Another Total War game is coming to mobile phones, but it's an odd choice

One of our most-played mobile games continues to be the fantastic port of Rome: Total War, as well as its spin-offs Barbarian Invasion and Alexander. The team which brought that to mobile as well as ports of Tropico and XCOM 2, Feral Interactive, has returned to the Total War series for its next port.

The developer has announced that its next title coming to both iOS and Android will be Total War: Medieval II which, as you can probably tell from the name, is set in the medieval era.

You’ll be able to download the title sometime in Spring 2022, according to the developer. Based on past form, we wouldn’t be totally surprised if the game released on one operating system before the other, but we generally don’t see exclusives from Feral’s ports.

Feral Interactive also released a brief trailer for the game, though if you know the title, there’s nothing totally surprising here.

We don’t know compatibility just yet, so which phones will be able to play the game or how up-to-date your operating system needs to be, but hopefully we’ll hear that before the game is released.

This game looks fun, but what’s arguably the bigger news is that clearly Feral didn’t stop with Rome: Total War, and is working to bring more Total Wars to mobiles over time. However, Medieval II wouldn’t be our first choice if we had to guess which were coming.

Analysis: a good choice, but an odd one

Total War: Medieval II was the next game made by Creative Assembly (Total War’s developers) after Rome, so it follows that it’d be the next title to port, but unless Feral is going to bring every single Total War game to mobile, we think it’s an odd choice.

Don’t get us wrong: Medieval II is a great game – this writer has nearly 200 hours logged into it in Steam – but it’s an odd choice compared to Rome.

Firstly there’s the reception to each game: on Metacritic (admittedly a hugely ropey way of comparing popularity), Medieval II is one of the few classic Total War games sitting at a sub-90 score, with 88 (which is still impressively high).

But more importantly, both Medieval II and Rome are quite similar gameplay-wise, even for Total War games: in the grand scheme of things the time periods they’re based on aren’t that far removed chronologically, and war wasn’t that different.

So while Empire: Total War has firearms and Warhammer (and later) Total Wars have heroes, both of which bring significant shake-ups to gameplay, Medieval II and Rome feel quite similar to play.

But it’s possible these similarities are what makes Medieval II an easy port: the map is pretty similar to Rome (though much bigger) and Feral doesn’t need to work out a way to bring guns and ability-toting characters to battles.

So the choice to port Medieval II makes sense, and we’re far from disappointed – we’ll definitely be sinking loads of hours into it when it comes out. We’re just surprised another game like Empire (this writers’ favorite) or Shogun 2 (one of fans’ favorites) wasn’t chosen first.

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