Now Playing: Total War: Warhammer 3

With 60 hours clocked and 3 campaigns completed, I figured it was time to knock out my review of Total War: Warhammer 3. If you’ve read my First Impressions post you’ll know that my initial reaction to the game was rather mixed, primarily due to the core campaign mechanics. There’s a lot that’s pretty fantastic about WH3 – the visuals, animations, music, battle maps, faction variety and impressive level of release day content.

The new siege system – whilst needing a few tweaks – is a welcome change. I agree that there needs to be less minor settlement battles, but a simple fix would be that these battles only occur at settlement level 2 or 3, otherwise a field battle is fought outside the settlement. Another easy tweak would be tower / barricade points being one-use only, stopping the player or AI from continually rebuilding them mid-fight.

There are some technical / bug / performance issues that also need to be addressed, but there’s nothing here that I felt seriously harmed my experience. I spoke in my FI post about returning to the Warhammer series from Three Kingdoms and how, in some ways, it felt like a step back. But I’d say that feeling isn’t as strong now I’ve readjusted to the way the campaign in Warhammer plays. That said, I still find the hero spam to be a particularly annoying facet of this series.

The real big problem with Warhammer 3 is the way the core campaign plays out. I’m certainly not opposed to smaller scale, objective focused campaigns. I liked the Vortex campaign in Warhammer 2 because it offered an alternative, more focused way of playing compared to the full sandbox experience of the Mortal Empires combined campaign. And I’m totally okay with Warhammer 3 doing something similar – offering a shorter, more focused narrative driven campaign that offers an alternative to the as yet untitled and unreleased mega-campaign that combines the maps and races of Warhammer 1, 2 & 3. The problem is, the core campaign of Warhammer 3 just isn’t very fun – at least not in its current state.

I’ve completed the campaign 3 times – as Kislev, Khorne and Cathay. Every campaign followed a similar pattern – an enjoyable start, followed by a tedious slog when the portals begin to open, followed by an irritating finish as I just want the campaign to end. Khorne, due to their faction mechanics, was probably the campaign that annoyed me the least. Kislev was an absolute nightmare of a grind and Cathay . . . well, Cathay was just kind of boring.

I’m not talking boring as in how the faction plays – because I love how each of the factions I’ve played work in the campaign in terms of mechanics and units. No, I’m talking about how each faction is faced with managing the core campaign. Kislev is mostly surrounded by hostile factions, constantly facing attacks so it’s not easy having to keep your best army and faction leader out of the fight either in the portal race, or resting in a city to remove negative traits before the next round begins.

Khorne, thanks to their increased movement mechanics makes getting through the portal realms pretty fast – but you’re still stuck waiting around for the traits to be removed which is even more annoying for a faction that relies heavily on momentum. And then we have Cathay which, once you’ve secured your initial province, is fairly easy to confederate the others around you giving you a safe and secure position where you’re not really in any danger. As a result, you just sit back and play the portal race because there’s not really any reason to expand – but this is also kind of dull.

Because despite the fantastic faction variety in terms of mechanics and units, every faction has to play the portal race exactly the same way – a race in which the less territory you hold, the easier it is because you have less portals to deal with continually spawning chaos armies and heroes and spreading corruption. A race in which if you don’t get into a realm before the AI, you’ll likely get kicked out and have wasted your time when they claim the soul before you.

A race in which your faction leader will be afflicted with multiple negative traits once they exit the chaos realms, forcing them to remain in a city for several turns waiting for the traits to be randomly removed. And by the time they are, the next round of portals will soon be ready to open so you have to do it all again.

The general concept of the campaign – entering the 4, unique chaos realms to retrieve the souls and fighting survival battles is something I actually like. The problem is, it’s way too punishing and restrictive towards the player. The good news is that, like the issue with the siege rework, it can be improved with just a few simple changes.

The first is that the negative chaos realm traits need to go – they’re completely pointless. Just get rid of them entirely. The second is that the chaos portals shouldn’t do more than spread a little corruption – no spawning heroes or armies. Right now, you have to keep several heroes strategically positioned throughout your territory so they can play whack-a-mole every time the portal event begins.

It’s annoying and tedious and it means that even if you’re trying to ignore the portal race and focusing instead on territorial conquest, you can’t ignore it entirely – and the more territory you take, the situation only gets worse.

If we really must race the AI, then don’t let us get kicked out if they claim a soul before us – it means we have to sit around and rush into the realm we need on the first turn the portals open or we’ll risk missing out. Let us enter when we’re ready, at our own pace. In fact, why not remove the AI from the portal race entirely? Just let the player engage with it when and if they want to. That’s obviously a bigger change, but probably the best one they can make. It would also make more sense from a narrative perspective.

Okay, I don’t want to drag this on any longer than I have to. Between this review and my FI post I think I’ve made it pretty clear what I think the main problem of WH3 is and how I feel about it. But let’s not forget that, aside from this problem, everything else WH3 does is pretty damn fantastic. I honestly can’t wait for the mega-campaign to be released so I’ll be able to play with these new factions in a pure sandbox experience.

Because the races, their mechanics and their units are all pretty great. And I think that once the mega-campaign is released and a few (inevitable) patches roll out to fix any initial issues, this Warhammer trilogy really will go down as one of the best strategy games of all time. But we’re not there yet, and there’s clearly a lot more work to do.

So I guess the question is – would I recommend WH3 in its current state? If you’re a fan of the previous games but you didn’t like the Vortex campaign at all then I’d say no – wait for the mega-campaign. If you’re like me and you did like the Vortex campaign for the smaller, more focused experience it offered then, even in its current state, I’d say the core campaign is worth picking up and playing.

I just hope CA can roll out some updates over the next few months that change the way the campaign works along the lines I’ve suggested here. Because like I said, the concept isn’t bad, it’s just the execution that needs work. Overall, WH3 is a solid and impressive release with an unfortunately big problem in the form of a campaign system that’s just not very fun in its current state. I am still having some fun with the game despite that problem, but not as much fun as I’d like.

7/10