Almost a year ago Empire: Total War was released and brought an entire new direction to the series, with Naval battles, gundpowder battles, the largest map in a Total War game, and a brand new game engine. Napoleon has kept all of this and yet also improved on the formula a great deal.

The main gameplay consists of 4 average length campaigns taking you through napoleons life. These Campaigns are very compareable to that of the one found on Rome : Alexander, in that you are given a time limit and because of this you are limited to how big and how advanced you can make your army. The other half of the main gameplay is very similar to the historical battles found on any other Total War game, except this time they are a life story of Napoleon, all the way up to his Battle at Waterloo but unlike the others series of games, you only have 1 unlocked at first and you have to go through them as Napoleons story unfolds. Their is still a Grand campaign, although it is not the main part of this game and feels just like an expansion of Empire: Total War.

The major part of this game that makes it so amazing is the multiplayer, mainly because you can do a campaign and people can control your opponent, which I must say is a lot better than spending 6 hours playing a multiplayer campaign. The layout on the battle screen has also changed a bit and feels like Google Chrome compared to Firefox, same layout maybe better and you can see so much more of your battle now without toolbars clumping up your screen.

The only bad points on this game are two smaller points, one of them your won’t notice if you have trouble with this game. First off is the AI,  it’s not great but not anything to write home about either, it can make bad decisions and sometimes will just sit there and let you fire cannons at it. Secondly, it has a few bugs and can crash or freeze for no reason what so ever, but I’ve played this game for over 30 hours now and only encountered this twice

Overall, a great game and no Total War or strategy fan should pass this up.