The Total War games aren't without their faults, but I really enjoy them anyway because they are both pretty accurate with history and thed base gameplay combination of turn-based strategic map + real time battles gives some good context to the battles you are undertaking.
My main complains with the series are that the long campaigns are too long and tedious-by the time you get 25 proviinces or so as the micromanagement needed in each one makes even ME pull my hair out, the AI is as dumb as a brick even on hard and cheats too much on VH, and the games in general do an exceedingly poor manner of documenting a lot of very important stuff, which means you are always finding out new thing that sure would have been useful in your last playthrough when reding Total War Center or what not.
I've been playing some M2:TW lately myself though, with the Stainless Steel 6.1 modification. The updated AI is much better, and the other changes made make the game a lot more palatable for me, even though the length of the game is a bit longer.
