After playing Total War games from Medieval 2 to Shogun 2 for almost two decades I've decided to finally give a try to the first game of the series. I've seen some videos on first Medieval and this game and I found some of the design choices, such as the map being an actual map, with pawns representing your armies, castles and agents to be appaling enough to try it myself.
So to start of - the campaign map. It's a nice change to operate on the province level instead of running your armies using their movement points. It really forces you to think otherwise about your moves on the campaign map, as provinces often border many others, enemy can attack your lands from different directions - and once they enter, you have to fight them all in one battle, instead of driving them back in different places alongside the border, as it is in the newer titles. The map is kept simple: in order to know anything more about provinces around you, you have to click on them and read the info from a scroll. It's the only way to learn that a province has gold deposits or produces excellent archers. What is definitely different to the later Total Wars is that a province has only one battle map - so if you are fighting a couple of times in the same highland province, you probably are going to place your archers always in the same spot. Every province looks different, but it can become tiresome, if you are fighting numerous times for control of this one province.
I have mixed feelings about battles themselves. On one hand, weather plays a very huge role in how your units perform, just as terrain does - which is a stark difference to later titles, e. g. in Medieval 2 archers don't really care about fog or rain - and I really like this aspect. Correct positioning of your troops is a key factor in securing the victory in this game, as the roster for all clans is the same and their stats don't differ - which leads to the terrain, fatigue of your troops and their honour (experience) to be crucial factors during the battle. I've played on the expert difficulty, so maybe I'm biased, but I don't think that your tactic matters that much, main thing is that you place your troops well, don't make them charge uphill or shoot uphill. Flanking usually doesn't matter, the enemy won't break anyways. Cavalry charges are also quite unspectacular, cavalry is rather useful in catching the enemy - be it fleeing or marching - that your infantry can't reach. A propos cavalry - they suffer the most from the fact that it's difficult in this game to pull your troops out of the fight. As soon as one of the soldiers comes in contact with enemy, the whole unit becomes quite unresponsive (it's especially painful when the enemy sends his daimyo against you, as he is quite invincible and will kill dozens of your men, who can't move away from him). The pathfinding of units is sometimes tiresome, as sometimes ordering units to move forward causes only one "wing" of the unit to come forth, leading the unit to stand with their flank opposing the charging enemy, causing a massive morale penalty. The fact that your (almost) only control is the LMB doesn't help either, I've had numerous situations when I missed a button by a milimeter, so instead of choosing a different unit, I've sent the one previously selected somewhere where I didn't want them to be.
The battle AI is quite satisfying to fight against: it moves cautiosly, looks for the best angle for charge or awaits you in a favourable position if you are the attacker. The fact that it tends to route from battles it finds impossible to win is simultanously its advantage and disadvantage - I really appreciate that it doesn't throw its soldiers mindlessly at you, but saves them for another battle, but it sometimes forgets, that it can't retreat anywhere on the strategic map - causing the whole army to perish in vain.
The game isn't very helpful in explaining how it works. On one hand, when attacking/defending a province, you get a nice tab informing you about all armies involved, number of men taking part and about the options you have: attack/defend, abandon the province/call off the attack, retreat into the castle (which, depending on its size, can house only limited amount of your troops). On the other hand, it doesn't give you any insight into the building tree, never gives any info whether your reinforcements will arrive or not, doesn't calculate the public order immedietely after you move your troops out of the province but only the next turn. There are also some other poor mechanic choices, such as the fact that you can only talk to a clan by sending your emissary to the other daimyo, tough luck if you can't find him on the map because he is on the other side of Japan.
I could also write about other aspects, such as outdated graphics or limited diplomacy options (you either have no dip relations, are in war or have an alliance), but I think this review is long enough. All in all, I wouldn't recommend it for more than one campaign. The battles, the quintesence of the Total War franchise, become quite repetitive really fast and the limitations of this ancient game engine really show. Worth a try only if you're really interested in how the whole series began
