Total War: Warhammer 3 Is On Track To Be The Series’ Best
Total War: Warhammer 3 launched today. Grand Cathay and Kislev are just the beginning, but here’s why the game is a standout hit.
Six hours in, Kislev was at war with itself when Chaos erupted in its mist. Ten hours in, the Kislev Orthodoxy had rallied and was making a bid for power. And then things got real.
And that’s just one corner of the vast expanse that is Total War: Warhammer 3. The grand finale of the Warhammer trilogy has big shoes to fill. After all, Total War: Warhammer 2 broke ground with its expansions and unified map of the Mortal Realms. In order to be a step up, Total War: Warhammer 3 had a lot to do.
But if you’ve read the title of this article, you already know TW:WH3 is doing that. There are massive quality of life improvements. Because TW:WH2 had such a long footprint, Total War: Warhammer 3 could grow by leaps and bounds. In a nutshell, the new game not only takes the best of its predecessors, it pulls in some of the changes made in other modern Total War games as well. Three Kingdoms was a huge step forward for Creative Assembly, and from that, we get the revamped siege battles and hero mechanics of Total War: Warhammer 3.
But it’s not just mechanics and gameplay overhauls that make Total War: Warhammer 3 so great. It’s the story. When we spoke to the Creative Assembly team earlier this year, the devs stressed how much work had gone, not just into the overall plot of the campaign, but into “the narrative” of Warhammer.
What is “the narrative” of Warhammer? It’s sudden betrayals or desperate battles turned into victories against the odds. Or convincing a rival faction to go to war with the Ogre Kingdoms because they ate your best hero. It’s the little moments that emerge from your campaign. And your choices.
The game threads the needle of putting you on the back foot, while still giving you a chance to fight back. Even if there are some turns when all you want to do is research another technology tree, or have juuuuust enough money to buy that shiny new unit, your foes come calling.
If you’ve played any Total War game, you know what we mean. But now amplify that by the larger than life characters in Kislev and Cathay and Chaos. If you’re familiar with the tabletop game, Total War: Warhammer 3 delivers on the dream of a regular campaign play group.
Even now, with more-hours-than-I-want-to-admit-to-my-boss in the game, I can tell I’ll be coming back again and again. Because the gameplay is satisfying, and the story keeps blooming. But, Total War: Warhammer 3 has a long lifespan to it. Creative Assembly have said this.
So if you’re looking for the complete package, like you might have found in the earlier games, you have a wait ahead of you. As it stands at launch, TW:WH3 is very story driven. Every game, every campaign feels like it has a timer ticking down. Which isn’t bad–the story should be going forward, and it makes the world feel big and alive. But if you’re looking for the sandbox freedom of something like Mortal Empires…you have a wait ahead of you.
But while you wait, there’s so much to try. Each faction feels wildly different. There are a lot of resources and mechanics to juggle. This is the kind of game that rewards you for mastery. And unlike other entries in the series, Total War: Warhammer 3 is very beginner-friendly, up to and including a tutorial campaign prologue that will take even the most novice player and whip them into fighting form.
I should know. I played through it, and by the end, I felt like a master tactician.
Total War: Warhammer 3 delivers in a big way. It’s a game launch in 20xx, so naturally there are bugs. But if we’ve learned anything, it’s that CA’s team moves quickly where that’s a concern.
So if you want to dig into the meaty world of Warhammer Fantasy, you won’t want to miss Total War: Warhammer 3.
Check out Total War: Warhammer 3 on Fanatical
