XIII Century – Gold Edition Reviews

If all you are looking for is historical medieval battles then this does its job. It's basically Total War Historical battles with preset armies and no empire building so low on replayability but can be fun for a quick tactical skirmish. I would recommend Total War over this game, but if you're on a budget and can pick this game up on a sale for a dollar, then this isn't a bad game. I feel more neutral about it than anything. Also mildly annoying - there is a message about a key that won't close even after pressing Shift+Tab. (I am going through my steam library and trying to review everything with enough time for a first impression)

Bet you thought [i]XIII Century[/i] was just a [i]Total War[/i] knock-off - only without the strategic layer? You thought wrong then. If I were to compare [i]XIII Century[/i] to anything, it would probably be [i]Byzantine Games'[/i] [i]Pike and Shot[/i] - [i]Sengoku Jidai[/i] - [i]Field of Glory[/i] series. In [i]Total War[/i] you mostly win with numbers. There are exceptions (using chokepoints, for instance), and one should never underestimate the power of micromanagement, but as a rule of thumb if you have a bigger and stronger army, you win. Not so here. Because [i]XIII Century[/i] understands morale. Here a battle is often resolved in a matter of seconds and won by positioning. You have to manipulate your enemy, force him out where you want him. And if you do have him where you want him, his entire army might lose morale in an eyeblink, and then - you win. The same applies to you. When determining a squad's capacity for inflicting heavy bodily harm, [i]XIII Century[/i] keeps track of numerous parameters. Apart from the usual experience, weapon quality, morale and freshness, among the factors are: cover on the flanks, cover on the rear, cover of archers and exposition to missile fire. The AI in this game is predictable, but very, very smart - it constantly repositions itself in order not to be caught off-guard and seeks for openings in your defenses. The predictablility of AI is really the only thing that allows you to win games, because you will [b]always[/b] be heavily outnumbered. If you want serious tactical play, there is probably nothing better so far - if we talk medieval warfare, even despite [i]Total War[/i]'s constant evolution. PS Bill Gray from [i]wargamer.com[/i] wrote a great article on this little-known gem where he elaborates why [i]XIII Century[/i] still remains a fantastic wargame: https://www.wargamer.com/reviews/xiii-century-gold-real-warfare/

If you're struggling with the memory access violation problem and decide to try using a virtual machine -- don't bother. I tried it, it's still the same. However, I still have to give this game a positive review -- it's extremely cheap, so there's more than enough content for your money, even with the inaccessible missions. Plus, the multiplayer is solid (assuming you can set up a virtual LAN to play it). Overall, it's just as fun as Total War Medieval 2, except it's all historical battles. Yes, the crashes significantly impact the experience, but I still got hours of fun out of a game which costs half a pound. Plus, the game is obviously abandoned at this point, so it's not like leaving a negative review will cause 1C to fix the game. It's a fun game, and worth the asking price.

18 year old game revisited... Remarkable that the AI seems smarter than same period games made since. Units wrap around flanks intelligently, and individuals break and fight they way through the lines in a believable manner. Troops are not always obendient and get tempted to chase the enemy. The visuals have a rather dark, dream-like quality and over-bloomed, but this is am amazing game for what is often just a buck or two in sales. You'll likely have to fart about to get the game to play right (a black screen - I fixed with changing to 60Hz and settings. There's several postings that tell you what to do.

Battle simulator without empire or army building. Does battles well enough. Looked like a bit light on content. And for some the game crashes once you get past the tutorial. Get it cheap.

Broken shit. I eventually managed to start the damn thing, but after a few missions it decided it was going to crash on one particular level every time I tried to play it. Unless you're running a ten year old machine, save yourself the trouble.

The game would be much better if it wasn't for the out of memory problem. I played first 3 English battles which were interesting and fun, but on the fourth battle it just stopped. I would recommend it if there wasn't for this problem.

If you have Win10 Do NOT buy this game even if you find it with 0.01 euro. You will be able to play just the tutorial. After that you will have the famous memory violation crash and there is no real crash for it.

This game is amazing and underrated, not much advertisment on it, shame. Yes it can be compared to Medieval 2: Total War in general, however the battle system is different, it needs more initial planning in order to win a battle, it can be considered as hardcore version of total war battles. The only con here that the game dosent have a campign map, only series of battles, but they are tight and needs a lot of strategy and planning, a battle can last much longer time comparing to total war games. The graphics are nice, better than Medieval 2, and comparable to Empire, while the sound and voice acting are average, the AI is decent, multiplayer is very enjoyable but usually its hard to find people online to play against.

Wow... I got everything I wanted from a Real TIme Tactics game... yet I felt disappointed. This blows away RTW series for melee based combat. There are so many dynamics to the game, and better yet the stats are not hidden, but layed out in the interface. RTW and other combat games leave a few simple options available to the players. In this game, you can see the effect of open/regular/closed spacing, the effect of other troops nearby, the defestation of ranged archers, plus the usual damage/armor/defense and much more. Yet... I felt disappointed. The battles were challenging, but I still craved the empire building of the RTW series. I wanted to create my army, my way, and not get stuck with historical units. I know this seems like a negative review, but I feel that I got everything I wanted from this game... and at the same time, self discovered I wanted more freedom. Perhaps, if they took this level of detail and allowed me to construct empires and armies of my own design, I would have loved this game.