Steve’s Opinion: Total War Warhammer 2

I’ve played a handful of the Total War games, but before Warhammer my main draw was Shogun 2. I enjoyed the empire management elements, but never got into the battles, more because of my own lack of skill than anything else. In both TWWH and TWWH2 I got out of my comfort zone and started trying to build the skills of a field commander, willing to throw bodies on to the ever climbing corpse mountain of my inexperience so that one day I might ascend to some degree of competence.

There were mechanics in TWWH I didn’t appreciate, the most grievous in memory being faction settlement restrictions. Thankfully that got changed. Climate restricts effectiveness of roaming far afield from one’s factional logic, but nothing is stopping you from reshaping the world in your own image in TWWH2. Aside from the hosts of enemies, of course.

The design of The Vortex main campaign of TWWH2 didn’t really appeal to me, and practice was even less successful than premise for me. I still picked up the game while enjoying its predecessor, however, because of what was slated for the game’s future. I remember they told of an expansion, Mortal Empires, which would be the open sandbox I had come to love and expect in 4x games, and all the factions of the world would be conducting a sprawling slugfest too good to miss. That was enough bait for me to bite the sales price, but unless my memory is swiss cheese, they also spoke of some fateful day when a third Total War Warhammer game would join the series, and an eventual promised land much like Mortal Empires, but spanning all of the content.

Honestly that might be more game than most gamers are prepared to jump into, but I’m eager for the opportunity. I’ve enjoyed starting and restarting various factions, as each plays rather differently from one another, and while my strategies evolve with each playthrough, I’ve yet to find myself bored with any given race. Some might be considerably harder than others for me to effectively employ, but I can’t say how much that’s my skill or the game’s inherent imbalance. A brief note, I don’t expect this game world to be balanced, but I’d like to think any faction could achieve their own victory conditions.

That said, I am on a new journey to start and complete the factions I begin these days, not simply restart when a new mood hits. Playing deeper into the games, and watching the world rise and fall through chaos and strange twists in the entropy of the AI has given me some very memorable and perplexing moments. The following image is of an imminent war declaration as High Queen Khalida realizes part of her ambition to put the Vampire Courts to final rest, and low and behold what else did I find? The vampires have turned both men and dwarves into their willing pawns? How these ancient enemies found a path to alliance I might not know, but I’d wager on Greenskin aggression being a common enemy. Not that it’s going to matter much in a moment, when the Tomb Kings teach them about the persistence of death.

In a separate playthrough I chose to take the Dark Elves under Malekith’s banner and dominate the northlands, conducting raids and colonization efforts upon traditionally held Norsican territories. While it resulted in a mixture of strange new developments diplomatically, I never imagined how warped the typical flow of the game would go. The younger high elven brother, Teclis confederated his elder brother’s lands, and shortly thereafter found his way into my courts, despite our peoples being fundamentally locked in amiable genocide against one another.

With distinct varied factions and a handful of scripted events that transpire, the AI throughout the game can create a world that feels both familiar and very different with each playthrough. I’ve already poured nearly five hundred hours into this version of Total War, and don’t see any reason to quit just yet. There’s plenty I haven’t seen and probably wouldn’t be able to imagine is possible until I get my hands dirty by doing it personally. Plus, I’m still having fun accumulating skill at conducting large scale combat resolution and generating more tithes of BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!