Total War: Rome 2 Is Getting Review-Bombed on Steam Due to Update to Female Generals
Total War: Rome 2 is the latest casualty in the trend of review bombings on Steam. While the game currently sits at more than 21,000 mostly positive reviews since its initial launch, the majority of its 505 recent reviews over the last 30 days are negative. This is due to some recent updates to the game that have supposedly increased the rate that female generals will spawn.
Many of the negative reviews for Total War: Rome 2 note that due to the Ancestral update and other recent ones, many of their generals in existing save files have been replaced by female ones. In addition, some of the negative reviews claim that almost all of the available characters from the recruitment pool are currently females for players.
These claims have led to long forums on Steam and the like that are heated, one of which had to be deleted by the official Total War: Rome 2 community manager due to it being “a mess” as noted by PCGamesN. There are several threads still being made on the discussions for the game on Steam, most of which are toxic.
What makes the whole Total War: Rome 2 review bomb fiasco even more complicated is that these claims may not be entirely true. According to YouTuber Republic of Play, the rate of female generals spawning vary between the different civilizations. Most of these are around 10 percent while the Kushites are around 50 percent. Meanwhile, the birth rate of females is 35 percent.
It’s also worth noting that not every faction in Total War: Rome 2 can have female politicians be used as military leaders and players are not forced to use them. The community manager for the game also noted that the game isn’t “historically accurate” so upset players can either “mod them out or just not play” the game. For more on history in games, check out our recent feature on the Assassin’s Creed series.