Total War: Warhammer III Reviews
Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer 3 is a spectacular fantasy battle simulator with a flawed campaign.
Total Warhammer III has some flaws in its core gameplay loop that can make long-drawn-out campaigns feel a little tedious, and I find myself starting more new games than I do finishing them. However, what this game does for the Total Warhammer series makes it undeniably the best of the three, and the factions available to play are by far my favorite in the franchise.
Warhammer 3 is Creative Assembly's most maximalist, chaotic, and arguably best game to date. But it'll ask a lot of you in return.
This new fortification system is also present in siege battles and small settlement engagements, and it's probably the biggest change to the overall Total War formula. Capturing points on the map builds up your resources, which you can then spend on fortifying defensible areas. It's a compelling tactical addition, bringing Total War closer to other real-time strategy games where it's not just about wiping out an army, but capturing points, defending them, and using resources wisely. It does, however, also take away from what Total War battles always seemed to be about: careful, tactical positioning within a semi-realistic environment.
Even so: I can’t help but marvel at the scope and imagination with which Creative Assembly has brought Warhammer’s fantasy world to life. And maybe I can forgive Immortal Empires for occasionally not working properly because it’s so packed with factions that already bend the rules by design. There are leaders whose army buffs I haven’t even touched, and parts of the world I haven’t yet set foot in. But if my past few campaigns have taught me anything, it’s that there are trees falling everywhere, and they’re making quite a lot of noise.
This is an enormous bummer, because everything else about this game is so good! In so many ways this is the best Total War game ever made, the latest example of a series that has spent the last 3-4 big releases (we don’t talk about the Saga games here) successfully refining a decades-old formula to keep it fresh and interesting. It’s a shame, then, that having come so far in so many respects this time around, Warhammer III stumbles right where it matters most: at the end.
Though best considered as the final part of an excessive strategy megagame, Total War: Warhammer 3 is a heavyweight in its own right. A little too much RTS grind in the midgame is easily outweighed by transformative changes to multiplayer, sieges, diplomacy and more.
We haven’t played Total War: Warhammer 3 enough to give it a final score just yet, but this is still a very promising game after 10-hours of play, with the new factions featuring great new mechanics to make every playthrough feel completely different. The story campaign has also seen improvements thanks to the new ‘survival battles’, while it’s also great to see Creative Assembly improve diplomacy and making it less intimidating for newcomers.