PC Game Review - Total War: Warhammer
Introduction
Total War game series was always focused on historic world battles and conquests until Total War: Warhammer was released. Unlike it's SF Warhammer 40k cousin, Warhammer is a fantasy setting filled with different number of beasts, monsters and races. Just imagine your standard Total War battles with huge hulking monsters wiping out battalions of soldiers and wild magics that could win you a losing battle. Yeah, suddenly Total War sounds much more interesting. Played in turn based World Map and tactical real time strategy battles, Warhammer will satisfy all your strategic needs.
Gameplay
When we start playing we get to chose one of four races in vanilla version of the game, more races were added via DLC's that increase playable races to 7. All those races are vastly different from one another and each has it's weaknesses and strengths. If you buy the game now you get to play as one of these factions/races.
Empire - Versatile Human faction with strong armored units with mage and battle priest supports and heavy artillery.
Dwarves - Slow heavily armored and technically advanced race, they can't use magic.
Orks - Wild and large in numbers with support of massive units like giants and trolls.
Vampire Counts - Undead army that can easily restore their numbers after battles and spread their vampiric influence.
On a Grand Campaign you get to play as any of those races and chose your army lord that can level up during battles and increase in strength as the game progresses. Every faction will have something different and interesting to offer like racial traits and different schools of magic.
Game's main goal is to complete the grand campaign and conquer provinces in turn based manner. During your time on world map you will build cities and upgrade building to get access to more advanced units and tech. It takes many turns to unlock some late game units, so be prepared for that, but once you unlock them game becomes much more strategically deep and fun. You can also trade with neighboring factions and join forces together to win. It will take time though, to play this game you will have to commit.
Once you are finished with the world map you get to play real time battles where your skills as a general comes to fruition. You can place your armies to guard the choke point, place artillery far behind and protect them while reducing enemy numbers from a far, or you can simply go all in and send all units forward and hope for the best. Once the armies clash, chaos is assured and in the end the best army composition and well educated general who knows his units strengths and weaknesses will win the battle.
Final Words
Unfortunately all that goodness comes with a price. Game costs 60 euros (depending where you live) and if you want to add all of the DLC's you will have to pay another 60 euros. DLC races are Chaos Warriors, Fallen warriors following dark Chaos Gods and using dark magic. Beastmen, Tribes of wild tribal creatures and animals raiding and looting using forests as ambush locations. Wood Elves, Elves from deep forests that use ranged attacks and big hulking tree creatures from the woods. As you can see a fairly expensive DLC's pack.
Strong PC is needed with quad core processor, ram over 6Gb and GPU with minimal of 2Gb ram on them, so be prepared. Once you sort all that out this game will give you many hours of fun strategic Warhammer goodness. This is as deep and complex as one strategy game can get.
I suggest waiting for the Ultimate Super Emperor Edition for 25€
Or whatever it is called.
Since Shogun II you always need to wait until all the DLCs are out.
Thats around the time I stopped buying full-price games. I was too upset about all that money milking.
Instead of buying a full game at 60€+30€ addon, I now but the all-inclusive edition 2 or 3 years later for 25€. They wanted it that way.
Also saves on hardware.
Well, theoretically. I'm going to get the Octacore Zen when its out lol. Its just too nice for BOINCing to not get.
It all depends how fast you want to play the game. Some will pay full price to get the game fast. I bought Warhammer during discount 6 months after the release, I will probably also get every DLC's on discount considering how hooked I am for this game. Worst thing ever was at the release of the game when Chaos Warriors could only be playable if you preorder the game.. That race was done before the launch but they wanted to milk more cash from the players. Despicable.
I could never get into ALL of the total war games (never tried this one). Maybe i'm just not made for micro-strategy games..
Total War games have that special pedigree that is not for everyone. However, Total War: Warhammer adds that fantasy layer that previous games missed. Games tend to get more interesting for me when there are more fantasy elements to them. There is so much depth to this game (specially when you buy every DLC).
Mirco? you control units the size of e.g. 120, and don't have to click each single one ;)
It is not a traditional quick micro like Warcraft 3 and Starcraft but there are some micro elements with the lords, heroes and units when you need to use their special abilities.
Did you do the Total War series (before Warhammer) already?
No, I've only played few Total War games like Shogun and some other ones. I needed that fantasy element to get me hooked for this series, there are plans to make two more TW:Warhammer games plus tonnes of DLC's. Now it's my time :)