War returns to the lands of Warhammer Fantasy (did it even leave? Doubtful) only this time there is a whole new array of factions to play as, including the High Elves, Dark Elves, Skaven and Lizardmen. Whilst these new races are the only ones playable in the campaign, you will spot all the old favourites from the first game as potential foes or allies as you fight through the game, and those that own races from the first game have them unlocked for multiplayer. They have also announced a grand campaign map spanning the first and second games' campaign that will be released as a free patch after launch.

Missed the first game and wonder what this is all about? The Total War system is an engine that combines turn based strategic war, on both a campaign and army level, and translates it into real time tactical combat. In this instance, it’s drawing on the rich lore and history of the Games Workshop licence to ensure that the armies you play as, are interesting and exciting, with gorgeous models.

The first Total War Warhammer was the bestselling Total War game ever (with its 1.7 million units shipped easily eclipsing the other more mundane total war series). I came to the total war series thanks to these Warhammer influences, having never played the older games I was flung head first into battling it out Warhammer style and this suited me just fine.



Very quickly I realised that this was not a conventional “point and click” style strategy approach. Attempting to “focus” your ranks of infantry on one target to take them down creates a shambled mess and opens up your flanks to easy counter charges, not to mention leaving massive holes in your lines for cheeky cavalry to sneak through and slaughter your poor archers.

No, this game requires planning and forethought on both a strategic and tactical level. The initial tutorials taking the time and effort to guide you into doing things right, so don’t skip them if they offer you the choice.

Total War: Warhammer 2 (or TWW2, as I’ll call it from now on to save my poor typing fingers!) has been gorgeously rendered both in the strategic map mode, and even more fantastically in the tactical battle mode, where you can zoom in on a single soldier, among the hundreds of rank and file infantry you’ve brought to the fight, and watch them die gloriously as you fail to account for your opponent’s siege weaponry flinging solar laser beams from the back of a Stegadon. Thousands of soldiers surging forward with the amazing accompanying sound design, as the ambient sounds of the unit carry through when you happen to be looking at them bringing the battle to life in the most spectacular manner.

Whilst the game is a sequel to the first TWW, they’ve opted for a much less “sandboxy” campaign than the first one, focusing the game more around a magical vortex in the centre of the map, where each faction is vying for magical control of the vortex for their own purposes. There are several cinematics telling you about the race as you progress and what is driving them to wrest control of the vortex.

Of course, as before, you can play Total War without knowing a thing about the Warhammer universe. Your handy advisor gives you choice nuggets of advice as you go along. However, having some foreknowledge of what units actually work against other units is always helpful. Sure tooltips imply a unit’s vulnerabilities and strengths, but they’ve modelled the armies close enough to the tabletop armies that if you know throwing a band of Lizardman Skinks into a unit of Dark Elven witchelves you’re going to have a bad time.



My First playthrough was as the Sneaky Skaven ratmen. Starting out I had a main city in which I had to deal with a combination of angry lizardmen and invading chaos barbarians. The tutorial helped me get going as I slowly managed to claim more ritual sites and Warpstone for my clan in order to perform the arcane rituals my faction required; the vortex deadline ever looming as other factions were racing to seize control at the same time.

An important lesson which isn’t quite covered in the tutorials is when to pull your forces back. Keeping your units alive is important, as veteran units are a lot more formidable than green recruits. For Skaven, this was easier, mostly because my cowardly rats were constantly breaking and falling back all on their own without my help… but as a result, so long as I didn’t allow some sneaky cavalry or flying units to go mop them up, they would reform and survive, gaining experience to fight another day!

In general, the racial choices seem fairly balanced. With resources being the deciding factor in what you can bring to the field. Sure, some of the factions’ basic troops are better than others, but at the end of the day they pay a lot more for them. When you play the skirmish mode, which just lets you build an army from preselected points values, the fights are pretty even and rely on the strategic use of your army as opposed to your most powerful unit. With all of these monetary requirements however, when playing the campaign, you will need to ensure that you don’t neglect your economic infrastructure, or you will very quickly find your armies failing to reinforce, and losing ground against better supplied foes. This careful balance in strategic mode is a tough one, as there are limited slots in your cities to build up with. Do you make the decision to build more diverse armies with a greater unit selection, or do you cement your financial base in security, running the risk that you won’t be able to counter the direction a foe has taken in building their army? In the campaign, you can of course gain resources through completing major quests, which I will admit has saved my empires from bankruptcy on more than one occasion!

Now we wander over to the less than desirable aspects of the game:

Firstly, when you pick a faction, make sure you like their aesthetic, because you’ll be seeing a lot of the same army repeatedly. Often you will get into drawn out wars against a specific faction and the battles can become repetitive as you strike blows against each other through an extended campaign. This is partly mitigated by the “Auto Resolve” button (if you reckon your forces can handle the fight) and will probably be further reduced somewhat when they fully integrate all the other race options from the first game as promised. Speaking of the Auto-Resolve button, one feature that annoys me slightly is the fact that whilst your armies are at sea, you have no option but to use the Auto-Resolve button. This has caused me, more than once, to lose to a massive army that I know could have handled in a fight. One might argue that sea travel is just risky, but I’d really like to see some actual sea battles implemented eventually. That said, I won’t hold my breath, seeing as this has been the case since the first game.

Loading times can also be a minor issue, especially if you aren’t running a top of the line mega PC. Sure, the game does a great job of scaling down the graphics in order to accommodate older machines during battles, but the loading times to get in and out can often be slightly longer than I’d prefer… Maybe it’s time for an upgrade!



Lastly, this game isn’t easy. Whilst personally I prefer my games to be on the more challenging side, I know plenty of folks who don’t want that level of difficulty in a game. Maybe I just need a few more years in Strategic school, but on my two campaign playthroughs, both Skaven and Lizardmen, I was always foiled and failed to win. Often at a point where my main armies would be wiped out, resulting in a frantic catch-up that never quite made it in time. Perhaps I should just learn that discretion is the better part of valour and retreat more often like the AI.