means you will never get bored from the flow of the game. Medieval 2 also gives some historical background as it tells you when things were invented, brought to Europe, or came to public thought.

I have found that I like to play the Scottish and go to a new history, where Scotland takes over the English before the crowns were united and then make Scotland into the over powered naval faction that it could only dream of being. Of course, there is always something that could stop it, whether the Pope starts putting pressure on the Scots to cease hostility between Scotland and England, or when the Spanish Armada has to fight the competing navies out of the waters. Even with that, I have played the Scottish at least five times and no game was alike. There were games where I ended up having all of England and the Iberian peninsula as the controlling faction of the seas, the one where I ended up in the middle of continental Europe and the ones where the Papacy had continuously been from the Scottish cardinal base which allowed for mass expansion throughout all of Europe and Northern Africa.

Overall, if you like the Medieval period or just want to see what it would have been like if a different faction had more control in that era and what its effect on history would have been, then I suggest getting your hands on a copy of Medieval Total War 2.