Clashing swords, flying arrows, thundering cannons and dragons soaring over the battlefield

CLASHING swords, flying arrows, thundering cannons and dragons soaring over the battlefield breathing fire on their hapless foes below.

CLASHING swords, flying arrows, thundering cannons and dragons soaring over the battlefield breathing fire on their hapless foes below.

No, it’s not a preview of the next Game of Thrones series, but the latest Total War game.

Developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega for the PC, the fantasy-setting Total War: Warhammer is the latest in the popular franchise which puts the player in control of a burgeoning empire and a great army — with views to expanding both.

Best described as a cross between classic strategy boardgame Risk and a real-time strategy (RTS) game, the Total War series has (until now) taken place in real-world historical eras such as Feudal Japan, the Medieval Era, or the 18th Century’s Age of Exploration.

Players oversee a map of provinces, where they can improve key settlements, recruit soldiers and agents, and move their armies about. For combat, the view switches to the battlefield, where the player orders units about, fires artillery and tries to defeat the enemy.

As a long-time fan of the Total War games, I’ll admit I wasn’t enthusiastic about Total War: Warhammer when it was announced. I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of orcs and dwarfs and magical shenanigans getting into my historical wargaming experience — but having played Total War: Warhammer I must admit I’ve completely changed my view.

Total War: Warhammer is not only an excellent strategy game, it may very well be the best Total War game released so far.

Creative Assembly have taken everything that worked in previous iterations of the series, transported it to the Warhammer fantasy tabletop miniatures role-playing game developed by Games Workshop, and produced an epic winner.

Creative Assembly have made lots of improvements on previous entries in the Total War series, building a richer experience and generally creating something wargamers and fantasy fans alike can really get stuck into.

Certain parts of the world are simply uninhabitable

The setting is mostly a dark, gritty and bleak one — imagine a more brutal version of the Game of Thrones universe combined with the Lord of The Rings and Dungeons & Dragons.

The fantasy and strategy elements combine perfectly and believably to create an engaging experience that fits the Total War scheme flawlessly, with plenty of scope for huge armies, epic battles, dramatic sieges and strategic plays.

One of the biggest changes to the series (besides being able to recruit dragons and spellcasters to your armies, and the fact the world is full of goblins and dwarfs and vampires) is that it’s no longer possible to take over the entire world.

Playing Empire: Total War, I would not rest until the entire world map was coloured British Empire Red and the Union Jack fluttered proudly above the forts and towns of every single province of the game’s world.

This time around, however, certain parts of the world are simply uninhabitable to some races. Humans can’t live in the Badlands, the Dwarves can’t live in the area the Vampire Counts call home, and so on. It basically means you are never safe; there’s always a faction out there plotting against you and waiting for the right moment to strike.

This also means it can feel like a struggle at times to get your position consolidated, particularly in the Dwarven campaign where I seemed to be perpetually running out of cash to maintain the large armies needed to hold back the Orc hordes — meaning parts of my realm were perpetually under siege or being raided.

While providing a challenge, I found this was somewhat frustrating — even when I reminded myself the game is Total War, not Total Sit Around With A Nice Cup Of Tea Discussing The Cricket.

Each of the game’s races (Humans, Dwarves, Greenskins, Vampires and — via DLC — Chaos Warriors) have their own unique visual designs, units and heroes, ranging from swordsmen and archers through to musketeers (for the humans and dwarfs) to cavalry, artillery and even flying units.

The graphics engine doesn’t appear to have been upgraded greatly from previous games

The diversity of units makes for some interesting tactical options — the greenskins work more on horde-like numbers, The Empire of Humans have steam-powered tanks, the Dwarves have gyrocopters, Vampires can raise dead soldiers as zombies, and so on. Each race also develops technologies and skills to give them an advantage on the battlefield or in managing their realm. As you fight, your units, leaders and heroes also gain experience, skills, or magic spells making them more effective and powerful.

Although I’m not particularly familiar with the Warhammer universe, it’s based closely enough on Tolkein-esque fantasy tropes that anyone with a passing familiarity with them (which is, let’s face it, pretty much everyone who plays computer games) won’t have much trouble picking the game up and figuring out what’s what.

The graphics engine doesn’t appear to have been upgraded greatly from previous games, but it is still perfectly functional and the core Total War gameplay experience shines through. Diplomacy and trade remain useful aspects and the addition of hero units to the battlefield also keeps things interesting.

One of the few backwards steps is in the game’s encyclopaedia, which gives you information about what the units are, what they do, their attack/defence capabilities, special skills and so on.

In previous titles, this has been an accessible, informative and even entertaining read, clearly telling you everything you need to know. This time around, I found it less helpful and also less entertaining to read — it just wasn’t as engaging and sometimes didn’t answer the questions I was seeking out in it.

There also seems to be a tendency for the AI to simply throw huge stacked armies at you; it was highly unusual for me to encounter smaller raiding parties and even the garrisons of most enemy towns seemed fairly sizeable. While this did add to the Grand Fantasy Epic feel of things, it also meant my armies spent a lot of time replacing casualties from huge battles (especially if they lost), at times preventing me from feeling like I could get ahead.

Fortunately, you don’t have to fight the game’s battles manually — there’s an auto-resolve option — but I found the results were invariably better when I took command of the troops myself.

The Total War series has long been one of the more accessible grand strategy games, offering an immersive experience without the extraordinary complexity and involvement of the Europa Universalis and Victoria games, and Total War: Warhammer is no exception.

If you are looking to command great armies of fantastical creatures, unleash magic upon your enemies and generally engage in the sort of epic warfare one would expect to accompany a sword and sorcery setting, it’s hard to go past this title.

Originally published as Clashing swords, flying arrows, thundering cannons and dragons soaring over the battlefield