One thing that should be mentioned for those that would be new to this particular series: there is a lot of DLC. There are sales constantly, and all but the newest releases will get heavy (50% or more) discounts probably 4 times per year, but overall, if you wanted everything, it can be a bit pricy. If you like it, though, the dollars-per-hour value is great.
ETA: And all DLC for the previous games will unlock the same DLC in the newest game once the combined mega-campaign map is released in a few months.
Here is a video detailing some of the diplomacy changes. Of particular interest is, if you have the correct relationship and build an outpost in an ally’s territory you can recruit some of their units (up to Tier-3 I think). Usually allies never help much when someone declares war on you but now you can recruit their units to (maybe) fill some gaps in your roster. You can even borrow armies of theirs (for a cost).
Ooh, I like that. One thing I liked about some of the older games was the “mercenaries” mechanic, where you could acquire different units in different regions, and end up with weird and wonderful hybrid stacks. I’d be happy to see something like that in the game again.
I love Total War Shogun 2 - it is one of the greatest games ever - but find most of the other TW games pale in comparison. Their interface is never as good. I’ve never tried the Warhammer ones in large part because the idea of a sword and sorcery version just seems silly to me.
Shogun 2 has always been my favorite historical game of the TW series. Dunno why but I never get tired of those little assassination videos (among other things). None of the others have captured the charm of that game.
Warhammer 2 never quite captured the charm of Shogun 2 but it exceeds it in almost every other way. It is a lot of fun.
Remember that on Steam you can play a game for less than two hours and return it for a full refund.
Two hours barely scratches the surface of a Total War game but at least you can give it a try.
Personally, when I do this, I start a timer on my phone for 110 minutes before beginning the game. When the alarm goes off I quit the game on the spot and then decide if I think it is worth keeping. If not, I return it.
Warhammer 3 is coming up, and based on what we’ve seen so far it’s been really exceeding my expectations.
I never thought they’d do anything as awesome as the customizable Legendary Lord for the Daemons of Chaos Undivided faction. That campaign looks absolutely epic.
Spoilers for end campaign rewards:
so the game was supposed to ship with 9 LLs; 11 with the preorder/first week bonus Ogre factions. But now we know they’re also adding an unlockavle 3rd Lord for Kislev, Boris, plus the Big Bad of the campaign - Belakor - is unlockable by winning the campaign. He doesn’t get his own campaign, you just get to stomp around with him post-game; but I see a lot of speculation that he’ll get his own campaign on the combined map, and I agree, that would be really cool. Regardless, an extra starting lords beyond the largest roster in the series so far is pretty great. Hopefully they will continue their DLC/FLC policy - I’m excited to see what they do with the inevitable Chaos Dwarf pack, and Cathay will probably get the Monkey King at some point since he shows up in load screens.
Aside from that, we’re getting really cool new siege battles, the new MP Domination mode looks really really fun, there are two mini campaigns in Multi-player that might mean a coop game actually gets finished (8 player rumble on Cathay between Chaos, Ogres, and Cathay; a 3 player coop defense against Demons in Kislev…)
I can’t wait to get my hands on this game. I’m split between playing as the Demon Prince, Kislev, or Ogres first…
If anyone is interested in sending off WH2 with a succession game, I started a thread here:
I just saw a review pop up for Warhammer 3. Maybe there are more (I have not checked) but I like this reviewer so here it is (he usually reviews old games but…). Very long and thorough. He says there are a lot of bugs.
Today is the day the review embargo dropped, so there should be more reviews out there; there are some bugs (not as many as you would expect), though most don’t seem game-breaking. There is a major issue with flying single-entities, though (the dragons, bloodthirsters, etc.), where if they are trying to attack a grounded single-entity, they try to land in the same spot, and instead get kind of stuck in limbo, just dry-humping their target, and not actually doing anything at all for a good 30 seconds or more.
And strangely, apparently Cathay cannon crews don’t have the ability to reacquire their weaponry if they drop the equipment for any reason (leadership break or intentional drop for strategic reasons).
There is supposed to be one more patch before official release on Thursday, so maybe some of this will be fixed up.
I always have too many games installed that I never actually play, so space was easy to come by! I’m pre-loaded and ready to go. I took Thursday off of work, and I am actually scheduling all of my plans around streaming myself giddily playing it for a full 24 hours after launch, for the (literal) two people that watch me play shit on YouTube.
I’m gonna run through the prologue first because i hear it’s a really well put together narrative experience despite being a tutorial.
Part of me thinks I should step into either Demon Prince or Kislev after that depending on which narrative inspires me more. Another part of me screams “OGRES!!!”
I’m going to do the prologue first, for the reasons you stated; after that, my plan has always been Nurgle, but Ogres really do keep pulling my attention…
Well damn, Baldur’s gate III has a 30GB in the pipeline and Cyberpunk has one for 43. Not a good week If I was subject to Download limit overcharges. I had thought most of the CP updates were for New Gen Consoles, not PC.
For those interested in Ogres know that they have a badly broken unit called Gorgers (as in very overpowered). Presumably it will be fixed at some point but, for now, it may affect your choice of what to play first (I’m kind of amazed that CA didn’t tweak this unit down a bit for release).
