It’s been a few years in the making and according to Creative Assembly, they’ll be working on it for a decade. I’m talking Total War: Warhammer, of course, the latest iteration of the British developer’s tactical strategy game and the latest title to make use of the Games Workshop franchise.
Total Warhammer, which I’m sticking to for simplicity, has been out for a week and it’s been one of the smooth Total War launches in years. Despite NVIDIA not being able to issue day-one Game Ready drivers, the game runs quite well. It hasn’t crashed on me once, and the upcoming DX12 support should provide a solid boost in performance for those running Windows 10, AMD cards or multi-GPU setups.
As for the game itself, my impressions from the preview remain unchanged. It’s the most accessible Total War game I’ve ever played, and each of the factions feel completely and utterly unique from each other.
The Vampire Counts can raise dead on the campaign map after a battle — whether they were fighting in the battle or not. Dwarfs (that’s how it’s spelt according to Games Workshop, complain to them) keep a list of all the grudges they have against other factions, and you can’t win the campaign if you’ve got too many black marks in your book. Greenskins get antsy and start fighting amongst each other if they’re not raiding or beating the snot out of something, while the Empire functions in a manner Total War veterans will feel immediately at home with.
One complaint I’ve got is that the multiplayer seems a little light on features. There’s little in the way of customisation, the leaderboards are pretty scant on info and it’s more or less all the same features that were seen in Total War: ATILLA.
That aside, I’ve got a feeling this will be the most beloved Total War game in history. The pairing of Total War’s strategy with the Warhammer universe is a perfect match in many ways, and the amount of single and multiplayer DLC planned should keep it alive for a long, long time.
How are you finding the game?
Comments
23 responses to “Community Review: Total War Warhammer”
Still trying to get my head around it, since this is the first Total War game that I’m actually trying to learn.
yeah I had to restart my campaign after figuring a few things out and realising I had ballsed it (mostly production buildings etc). I originally started my first Empire campaign on one of the higher difficulties, telling myself “I totally got this”……..turns out I totally didn’t have it.
Maybe I should have read those instructions after all…..
Nothing wrong with that. Think I failed my first 3 shogun 2 campaigns when I was learning.
I vote we just call it TOTAL WAAAGH
Liking it so far, only early days on In the empire campaign and haven’t tried multiplayer as yet so can only give early impressions, but solid so far. No technical problems, looks pretty on ultra settings too.
I wasn’t convinced about the total war formula with Warhammer setting, but turns out it might be exactly the total war I didn’t know I needed until I had it (Think I had gotten a bit bored with the Total War formula but this shakes it up nicely).
should be many hours of enjoyment I think.
I’m about 5 hours in, starting to figure stuff out (total war virgin here), but I’m frustratingly stuck a bit atm, I’ve expanded as far as I can, and have 1 full ally. Unfortunately the only thing I can do now is to start expanding more and attempting to destroy other factions but my main force isn’t strong enough against enemies always with 2 generals (forgotten correct term for them, commanders?),Not to mention that I’ve been advised Chaos on it’s way. If I can figure out how to combine my 2 forces into 1 battle I’ll be right, but at the moment I’m sort of stuck :/
Thinking about starting a co-op campaign, It sort of looks like it just works the same as single player but you have a human ally?
There is a red circle around your general, as long as another of your generals is standing close to that circle you will have both armies in the battle.
Ride one general right up to one enemy and leave him there, then attack with the 2nd general, you should see both of them available in the fight.
This also works when besieging a town, you can have one general go early and set up the towers, and then ride you 2nd general up so that both attack at the same time.
holy shit that’s invaluable advice thanks!
I did actually google how to combine but just didn’t really find anything of use, it motivates me to head back to it because the game had really just became about pumping through the turns to earn income and build more buildings, plus going around trying to kill the hero’s that are roaming around in my lands and trying to level my heroes up.
Vampire Counts are just sooo good despite not having any ranged attacks.
about 10 hours in. 8/10 for me. I’m a big warhammer fan (hate age of sigmar though) so that helps but so far my only fault is it could do a better job of explaining things and letting you know what you can do (like teleporting to quest locations).
Maybe it’s just me but the ai feels a lot tougher and is a lot more aggressive on the campaign map, in the old ones i never really felt challenged once i had some large armies but they’ve kept me on my toes in this one.
Im liking it so far, had previously scored Shogun 2 for cheap and finished a campaign but as the factions are similar I didn’t really feel like doing a 2nd play through.
Total warhammer however looks like there is a lot of re playability.
Started a campaign as the orcs and messed a few things up, mainly via alot of rebellions and build lists not being as good as they could be.
Also started pushing north to capture the last bases before taking care of the other clans so once i had done that I didn’t feel like cleaning up the mess so I started a new campaign as vampires.
The only complaint i have is the game kind of rushes you to get set up before chaos comes, like you need to finish by a certain time but I think you can just cruize and systematically wipe everything out.
The battles are different, the main thing I find is you need to keep some troops in reserve and watch that your formation stays tight rather than letting your forces chase enemies all over the map.
Nope. At least, not for me.
I like it a whole lot. But I like Empire: Total War more.
omg im not the only person who loved Empire
heh… nope not by a long shot.
I remember being surprised in a thread from a while back where a decent proportion of the punters said they liked it most (in spite of it’s flaws). Until then I thought I was the only one!
Yup another empire fan here! Favourite by far
It took me 3 nights to get the long victory with the Dwarfs, and enjoyed it greatly. I’m only running it on low on my laptop so I was auto-resolving most battles just to save my poor computer.
After confederating with a bunch of the Dwarf clans I managed to take out the Orc clans just as the main Chaos forces started sweeping in. From then it was a mad rush to get my armies back north for the defence. I managed to save Kislev when they only had one settlement left, which won me diplomacy credit with the Empire and Bretonnia. Finally pushed Chaos out of the north, and them teamed up with the Empire to crush the Vampire Counts.
Some advice is to early focus on growth, public order and income from your settlements, with one main province dedicated to pumping out your armies. Growth is really important as it allows your settlements to grow quickly, while also improving your replenishment rate for your armies.
I’ve really enjoyed this version of Total War and look forward to playing the other factions.
Bloody dwarf… Your kind are running rampant in my Orc campaign at the moment giving me all sorts of grief :p
As an enormous pre-Age of Sigmar Warhammer fan I was almost certainly going to love Total Warhammer unless it was a complete dud. This is the first Total War game I’ve played, and the last RTS Warhammer game I played that was any good was Shadow of the Horned Rat back in ’95. Waiting for over two decades for a replacement has been tough, but I’m glad to say the wait is over. Creative Assembly absolutely nailed the setting, and I couldn’t be happier.
I’ve been playing Warhammer on and off, mostly with the same group of people, for about 25 years. Recently it’s become almost impossible to get a game together due to everyone’s changing lifestyles (work, kids etc), as well as the massive investment in time and money (esp. recently) required to collect, assemble and prepare an army for the tabletop. It’s now super easy for us to enjoy a truly massive Warhammer battle without having to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in prep and then an entire weekend or more playing the battle itself. It sucks that this took so long to happen, only coming about after the old Warhammer IP was shelved in favour of the more streamlined and generic looking Age of Sigmar range, but to be honest I can totally understand Games Workshop’s decision from a financial point of view. If Warhammer had been this easy and fun to play on a computer for the last 25 years I probably would never have bothered buying a lot of the models I ended up buying over the years, with the exception of collector’s pieces and models bought specifically for modelling/painting. I can only hope that the success of Total Warhammer makes them rethink their approach to licensing their IP for other computer games in the future (what about a Horus Heresy game built in a style similar to TW/Planetary Annihilation for example – couldn’t possibly eat into GW’s profits because it’s physically impossible to play a battle that size IRL)
It’s been interesting to read reviews from people in the other camp (Total War veterans with no Warhammer background). Generally speaking the increase in complexity of unit types, coupled with the increased flexibility afforded by a fictional setting seems to have been well received. But I can’t really comment beyond that as I have zero experience with previous TW titles.
In terms of quality, I’ll admit the game runs a lot worse than I expected it to. But it still runs pretty well, and hopefully future patching or DLC may address this issue further. For the record, I’d buy any race packs they put out for this, realistically at any price too. I would gladly drop another $200 into this to fill out the roster. If you’re a pre-AoS Warhammer fan, I couldn’t reccommend this game highly enough. 10/10
Well put sir
Probably already know this but if you want to play some pre AoS warhammer the 9th age ruleset is great
Awesome, I’d heard about it but forgotten what it was called. Thanks!
This is my first Total War game and I am loving it; thought it may be hard to get into, and there is a bit of a learning curve at the start; but bloody hell this game is good! if you are on the fence give it a go, I’m having a blast with it!
I really need to buy this game and try it out
Is there also a Co-Op campaign? Can anyone say how this is? Seems like it might be tricky with 4-5 playable factions.