This is something new I’m doing, yet have pondered about doing for a while, revisiting a game I already reviewed. I considered it with Kirby Star Allies long ago thanks to the various dlc that had come out for it. Of late I ended up playing a lot of Total War Warhammer games, and looking back I feel I can go into more depth with the second game and my experiences with it, as well as why this one and not the other two.
What has happened since I reviewed this game? well A bunch of dlc has come out ranging from new races like the Tomb Kings (mummies commanding Skeletons and that, lots of “the mummy” references there) but also several new character dlcs that as well as containing new Legendary Lords with their own stories, also contain new units for the races of those Lords. For example, Lizardmen started with 2 Legendary Lords and now that’s gone up to 7 each with their own faction.
While the main narrative campaigns are listed under “Eye of the storm” many of the campaigns notably those involving characters introduced as later dlc do not follow the same brutal progress that the first ones do. Instead they have their own story and tasks separate from the attempts to seize control of the vortex. For instance Death Master Snikch completes every assassination mission as he hunts down Malus Dark Blade. While Nakai the Wanderer rather than controlling Cities plays as a Horde army and instead is out to remove the Empire presence from Lustria making it that on the campaign map he plays very differently from every other Lizardmen faction.
The other main mode is Mortal Empires. This mode lacks the more story driven element of the ‘Eye of the storm’, instead giving a more generic short/long campaign goal to achieve to be considered victorious. The closest thing you will get to story content in these are the special mission battles for each Legendary Lord. The other main difference in this mode is that all factions you have access to can be chosen and all factions currently released are present. This includes those races and characters from Total War Warhammer’s first game.
For the battle side, I often found myself doing the battles more with certain factions rather than simply auto battling near constantly. Clan Eshin kept saying I would lose the battle in Automatic, yet often found myself relatively comfortably winning when controlling them. I do struggle however when controlling a large army as even if I pause the battle, often there’s so much going on I lose track of things and don’t realize a unit has chased a fleeing enemy or have a bunch of people that wiped out theirs and have been doing nothing for awhile. I basically had to spawn 3 or 4 Skaven armies to wipe out a Wood Elf stronghold but nicely the computer controlled those while I controlled the main force… not being able to replicate that again, annoying as it would help a lot. Still, good planning often did allow me to overcome foes that in a simple numbers game would have beaten me, often using better hit and run tactics or strategic focusing on fire (spawning a unit right behind their artillery also helps). Nothing feels better than when you win the battle at an enemy stronghold, and all that was remaining of your forces was Vlad and his two Giant Undead Bat Dragon Monsters. A wins a Win, and they are undead, just raise more.
And now for a big negative about all that DLC. Just because you don’t have the dlc that lets you play as things, doesn’t mean you won’t face them. This isn’t too much of an issue if it were just enemy characters or factions… But, those factions that had new Lords release also gained access to new units for their armies. Suddenly when attacking Lustria as Clan Eshin, in facing Lizardmen armies that have many large monsters that when I play as them I don’t have access to. This did feel a bit pay to win in that regard. I still won the campaigns, and as such got the achievement I had been going for. But it still gives me the feeling that there was meant to have been some counter that I didn’t have access to. And given how much DLC there is, that gives the enemy factions a considerable level of unit selections I didn’t have.
Those negatives aside, I would often find myself playing for many hours at a time, much to the concern of the editor of this paper. It often had a “just one more turn” feel only for a sequence of events to start up that hit my brain telling me to not stop till I felt my forces were in a stable place and that current threat destroyed. Or at times I’m so close to winning a campaign that has an achievement that fewer than 2 percent of the player base has, my brain keeps telling me to get it done… admittedly the Norsca campaign led by Throgg took me quite some time but I got there.
Notably I prefer this to the first game, as well that one I would find it far harder to get started. Many times I’d attempt to start a campaign on the first game and have to restart as it would throw a brick wall against me right away that you have to work to get round through a series of cryptic clues that aren’t given. Instead the campaigns of the second game usually ease you in on what to attack on your first turn.
I have tried the third game, but that one has that same long loading issue that often has me start browsing on my phone or going to paint models that sometimes I end up here, only even longer. Maybe next computer upgrade.
Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮
