Medieval: Total War™ - Collection

An interesting look at the earliest era of Total War games. Features surprisingly good music, but the pace is very slow... I mean, 6 years to build a brothel?

This game has been part of my life for about 20 years. It still outmatches many modern day strategy games. Some things have not aged well, it is true, some units are based on legends rather than history. Some automatic results make no sense. The AI sometimes makes strategic or tactical blunders. But I find the issues above to be minor ones. The aspects of grand strategy and tactics that you can explore are a lot of fun. The music is one of the best in any game I have ever played. I will probably play this game until the day I die!

The most entertaining game I have played.

stopped working. kicks out every time

Much superior combat system than MTW II

Game crashes a lot which is very annoying

ultimate game for replay value. Much more depth and strategy than at first glance. I have enjoyed this since its first release!

This will forever be my pinnacle of the Total War franchise; not for the graphics (they're bad), not for the battles (unwieldy and uneven), and maybe not even for the map play (totally broken at times).
It is however the only game that has let me feel like a true monarch, wherein I tend to the matters of state and occasionally grace the battlefield with my presence. It's straightforward approachability while still having layers of strategy to engage with are pure bliss.

Was a great game back in the day but this one constantly crashes.

crash crash crash crash crash!!!! YOU CAN'T GET PAST MID DOMINATION BECAUSE IT JUST FREAKING CRASHES AAAAALLLLL DAAAAAAYYYY LOOOOONG!

fun game

It's a charmless, quality of life-less, bloated, experiment from Shogun 1, to see how much stuff could they put into this before the game crashes again.

It's interesting seeing what would later be refined in Medieval 2, but up there with Empire as being the one of the worst Total War games. Shogun 1 had cute CGI and made the effort to make you feel like you were in a war room with other people! This game however strips away that charm to add in MORE units and building and places to conquer, but it's all just busy work that can become overwhelming in the late game, since you'll be micro managing all your pieces and there's so much to move and build. And building anything takes way too long! Way too much to to do and it looks so sloppy when you're playing! I conquered 80% of the map before coming anywhere close to late game units or buildings. Then the game hard locked after my 100th turn ended, so I can't play that campaign anymore.

This port is very bad. It crashes often, hard locks and the UI wasn't upscaled with the wide screen slapped on in recent years. The AI seems shy to conflict? I've seen major factions lose half their territory to rebels and stay at one provence for the entire game. The battles are also just boring. I can't figure out the specific reason why, but I can easily out flank every army. Zooming in just shows a pixelated mess. Every unit has such a busy design it's hard to tell which units are mine or the enemies. Oh God! also the Unit replenishment system is awful. You have to move that unit onto a territory that can build that unit, then open the unit build option and drag the damaged unit into the unit panel, and every damaged unit heals on-by-one. Just build another unit, save yourself the needless micro.

Nah, didn't like this, and only made me want to play Medieval 2 again.

Classic

A decent and spirited attempt at a mixed turn-based/realtime Medieval War Simulator. The title feels antiquated and creaky among historical sims today, but MTW was once an innovative and well-received successor to the popular "Shogun: Total War" series and it is easy to see why the franchise continues to this day.

You could save time by picking up "Medieval 2: Total War" today since it is a bona fide improvement over every feature introduced by this original copy and also enjoys a generous modding scene and continuing support as of this writing. But the original is still a delightful little time capsule of cutting edge ideas from the turn of the century and a joy to open up from time to time, if only for the nostalgia of it.

formidable on s'y croirait

Hell Yieh Frater!

Takes me back to a time when gaming wasnt about trophies

The best game of all time. Wish they made games more like this. Simple but endlessly fun.

ITS OK.

Rarely works, when it does work it works for a short time before crashing. Obviously an old game so it is what it is. Just doesn't work these days.

"Would you recommend this game to other players?" - Yes

An Age of Darkness

Medieval Europe was the only sensible option for a follow up to Shogun: Total War –nearly 400 years of unremitting war, social, cultural, religious, and technological change, during which any of the featured factions might have prevailed to steer the course of history. Like any good sequel, Medieval: Total War builds on the foundations of Shogun, greatly expanding on characters, sieges, religion among other aspects. But with ambition comes a chance of failure and, although not a true failure, Medieval is, at best, a slow and tiring experience.

The most important addition to the gameplay is the expansion of the character system. Unlike Shogun, characters are not merely generals but fully developed personalities with new traits. A character’s loyalty, dread, piety, command, and acumen ratings all determine their capabilities as governors as well as generals; they also develop “Virtues and Vices” with further effects on their traits. Bestowing titles and positions in your court is key, as disloyal generals can initiate civil wars if they reckon their chances are good enough, forcing you to choose between backing the “loyalists” or forging a new dynasty with the “rebels”.

Securing the future of your dynasty is a critical task in your campaigns. Ensuring you have princes of the blood to inherit the throne is critical as without heirs you lose the game automatically. In this quest you are joined by the princess, a new agent who can marry into factions; in doing so you can secure alliances with greater chance of success, continue the royal line of your faction by marrying a foreign princess, and even lay claim to another faction’s lands should they be destroyed.

There are other additions you would expect from the medieval period. Sieges are bigger and bloodier, with new siege engines available to help batter down the many-walled castles you will encounter. Naval warfare is introduced with fleets able to transport armies and create trade routes across sea zones. Religion is fleshed out with the many competing faiths of the medieval period and their holy wars – crusades or jihads can, theoretically, be a great expeditor of your conquest, especially against opposing faiths.

Otherwise, the game operates much as it did in Shogun. The campaign map remains as a 2D setup (fittingly rendered in the style of a parchment or tapestry) and so requires the same cautious approach, risking battles only with the forces and infrastructure to back it up – battles are just as punishing and ill-controlled as in the previous game. But the expanded scope of the period (366 years vs. Shogun’s 70, or 366 turns vs. 280) really starts to drag out the process of development. It takes 8 turns to build a tier 2 castle in addition to the 4-8 turns for any other building in most of that tier, and since many units still require a combination of buildings to unlock, you’re spending 20-24 turns before you can even start to recruit decent units for your armies.

In the meantime, you’ll observe the vagaries and vicissitudes of the character system, which I find over- and underwhelming all at once. The “Vices and Virtues” system, in practice, feels frustratingly arbitrary. At the very least, it’s a “one virtue-one vice” situation for new princes who come of age, but the system really does feel partial to negative traits; generals who just fought hard battles can suddenly get “Lazy” next turn, and almost everyone, it seems, turns out to be an inbreed if they live long enough. In fact, non-family characters have no age and are effectively immortal – unless they up and die within two turns of their appearance.

Yet for all their difficulties, characters don’t seem to have all that much impact in the long run. I never found provinces or armies to suffer for lack of good leadership in any noticeable way, and their loyalty was all but certain with very little effort. That is until, as England, I finally began my first major war with France, 120 turns in, and the whole damned country suddenly rose up in civil war against me with no indication of why.

Yeah. No thanks.

The presentation is strong but not as consistent as in Shogun. Dirty, unsentimental character portraits and gloomy, Gregorian chanting dominate the main menu, suggesting a grotesque, Dark Ages interpretation of the period. Jeff van Dyck’s soundtrack certainly upholds this with chanting and pounding war drums. Yet the battlefield graphics themselves are shockingly colourful and many graphical aspects, from event notifications to many unit models bear a more lighthearted “storybook” aesthetic – not a bad thing in and of itself, but another illustration of a confused effort.

Medieval: Total War is probably not a bad game. It’s an ambitious sequel that expanded Total War in the obvious directions and did everything to add depth to the experience. But many of these added mechanics feel underdeveloped, or at least inconsistent, and that’s the word I would apply to the game as a whole. If you enjoyed Shogun and are looking for added challenges or want to experience older games as a series veteran, by all means try, but this is the first Total War I would be unlikely to revisit anytime soon.

love this game

Buggy as hell, get on sale and pretty much know that it will crash or session will become unplayable at some point.

Medieval: total war is a great old game which i would recommend if you are a fan of the total war series. the main problem with the game is that the game crashes a lot. to fix these crashes i would recommend putting the resolution to what you monitor displays as and not using auto saving. After this the game should stop crashing.

Steam version works for me on win10 and win11.
I still have old cd-rom box and I tried to install it with all patches I found, but it still didn't work then. On VM I had problems with direct3d. Later I bought here as a last attempt to ever try play tw1 and it will amazingly worked.

The last good Total War game

crash to often

Along with the first Shogun - the only enjoyable game in the series.
Some of the mechanics maybe didn't age that well, but battles here, ironically, are more interesting and feel better than in all other games in the series

People say, medieval 2 is best.. Don't know, controlling formations, especially cavalry feels weird and clunky there, and I think that global map interactions are better here, than there. Here you just move troops from province to province. Simple enough, good enough. In other games you move real distance for armies regardless of province

very good game

Imagine using Road Rash's graphics to make an RTS game, it's so creative !!!! <3

Incredibly addictive game for the time it was made love the whole series

Does not work on my GNU/Linux system, crashes after clicking "Play" at the Launcher.

Very cool and very fun

its great fun good time killer

I would recommend playing this game if you're trying out old Total Wars. This game is basically an upgraded version of Total War Shogun 1. Everything is similar, but better. My personal recommendations what to play in the game are: Europe Campaign at least 1 time, The Vikings Campaign at least 1 time, all Historical Campaigns.

This game has amazing music. Really feels like you're waging war in medieval times. Visuals are also amazing, especially notifications that something significant has happened in the world. I liked the fact that if there were any famous writers or culturally significant events, they would appear as notifications during the European campaign.

I do need to mention 1 drawback though, at least in my opinion. Total War Medieval 1 Europe Campaign is much slower than its' predecessor Shogun 1 Sengoku Jidai Campaign. European campaign on expert difficulty is almost too long and it's very tedious to carefully take care of all of your cities, move armies. You will have a lot of armies, much more than any future Total War games let you generally build financially. The fact that you need to keep units practically in all provinces in the game, because of the loyalty. Personally, it felt to me like the European Campaign was way too slow and tedious. I had a lot more fun in The Vikings Campaign and in the Historical Campaigns.

And as usual, Historical Campaigns deserve a separate mention. Bravo. I liked it a lot. Absolutely amazing design in a lot of missions. I enjoyed every fight and it was great. Historical Campaigns were great even in Shogun 1, but in Medieval 1 developers definitely outperformed themselves and did a lot of improvements and the experience became even better.

Ride into battle, king gets killed. Immediately lose.

This is the only Total War where I have seen the credits. Awesome

loads of fun.

One of the best TW game out there... The simplified economy lends itself to more combat

really love this game

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I love this game SOO much! It taught me about Medieval times, and also was TUNS of fun!!!

I can't tell how much it is just very dated and how much ill-designed but this game was really annoying and boring to play however cheap.
It does have interesting strategic mechanics but then it also has terrible 3d battles with cluncky controls and infuriating random events in the campaign, the worst of which is that destroyed factions just respawn out of nowhere with a huge army and leader in the same province. As a player you need so much time and planning to build an army like that (not to mention possibly the effort to destroy that faction) that it feels like the game is cheating.
I see no reason to recommend this to anyone.

OG Classic!

"Medieval: Total War" offers a deep and immersive grand strategy experience set in the tumultuous Middle Ages.

Ah, a return to an old favorite.
There is something beautiful about the simplicity of Medieval:TW. Don't get me wrong, i often find myself thinking "I wish they had this feature or that feature" or "it would be better if I could X, Y, or Z", but sitting down and turning my brain down to power saving mode is a relief most days.

My biggest issue with replayability is that I get into the Skyrim Paradox. I go into each game saying, "Okay, this time I'm not going to be a stealth archer," but I always spend most of my time shuffling ships around the Mediterranean to pay for my armies.

The XL mod adds a lot to the game, and i highly recommend it. I particularly like how I have no idea what nation is going to dominate any given area in any playthrough. Sometimes the Fatamids die off early, sometimes the Turks do, sometimes the Byzantines become world beaters, sometimes they own nothing but Rhodes.
The only thing is that you better stop the Danes early because their merchant empire will be a real headache later.

love

I don't know guys, game is fun but paesants start revolting if I attack the pope.
4/5

amazing

Amazing game series, I play all the time I can and it is spectacular, and I have written strategy to get and earn money and then ability to build military forces.