The sequel to Shogun: Total War relocates the player to the battlefields of Europe and the Middle East. The game is largely based around the religious crusades of the era, with players able to take up the leadership of one of 12 factions - ranging from the usual suspects of English and French right through to Turks and Egyptians with all those in between. Each has benefits and disadvantages, depending on specialist units and the territory they hold.

The game is played on two levels. There is a strategic level with its roots firmly set in the mould of "Risk" and there are the large-scale tactical battles. You can choose to fight the campaign, have a quick one off battle, fight an historical battle/campaign or to create your own battlefield with the map editor. There are 4 difficulty settings and these seem to be well balanced.

The strategic game allows you to raise armies, undertake country improvements that allow either better income, greater morale or new and improved units. The map is divided up into provinces with each province having differing levels of potential in production and starting units (some unique to a particular province). There are some 100 differing units in the game and many different structures to build.

You have the ability to raise military units or strategic units such as spies and religious zealots. These are represented on the strategic map with playing pieces reminiscent of chess pieces and can be moved one province at a time (a turn representing a year). Although the layout of this is quite well done, there is an issue of how units are combined and selected. Sometimes if you place them too close together, one hides behind the other and it requires precision clicking to select them again. When combining units (to build bigger armies – is there any other sort?) it again requires a degree of accuracy to highlight each other to allow the stacking. Given that the piece you pick graphically grows to about three times the size to represent its selection it's sometimes difficult to discern what you are stacking onto. This is however a minor annoyance as this part of the game is fun to play and can clip along at a fair old pace.

The AI turn seems to work very fast and you have to watch carefully at what is happening on your borders and inside your borders as well. Assassination is common and if you don't protect your provinces and armies, you can easily lose a General (or worse still - one of your nobles) to an assassin's blade.