Reviews - FacepalmFullONapalm

This mod is my new favorite for Medieval 2 Total War. I'm in love with the setting and found myself addicted to just stomping on all my opponents as one of the powerful Napoleonic Era empires, though there are a few problems.

The graphic effects on the battlefield is fantastic. Get a huge line of infantry and set them on the enemy. You'll see what I mean. The smoke emitted from musketfire and cannons is just... Ah, refreshing.

Units also look great and massive unit counts make battles grand in scale but you better bring a good PC for multi-army fights. Overall, though, I'm surprised that the performance is as good as it is.

General spawn rates are very high, making regicide harder and fielding numerous armies easier. Thanks, man.

The battle map usually ends up naturally leaning towards the way history happens if you play into your role correctly. Which is pretty cool!

A few bad things however...

Hud icons look out of place. Not really a huge problem as everything is still readable but it is glaring. One thing that bothers me in particular is that the attack crosshairs still have white spots where the modder missed transparency spots.

The battle AI is *incredibly* stupid. We're talking cavalry charging face-first into line-infantry armed with bayonets, taking forever to set up their units to fire upon the enemy, and not taking advantage of defensive hills. They also rarely protect their generals. Not to mention city battles where they kinda bunch up in the center or do absolutely nothing when attacking (I'm looking at you AI re-enforcements)

The campaign AI is also really bad. They rarely keep units in their cities and usually end up with bankrupt statuses. Though, they're good about keeping their promises despite being listed as dubious. Another thing is their free units. Not entirely sure they get them but it certainly seems like it and it's annoying. You could beat them fair and square, utterly crushing their forces just for them to get a free stack of doom a turn later out of nowhere.

Auto-resolve is also skewered. I can have a full stack of units and it'd still be about half balance of power, even if the enemy has about 3 or 4 units. There's also a problem where you can have a very good chance of winning the auto-resolve but you end up critically defeated and they lose very few. So, prepare to manually fight each and every opponent. It gets pretty tedious when you just want to crush smaller armies.

Sound effects are also weak. I remember the first time I heard muskets and arq's in Medieval 2 and it was thunderous. However, unless you're close to them as they're firing, muskets sound like firecrackers. Also the melee sound effects are a bit sad.

The campaign map music is annoying at first but it grows on you eventually if you keep it on. I like allies_war_theroyalairforce though, fun to listen to.

Not all nations are playable. Why you gotta treat mah boi, the Dutch, like that?

Balance is a bit broken. Play as Russia and spam musketeers, grenadiers, and strelets and see what I mean. The shear force of a huge line of infantry alone will win you any battle.

That being said, unit variety is low... but that comes with the era so I can't blame the creator for that.

It's everything you'd expect and more! All four factions fight for control on each of the vanilla maps. It's complete chaos and I love it. I mean, come on, everybody wanted it at least once in their Battlefront 2 playtime and here it is. It's quick and easy to install so why not try it out?

There are a few problems however:
It's unfixable from what I've heard but one faction always take the role identified by white. This is difficult to tell if a post is neutral or being converted.

Another problem is balancing for the Empire which tends to *always* lose in my experience outside of Hoth, naturally, but that's hardly the fault of the creator or mod unless it's placement of their posts.

The mod is also *very* prone to crashing on exit of a match. Luckily, it never crashes during gameplay but 6 times out of 10 it's going to crash when you get out of a mission. I tried it without any other mods, just patches, and it's the same story.

UPDATE: Ignore the part about crashing often, turns out Steam reinstalled an old modded all.lvl file that was causing the crashes.

Everything you ever wanted: Increased FOV, better performance, etc. It just makes Area 51 feel good to play. Why not 10/10? Two reasons: There's a glitch that sets the FOV back to default after certain cutscenes and the launcher for this mod requires internet connection to start.

No download. How irritating.

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Will never be released, not to mention that it says that it is released already.

I love this mod, one of the best most converting mods out there. The environment, character models, and weapons are all very well detailed and look good for the outdated engine. The voice acting is surprisingly well also although it isn't the best it is still impressive for an indie game (mod). My only real gripe is the fact that guards are TOO ALERT. You could be the perfect sneak but yet they will still detect you even when facing the other way. Picking up bodies and hiding them and enemies running away when sustaining too much damage is awesome as well. Performance is superb. All in all I rate this 9/10 and will always recommend this mod. Good luck on Steam!

Completely reworks BFME 2, if you loved the first game's castle base style you will love this! Can't wait for the almighty goblins to be released!