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Product test

"Total War: Warhammer 3" in review: epic strategy battles for beginners and pros alike

PC Games
16.2.2022
Translation: machine translated

It's time for a new Total War. Creative Assembly finishes its Warhammer trilogy and also tries to give beginners a chance. In our review of the strategy game, we find out whether the plan is successful.


This is an article from our content partner "PC Games". Here you can find the original article by the two authors Andreas Altenheimer and Benedikt Plass-Flessenkämpe.


Unfortunately, you have to be prepared for long loading times, which take several minutes per save state or battle in the case of an HDD storage medium. You should therefore free up enough space on an SSD drive to significantly reduce the waiting time.

Familiar strategy fun

In the former case, in contrast to the previous Total War games, you'll receive much more concrete information about what the final result will probably look like. In addition to a rough chance of success, all units that will most likely lose their lives now flash red.

Thanks to the Warhammer setting, there are also numerous flying creatures and giant demons, not to mention the commanders' multi-layered magic skills. The latter also provide a fair amount of role-playing flair by gaining strength with increasing combat experience, being allowed to wear equipment and learning a new combat skill with every level-up or at least improving an old one.

One of the biggest weaknesses of "Total War: Warhammer 3" is the AI, which sometimes takes on strange excesses within the real-time battles. While you as the player take care to distribute your units separately and specifically to your opponents, the computer too often relies on blind rush-and-attack tactics.

In addition, we noticed some strange dropouts in the test, which we observed in the "normal" difficulty level. The best example: Once we brazenly placed our archers in the front row and shot at a unit standing in the foreground. The computer, on the other hand, didn't move, even though masses of arrows rained down on its soldiers. Only when half of them lay dead on the ground did he act and move his troops.

Faction overkill

The story of the campaign, by the way, directly follows the end of the prologue. According to it, Yuri Barkov was led astray by the demon prince Be'lakor and manipulated into mortally wounding the bear god Ursun. Depending on which race you play, you'll pursue different goals accordingly: While the humans of Kislev and Cathay want to save Ursun, the underlings of the Chaos Gods want to see him dead for good.

Moreover, each race has its own game mechanics, which makes for quite a bit of variety. For example, the Slaanesh are able to seduce enemy units and turn them to their own side, while the Tzeentch can manipulate the enemy with the help of the transformation of paths and force a war between two friendly factions.

Some races even shine with really innovative ideas that will require you to completely rethink your army structure. The best example: the Cathay, who live for a balanced relationship between the Yin and Yang forces. That is, constructing buildings, recruiting units, or researching a new technology shifts the compass either toward yin or toward yang. And the more balanced this ratio is, the more efficiently your empire will operate.

Another unique feature of the Cathay race is caravans, which allow you to build trade routes to the Kislevs. But be careful: the caravans march across the game world like independent units and are therefore at the mercy of surprise attacks from the enemy, which you'll have to fend off in case of doubt.

Dare more diplomacy

Apart from that, Creative Assembly has mainly focused on the diplomacy aspect and expanded it with useful features. Especially important: If you lead a military alliance with another faction, then you automatically collect so-called alliance points. You can spend these points in several ways, for example to borrow a unit from the ally or to ask him to defend one of your cities.

Things get really interesting once you set up outposts in the cities of your friendly faction: After that, you'll have their unit types at your disposal, which you can recruit from now on and combine with your own troops.

Other diplomacy innovations relate to the exchange of settlements or the quick trade already introduced in Total War: Three Kingdoms, thanks to which you can see all chances of success with all available factions at a glance.

Now with up to eight players simultaneously

On top of that, there are two more bonus campaigns, which are mainly meant for multiplayer sessions. While "Darkness and Discord" also features up to eight players fighting each other, "Something is rotten in the state of Kislev" is much more compact. Creative Assembly has explicitly designed the mini-campaign for a long afternoon, in which up to three opponents can go through a complete adventure.

Conclusion: a Total War for beginners and pros alike

Pro

Contra

  • Despite the prologue campaign, still not an easy game to learn
  • Very long loading times (especially on HDD hard drives)
  • Eats up over 100 gigabytes of hard drive space
  • Unattractive AI dropouts in the battles

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