Recent reviews by Baxter

Crashes whenever you pause or complete an event.

This has been a known problem for two years, but rather than fixing it, EA prefers to just sell a broken game on sale as often as possible. Thank God I bought this on Steam and not Origin where refunds are almost impossible to get.

This is personally my favourite Total War game, which is subjective.
However, I believe this game is objectively an overall imporvement on Empire Total War, and is the better of the two games.

Many of Empire's faults and shortcomings are directly addressed and improved within this release. While the playable nations are far fewer, and the map itself is reduced to just Europe itself, this focus allows for each aspect of the game to feel special and unique. Unlike Empire, every nation no longer has generic identical infantry with recolours for uniforms, but instead each nation has entirely unique (and historically accurate) units and appearances, down to the common line-infantry!

You feel the power of Luetzow's Freikorps, or the Royal Scots Greys in a cavalry charge. A regiment of 'Old Guard' has snatched me a victory from the jaws of defeat many times - illustrating to the player their legendary reputation in real world Napoleonic History. The uniqueness of these 'special elite' units solves one of Empire's greatest problems; that is it's lack of diversity in unit types. Also, their addition has great meaning to those who study this history. This game allows for lovers of Napoleonic History to see literature and essays translated onto the screen in incredible detail (both graphically and historically)!

Graphically, the map itself looks incredible when compared to Empire! The humongous map of Empire created many issues, such as large areas being unfairly clumped under one city capture-point. Most notable was 'France', which was just one province in Empire. In Napoleon, France was more accurately split up into six cities (Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Reims, Caen & Marseille).

Further on the point of Graphics: every aspect of the game that was ported over to Napoleon received a huge face-lift, visually looking 7 or 8 years newer despite the game only being released one year after Empire. I can't stress this point enough, Napoleon still looks phenomenal, especially as it upscales for newer HD monitors far better than Empire's engine can

The tech trees of Napoleon are far smaller and simpler, but each upgrade makes a huge difference. Where with Empire, the amount of tech options can appear overwhelming, yet ultimately almost all upgrades are minuscule stat differences. Remembering to check if you're researching anything at the end of a turn in Empire begins to become a chore rather than something to be excited for as it does in Napoleon.

The way that the history of the Napoleonic Wars is implemented into this game is done 1000x better than the events of the 18th and 19th centuries were for Empire. In part, this is because a Grand-Campaign in Napoleon lasts 5-10 years, starting in 1805 with turns only taking a few weeks rather than a whole year. Empire spans an entire century, and with AI as unpredictable as TW's, that amount of time means that any semblance of an accurate timeline is lost, as France and America can randomly go through their revolutions at any time, dramatically changing the game and neglecting the history and events that led to those revolutions in the real world.

While the game initially follows the course of history in it's Grand Campaign (IE: The Austrians always declare war on Ottomans in 1805...), the game allows for a lot of alt-history, but these events tend to make far more sense to the player based on his actions when compared to Empire. For instance, in Empire, countries randomly go through revolutions regardless of the player's interaction. These events were created in Empire to supposedly add flavour and replayabiltiy to the game, but instead, they prove to be a lazy excuse for conflict based on dice-rolls that the player cannot see or alter. Meanwhile in Napoleon, if you destroy an enemy's army and bankrupt them through trade blockades, you can cause a revolution yourself to break out! This is just fundamentally better game design, as the players actions directly effect the outcome of history; and if left alone, history's events carry out as expected. Ironically, I believe Napoleon's approach creates far more replayability, as your choices and decisions carry far greater weight.

A quickfire list of other improvements:
- The AI is far better, but still pretty awful (especially the Danish for some reason)
- Ship battles are improved, and visually look far greater on the new engine!
- I really like the stressed importance of unique historical regiment units.
- Generals are all real historical figures, even down to some who's Wikipedia article is a few lines long
- You can feel the level of historical research that went into every aspect of this game. Generals, technologies, unit types, ships, map locations... Each has at least a paragraph that teaches the player relevant history on the subject - this adds huge replayability, as you may ignore them on your first playthrough!
- The Campaigns of Napoleon were very fun and unique, but very linear. They are not designed to be replayed, which I appreciate as it tells a more cohesive story on the man.
- Each one of the "Battles of Napoleon" are thrilling fun, especially on higher difficulties.
- The historical detail within the "Battles of Napoleon" is immense. Compare the geographical features, unit types and their locations to real-world strategy maps of any of the battles, and you'll see how accurate they are!
- The trading system and merchant ship mechanics are far simpler and are more fun
- The cinematics that play in the Campaigns of Napoleon are all fantastically voice-acted and detailed! They're very inspirational, and give the player a reason to get invested in the history the game teaches in the background.
- It's not really my thing, but people adore the multiplayer of this TW more than any other...

Tl;DR, this game is far better than Empire. Gameplay-wise, it succeeds in all the mechanics it attempts. The developers were responsible and aware of what to keep and discard from Empire, rather than trying everything and seeing what stuck!