Total War: Warhammer

I've been fanatically buying and playing Total War games since the first Shogun came out. So, I feel my opinion has a bit of weight when it comes to talking about the series.

We're got the same set up as usual when it comes to the development and publishing. But the kicker with this one was that we dropped the historical setting completely and went for an extremely rich and vibrant one by taking on the Warhammer universe.

At first I was really excited about this game. The total war battlefield engine is unique among strategy games and finally getting a chance to see something amazing take place in it with the potential of giants, knights, zombies,orcs and so much more smash into each other was just amazing to looking forward to. It was my main driver to buy the game to be honest.

Visually I have to say that the game did deliver for the most part, its the prettiest and most well realized Total War thus far in that respect. However, a bit of an issue with it is that there doesn't really seem to be that much unit diversity in the game. Yes, its great the first time you see a horde of giants tear through a bunch of swords men, but there is not much else there beyond that in the game.

Now, the reason I say that is that this might be the second most simplistic Total War game that has ever been put out. This is due to the fact that all of the factions in the game only have a singular method of playing them effectively in terms of military unit composition. This essentially means that countering each of the factions becomes a very simplistic affair. Now, you might argue that it was easy to counter in earlier games, and I would disagree with you because in other Total War games you aren't restricted to play in a specific way just because of the faction that you picked. So while yes, overall the factions themselves are very different from one another each of the factions only effectively play in a single way making the game as a result a bit predictable.

Another side effect of this is that it makes the game a bit slow in combination with the massive size of the overall map and the slow economic build up that is in the game. I literally found myself just pressing end turn over and over waiting for my armies to march from one side of my country to the next to get to some random horde or stronghold or just to check on something. This is aside from the issue that you always can't seem to catch those fuckers as they are always just that tiny bit faster than me.

So, while Total War: Warhammer is not the worst Total War that I have bought, that honor belongs to Total War: Empire. I can't honestly recommend this one to anyone outside of Warhammer super fanatics because its really not that complex of a game and for the most part it feels empty and slow. This is despite me enjoying myself for the most part when it came to playing the game. I just don't see myself sinking as much time into it as I did in Shogun 2 and I know for a fact that I'm not having as much fun playing this as I did playing Shogun 2.