Medieval: Total War

The Good
The 3D battle scene, it's truly great. All individual soldiers movement looks real. At the begining of the battle they moved uniformly in their group, later, when cohesion decreases, you'll see them fight individually. The terrain looks very marvelous, and the computer AI uses them well during it's manuever. For example, AI cavalry would try to circle the hill or forest to attack you from the rear, AI will pick high ground to place his infantry and missile troops to force you to fight uphill. The battle sounds, wow, imagine any colossal movies you've ever seen, that is.
Naval battles in this game is calculated by computer, it will be good if in later development player can control naval battles as ground battles. The music of this game, what more I can say, It's beautiful. There are two kind of music according to which faction you play, Middle Eastern or European. During strategical play, random event such as crusades, jihad, re-emergence of extinct nation, mongol invasion etc can turn all your hard earned conquest to nothing. This will force you to play cautiously.

The Bad
The strategy is oversimplified. Basically, just conquer enough number of provinces and you can crush any opponent. It'll be good if there is some disadvantages (say larger corruption level) for larger nations. The politics between nations is restricted to just no treaty, ally, and war. The AI however, inclined heavily to wage war against you. It will only accept peace when truly weak militarily, never counting economic power and reserves in interior provinces, which is to it's disadvantage. There is no control to your economy except just building trading post, farm and mine. Regardless how much your population are, you can train as many soldiers as you like in a province, which is unrealistic. Later in the game, when you (and AI) has so many troops, you can not deploy them all in battle, some goes to reserves. This sometimes gives a headache as an army routing in the first phase can bring fresh reserves to crush the formerly victorious but now tired pursuers. It seems that this game is too much weighted toward tactical (battle) play, while strategical play is not much developed.

The Bottom Line
Greater than any games in tactical play, less in strategical play.