Medieval: Total War - Viking Invasion

Medieval Total War had one thing, Vikings, and that was good. But what about more Vikings, that would be great. Well Creative Assembly has brought us more Vikings, and it is great.

In my review for the games predecessor I said it didn’t exactly have a story, well nether does Viking Invasion. Once again the main campaign is given to you with a text description of the current status of the game field, this time the British Isles. Here is a short extract so you see what I mean. “In 793AD Britain is not a country. It is not even an idea of a country yet. It is a patchwork of competing petty kingdoms, left behind after the departure of the last of Rome’s Legions.” But again the story isn’t really needed outside of setting up what’s going to unfold.

The Viking Invasion is set in the British Isles and part of Western Europe. Because it is just the isles they have taken the view in closer and split it into many more states, unlike Medieval where just a small handful of areas made up the British Isle. You can choose to play as one of the foundling Kingdoms of Britain or Ireland, but why play as them when there are Vikings to be had I say. Playing as the Vikings is the only way to truly experience this expansion, although it is still great playing as the kingdoms the Vikings make it shine.

When playing as the Vikings though there is one small problem, you have to continuously attack the other players or you will quickly go broke and your once proud kingdom will fall upon its lack of fundamental business practices that everyone except that Vikings have apparently mastered. This was probably done so that people could experience more closely what the Vikings had to do to survive and also the trouble the British Isles went through to try and repel them.

Gone from Viking Invasion are the most annoying Crusades as the Pope and Church wasn’t properly established in Britain yet. So that means you can attack your catholic brothers freely without any fear of repercussion from the Pope, which is nothing but a good thing.

Modified for the expansion is the battle interface, this may just be the greatest add-in the expansion has. At the beginning of each battle instead of a small parchment popping up you are taken to a battle screen where on the left the attackers units are listed and the right the defenders. The reason this is such an important and useful upgrade is that before you decide to even enter the battle you can see all of your enemies units and their reinforcements, given you have watch towers in your region, which you should if your any kind of ruler. So if you enter a battle where you are seemingly outnumbered but notice that the enemy has no projectile units or horses where you do then it may help you decide whether to fight or not. This not going into battles blind is a very good thing.

Also because of the Vikings natural inclination to loot and burn I never really managed to get my income to the 200,000 mark and above like I did in the normal campaign, which I felt a good and a bad thing. A good thing because I couldn’t just swarm the field with dudes in an instant, but a bad thing because I couldn’t swarm the field with dudes in an instant.

Also added is a pop-up at the end of rounds that tells you of any virtues or vices your generals have gained in the last round. This is of particular interest as it was one of my most appreciated functions in the original, and with a menu telling me when one of my men gains a new virtue or vice I do not have to manually check them all to see. So if your General develops a liking to his daughter you will know of it as soon as it happens and can act accordingly if you wish.

There are quite a large amount of new units introduced into Viking Invasion, as the game title implies most are Viking related. Although most are just Viking units there are also now new Rebel units, in previous installments the rebels were just normal units, but now there are a few rebel exclusive units like, Berserkers and Frydmen. All the new units are not Viking Invasion campaign specific either, The Creative Assembly have also added a few more units to the campaign maps of the original, like Arab Infantry, and three new starting factions which just add even more to the fun, so just because it’s a Viking Expansion doesn’t mean you can’t conquer Europe all over again in a new way.

Graphically the game is the same as Medieval Total War which means it is still pretty nice looking. Nothing much has been added into the game graphics wise but the engine is durable enough that it doesn’t matter. A lot of the menus and pop-ups during the game appear to have been cleaned up a bit, with news graphics for a lot of the messages, ranging from a dead general to a new baby.

All the sounds from the original have returned with a few more plugged in, mainly battle anthems. So on the sound sides things are still pretty strong, although the few annoyances I had with the original have returned it isn’t that big a deal. The main-stay of the new sound effects and music are on par with the original meaning that the sound track is excellent, again.

This is an outstanding expansion pack and with its plethora of new goodies it will keep you playing for a while. The Viking campaign alone is about as much as a full game would give you, so there’s no way your going to feel like your money has been stolen by some greedy developer. The main campaign is about half the length of the original, which makes a game about as long as the average Shogun game was, which is about 4 to 6 hours long depending on speed and ability. All the multiplayer options have been brought over into Viking Invasion so you can battle it Viking to Viking with your friends.

Minimum System Requirements
- 3D Hardware Accelerator Card required – 100% DirectX 8.1 compatible 16 MB video card and drivers.
- Pentium II 350 or Athlon processor or higher.
- English version of Microsoft Windows 98/2000/ME/XP.
- 128 MB of RAM.
- Quad Speed CD-ROM drive (600 K/sec substained transfer rate) and drivers.
- 400 MB of hard disk space required for Medieval: Total War – Viking Invasion. (Plus 200 MB for Windows swap file).
- English version of Medieval: Total War.
- 100% DirectX 8.1 compatible 16 bit sound card and drivers.
- 100% Windows 98/2000/ME/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and drivers.
- DirectX 8.1 (included).

Required For Multiplayer Mode
- Pentium III 750 or Athlon processor or higher.
- Internet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported.
- Internet play requires 28.8 Kbps (or faster) modem and drivers.
- LAN play requires network interface card and drivers.