Total War: Warhammer 3: First Impressions

With 28 hours clocked, I just finished my first Total War: Warhammer 3 campaign and I hate to say it, but my initial impressions are a little mixed. But before we get too negative, let’s quickly run through all the good stuff in Warhammer 3.

Visually, Warhammer 3 looks superb. The units, campaign and battle maps are all impressively detailed. The unit animations are amazing. The sound design is excellent, accompanied by an excellent soundtrack. In terms of content, Warhammer 3 has nearly double at release compared to Warhammer 1 & 2 with 8 races and 12 Legendary Lords available to play on Day 1.

The multiplayer campaign has been expanded for 8 players, with a new option for simultaneous turns. And there are even two smaller ‘mini-campaigns’ for exclusive co-op play – although I wish these were also available to play solo. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my first campaign and I’m sure I’ll enjoy many more but, I must admit, I’m not in a great hurry to jump into another campaign just yet.

The first problem I have with Warhammer 3 is that it’s not Total War: Three Kingdoms. This might sound a little strange, but allow me to explain.

Three Kingdoms introduced some pretty major overhauls of the campaign side of Total War with numerous improvements to the diplomatic system as well as faction, character and settlement management. Although WH3 rolls a few of these features into its own campaign (such as the Quick Deal diplomatic option) the majority of what made 3K so enjoyable and engaging in its campaign is largely absent here.

Now, to be fair, I did kind of expect this. After all, Warhammer 3 needs to be able to combine with Warhammer 1 & 2, so it simply isn’t possible to radically overhaul these systems, not without breaking or entirely redesigning all of the previous content. And I’m not sure the hardcore Warhammer fans would want that. They’re probably quite happy with how the Warhammer games already play.

But me? It feels like a step back after playing 3K and that’s hard for me to adjust to. Obviously, 3K can’t compete with Warhammer when it comes to faction and unit diversity. That’s the real star of the Warhammer games and it carries WH3 just as much as it did WH1 & WH2.

One thing I was really glad to see the back of in 3K was campaign map agent spam. At times during my Kislev campaign, I had 12 or more enemy heroes running around my territory. Some of the cities had 3-4 permanently camped outside. And no matter how many times I eliminated the f**ks they’d reappear a few turns later – and they’d usually bring a friend.

I don’t recall the heroes in Warhammer 2 being this numerous or annoying. It’s a little silly calling them ‘heroes’ when new ones are popping up every f**king turn. They seriously need to limit how many heroes each faction can recruit. They should be special characters whose placement – embedded in an army or active on the campaign map – is a considered decision.

But they’re not because there’s no end to them and I really got f**king sick of playing whack-a-mole every turn trying to get rid of them. Speaking of playing whack-a-mole we also need to talk about the core campaign mechanics because I have a lot to say about that, but for now, let’s talk about battles and the new siege system.

Battles in WH3 felt a little strange at first and I couldn’t quite figure out why. They all seemed so . . . messy and, if you’ll forgive the pun, chaotic. And that’s when I realised the problem – some unit collisions are totally screwed up. Now, I’m no expert on this stuff, so I don’t know if it’s collision or not, but I do know that when a line of infantry is ‘braced’, enemy units like cavalry shouldn’t be able to just push their way through the formation.

Because that’s what’s happening now in so many battles. Any ‘larger’ unit can just walk through a braced battle line like it’s not even there. And that’s why battles feel so messy – because any attempt to use formations goes to hell when the enemy can just push straight through your line and immediately attack the weaker units such as archers, artillery or spell casters behind. They don’t even take damage as they ‘push’ through. It just slows them down. I never had this problem in WH2 so I assume it’s some kind of bug they need to fix.

And then we have the new siege system which I do kind of like, but I do think it needs a few tweaks such as you or the AI being unable to rebuild destroyed towers or fortifications. Every building ‘point’ should be one use only. That would encourage both you and the AI to hold the outer areas of the settlements first, before falling back and building new defences at a second or third line. But right now, you can just keep rebuilding stuff, even behind the enemy as they advance and it’s annoying when the AI does it to you, and kind of overpowered when you do it against the AI.

And finally we have the main campaign mechanic in which you must race the AI to obtain four souls from the four realms of Chaos. And it really is a race, make no mistake. I actually think this system could be pretty fun but in its current state, its kind of not.

It results in a campaign where expanding too far is actually detrimental to your progress. It’s more effective to play turtle, keeping your faction leader fresh and ready to enter the portals to the chaos realms as soon as they appear because if you don’t, the AI will beat you to the souls. And if the AI reaches a soul before you, you get kicked out of the realm with nothing to show for it.

Keep in mind, each realm can take several turns to complete, turns in which your faction leader and what is likely your best army is mostly sat around doing nothing. To get kicked out with no reward is a total waste of your time. You have to just sit and wait for the portals to re-open. But even if you do claim a soul, you’ll also pick up some pretty nasty negative traits which you can only remove by spending 2-3 turns in your capital city, or in a region with a specific building type.

Which means . . . more sitting around . . . waiting. And whilst this is going on, you’re not really focused on the rest of the map. Your faction leader can’t really get involved in your expansion because you need to clear those negative traits and get ready for the next round of portals. And, like I said, expanding too far is detrimental because you now have more portals to close before they spawn so many chaos armies (and more f**king heroes) it becomes a nightmare to deal with. So you’re playing whack-a-mole, not only with enemy heroes, but the chaos portals and the armies and heroes they spawn.

That’s how I think I spent 70% of my campaign time, running heroes around to kill other heroes or closing portals. Most of my armies just sat in key locations to protect my modest borders because I couldn’t focus on expansion if I wanted to win the campaign.

Which I almost didn’t. One of the AI factions collected all 4 souls before me. The game told me I could intercept this army, defeat it in combat and block it from returning for 15 turns. I expected it to work like the Warhammer 2 Vortex system whereby I’d get the option to teleport and stop them. But no, I just had to send my faction leader to camp the quest point . . . waiting . . . and sitting . . . and waiting several turns for the enemy to finally decide to show up.

But after defeating that army, I tried rushing for my last soul, only to receive the notification that I’d lost the campaign several turns later. Because the AI didn’t get the memo about being blocked for 15 turns, it seems. So I reloaded and returned to the quest point, defeated the army a second time and then returned to the realm to claim my last soul but . . . the realm then reset, and I had to start from scratch. Which meant rushing as fast as it would let me, spamming the end turn button to claim the soul before the AI could re-spawn again.

I managed to do it, but at this point I was really just hating the game. It just wasn’t fun. I took my soul, fought the final boss battle and won. But I was glad it was over. A campaign I’d initially really been enjoying turned into a campaign I just wanted to end.

But here’s the thing – the system isn’t bad, it just needs some tweaks. The portals shouldn’t appear so often or be so numerous. They shouldn’t spawn enemy armies or heroes. You shouldn’t get negative traits just for entering the realms. If the AI claims a soul in a realm before you do, you shouldn’t get kicked out of it – everyone should have an equal chance. And if the AI does claim all the souls before you, you should get an instant notification to teleport and stop them.

The campaign in WH3 right now is just too focused on racing for the souls. My faction leader spent most of the campaign just slowly traversing the chaos realms, one turn at a time, or sitting in a city waiting for a negative trait to be removed so I could go back in. The way it works right now is tedious and it sucks. I just stopped caring about anything but getting that last soul. I stopped bothering managing my territory because it really didn’t matter. My other armies didn’t matter.

That’s why I’m reluctant to jump into a new campaign because I don’t want the same thing to happen again – me just sitting there, spamming end turn not really caring about anything, just waiting for the next portal to open so I can jump in first and win. I guess I could try to ignore it and focus on a domination victory, but I’m still going to be stuck playing whack-a-mole with chaos portals every 15 turns or so.

Overall, although it might be hard to believe after that lengthy rant, I’d still say my experience with WH3 has been mostly positive despite my issues. I do want to start a new campaign, but I might wait for a patch or two to see what changes get made. Because changes do need to be made if they want this campaign to be fun and engaging from beginning to end – not the tedious and annoying grind it slowly turns into now.