If you’ve read my Total War: Warhammer tips and tricks article, then you know that I think that Total War: Warhammer is a very good strategy game. Let me tell you that the sequel, Total War: Warhammer 2, is even better.
As fans of the Total War franchise are aware, developer Creative Assembly likes to release their games in paired semi-sequels. Napoleon followed Rome, Attila followed Rome II, and now Warhammer 2 follows Warhammer. In the past, each installment and its respective semi-sequel would share a lot of DNA, even if they’d been dressed up to feel different. Total War: Warhammer 2 is the first game in the series that changes its predecessor’s formula enough to feel fresh, while not completely reinventing the wheel. Unfortunately, in changing up that formula, it still leaves some annoying tropes of the genre unfixed. Thankfully, these end up being nothing more than minor annoyances, but they’re still worth noting.
Where the first game was set in the “Old World”, TWW2 takes place in the “New World”, an entirely new set of continents that somewhat resemble Africa and the Americas. The Old World, which geographically was loosely based off Western Europe, was dominated mostly by humans. Here in the second game, the focus is on four entirely new playable factions: High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, and Skaven. I got the chance to play each of these for a few hours, and every one of them is cool in a different way.
The High Elves are the most conventional and balanced, but also extremely strong, which makes them a good starting faction. The Dark Elves are hedonistic slavers who can sacrifice their indentured servants to summon a giant floating city that acts as artillery support in battles. The Lizardmen are ferocious reptilian killers who are liable to go into a killing frenzy in the middle of battle, ignoring any orders you give. Finally, the Skaven are conniving ratmen who swarm their enemy with sheer numbers and can hide their settlements underground.
At its core, TWW2‘s gameplay strongly resembles that of the first game, which is by no means a bad thing. First, there’s the battle portion, which are the real-time strategy battles that everyone sees in the trailers and promos. Then, there’s the campaign portion, which is the turn-based Civilization-like gameplay that is intrinsic to the grand strategy genre.
In the first game, the endgame entailed you trying to hold off a massive invasion from the forces of Chaos to the north, while also trying to complete a handful of other goals. While this was a novel idea for the genre, the fact that this invasion always came from the same place meant that some factions would have a more interesting campaign than others, simply based on where they were on the map. In TWW2, while the forces of Chaos are definitely still a thing you have to deal with, they are by no means the focus of the single-player campaign.
Instead, no matter which faction you start as, Warhammer 2 starts with a cinematic showing a giant magical vortex that dominates the northeastern corner of the game map. This vortex, which until now has been keeping the forces of Chaos at bay, has started to break down and become vulnerable. Each faction wants to control this vortex somehow, and they do so by performing a series of rituals throughout the campaign. You can only do these rituals by accruing certain currencies, and then defending your cities from enemy attack for a number of turns as you actually perform it. The strength and number of these enemy forces gradually increase with each ritual, culminating with the final one where literally the entire world turns against you and launches a last-ditch effort to keep you from winning.
This campaign of attrition solves the problem that the first game had with its pacing. While the beginning and middle of a campaign were exciting and tense, there would be one or maybe two good wars before one faction blasted way ahead of everyone else. This would result in the last third of the game being tedious busywork as they checked off all their objectives like a shopping list.
The second game’s model solves that by not caring how much territory you have or how many armies you’re fielding; it just wants to know how close you are to filling that bar at the top of your screen. The Bretonnia faction in the first game played similarly, except instead of ritual currency, you were accumulating Chivalry. Given how much people enjoyed playing Bretonnia, it’s clear that Creative Assembly has taken that idea and applied it in a much more significant way here.
However, for those that enjoy the classic steamroller approach, there is a victory condition whereby you conquer all the other main factions. However, this is often much more difficult than a vortex victory, and you’ll probably have already gotten to the final ritual by the time you eliminate all your enemies. It seems like more trouble than it’s worth, but some people prefer that I guess.
This new victory condition also works well because whenever a rival faction begins a ritual, you have the option to spend a buttload of money to hire an army to go and disrupt it or strike out with your own forces to go and disrupt it yourself. Because all of the factions start out on different continents, the fact that you have to travel across vast oceans to get to your rivals really adds to the epic scale and sense of adventure. Furthermore, since you only have a handful of turns to do this in, it feels much more surgical.
In the previous game, it was all about full-scale invasions and gradual expansion. Now, you get in, you smash the crap out of their cities, then you get out. If you succeed, then the other faction has to wait a number of turns before being able to try the ritual again, giving you the chance to catch up. This ensures that no matter how much territory you have, someone could come in at any time and ruin your day. It makes the pacing feel tense no matter what, and that’s what makes it brilliant.
As for the rest of the game, Total War: Warhammer 2 plays and feels very similar to its predecessor. There’s still an RPG element that allows you to equip magical weapons and armor to your lords, and skill trees to level them up with. There’s still the presence of heroes, which you can recruit and either use in battle as powerful units or as agents of espionage on the campaign map. If you played the first Total War: Warhammer, all these mechanics will feel comfortably familiar to you. For those that didn’t, it’s easy to understand.
The micromanagement of the real-time strategy portion might feel overwhelming for newcomers to the series, but Total War: Warhammer 2 has a full-fledged tutorial now, so it’s a good place to start. Still, there’s a lot that the game doesn’t tell you. you. Creative Assembly has added a lot of small quality of life improvements to the battle UI, which I appreciate, but there are still some points when I’m playing a battle and wish there was a certain button or hotkey that doesn’t exist (at least, not that I can find). Also, the AI for diplomacy has been improved marginally, but it will still do things that are straight up confusing. Finally, because naval travel is such a huge component of the game, it would be nice if it was more apparent what the difference was between a land bridge that I could take an army across versus an impassable strait. Like I said, these are just slight annoyances, but they are still annoyances.
Graphically, Total War: Warhammer 2 unsurprisingly looks astounding. I’m running it on a GTX 970 and was able to turn all the bells and whistles on with a decent framerate. If anything, it started chugging a little bit when I had a huge number of units on screen at once. Aside from that, the battle maps are suitably epic and enormous, with varied terrain that can make for tense and strategic battles. The campaign map is much more vibrant and colorful this time around, in contrast with the subtler tones of the first game.
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Adam Miller
Adam is an amateur games writer and personal blogger. He has an avid love of video games, and relentlessly seeks others to share it with. It's usually good fun, until they run away. Why do they always run away”¦.?
