It is hard to rate this game. It just seems so different from the previous ones, I'll have to adapt.
For one thing, the ever so complicated glitches people have run into. You can't really blame the game for the internet's fault. Steam, the people who run this, just don't handle this game well. On top of this there are the massive system requirements you need to run this. My computer originally cut up George Washington's dialogue, which gave me a headache. Luckily, it has been fixed, and the only thing lagging nowadays is the cutscenes for a duel.
The voice talents have been very limited compared to Medieval II Total War and Rome Total War. The voices of characters in the midst of battle, proclaiming the loss of a general or the swinging of victory, have been cut, leaving you feeling lonely. The most depressing of all is the battle speech before the fights. They really raise your moral and convince you to play. This game lacks any speech at all. It just cuts to battle. I wonder if they thought it took up too much memory to add on, but anyway, it is a shame to not hear a speech before battle from a Revolutionary leader. The regular troops speak their part, though. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it is in their native tongue where I personally preferred hearing things in English, my primary and preferred language.
If you are a veteran player, you know about events. And for new people, events are things such as an earthquake, announcing your city is under siege, or telling you what has been recruited and where. The text in these boxes are now so small as to sometimes cause you to squint to read it. I can say it is about nine or eight size font if it were on Microsoft Word. It is small enough to confuse an e and an a.
A helpful little item, though, is that the woman for the campaign map now tells you when your garrison (your army) is too large for your finances to take. This way you don't have to do the work to figure it out. Along with this, you are warned when bankruptcy is on oncoming, and to take action to reduce the army or fix the economy.
The AI was limited in my early experiences. Sometimes the AI lack any sense of, well, sense, and may stand under your fire for a long while before reacting. Cavalry is now falling out of style in this game, so you in many battles lack a way to catch up when the enemy army starts to rout if you tend to spam characters, which you are much more likely to do with line infantry, the universal soldier unit. So you will chase after these guys, who apparently always have skirmish mode on, to catch them. This can last forever, if you let it. Skirmish mode, which is running away to avoid hand-to-hand, should have been abandoned by gun-wielding soldiers, only favored by indians or such who have bow and arrows. Gunmen have bayonets, and as such don't deserve the ability to run away.
Specific, historic soldiers have been mostly abandoned. Where once there was a difference between "Billmen" and "halberd militia", now the names are "line infantry" and "regiment of horse". No prefixes, really, to tell you what type they really are. Luckily, though, you are given the right to name these Some historical groups you could have guessed have appeared, such as minutemen for the United States and Black Watch for Britain.
On the field, agents from previous games were abandoned. Diplomats and merchants were left behind. The merchant is a welcome goodbye, it was tedious in my opinion, but the diplomat was something I found very realistic and interesting. In Empire, you simply click a button when you want to talk to a country. The Assassin and Spy, on the other hand, have been combined into a single agent called the Rake, while Gentlemen can research new technologies.
Apparently the game thinks for you sometimes, such as in multiplayer. The first time I entered this, it dished out the army it thought I should have. I like to decide my own armies; the pre-set idea is just a waste of time to press the "clear all" button.
On the positive side, a new idea...revolutions...allows your government to switch itself. When it occurs, you must choose a side and pray for the best. This happens mainly when you start really screwing up in-game. Each of the three governments, Republic, Absolute Monarchy, and Constitutional Monarchy, provide different things.
Sea battles occur, and are very engaging and interesting. The realism and creativity in this is something to applaud the programmers for. Everything from grapeshot to the water is realistic.
One final note, if you have an older computer...wait, scratch that, if you have a computer older than a late 2007 model, don't expect much from the game. For others, switch your graphics to low unless you dished out major cash for this. It uses the most, and I mean so-most-it's-farther-than-almost-any-currently-used-computer most advanced graphics. It really will blow up any computer that is not almost new, especially when you're waiting some ten hours to download the game.