Total War Saga: Troy: First Impressions

You got me, Tim Sweeney. A free Total War game at release? How could I resist? I signed up to the Epic Store and claimed my free copy of Total War Saga: Troy and I’m now ready to share my first – and possibly last – impressions.

I’d normally follow a First Impressions post with a review, but the problem is, I’m not sure I want to keep playing Troy, at least not in its current state. I’ve not yet completed a campaign and I’m not sure I want to. And it wouldn’t be fair to review Troy if I don’t complete at least one campaign.

I might return to it again in the future, if patches and updates address the issues I’m having but, honestly, with a new and exciting 3K DLC release on the horizon, I don’t see much reason to return to what is, unfortunately, an inferior experience. Notice I said ‘inferior’ and not ‘bad’ because I don’t consider what I’ve played of Troy to be bad. Well, aside from one important aspect that I’ll discuss later – but it’s an aspect that can be fixed with post-release support.

Visually, Troy looks great with what is one of the most gorgeous campaign maps we’ve ever had in a Total War game. It’s vibrant and alive and it captures the setting beautifully. The art and UI work is also perfect for the setting and does a fantastic job of immersing you within the period.

 

The battle maps are also among some of the best we’ve ever had, not only visually in terms of lighting and vegetation, but also in terrain variation. The maps remind me a lot of those in Total War: Arena, with plenty of natural choke points and elevated positions. Compared to Warhammer or 3K which predominately feature relatively ‘flat’ maps, Troy’s maps provide what should be a more tactical and engaging terrain to navigate and fight upon. I say ‘should’ because sadly, the combat of Troy is the ‘bad’ part of the game I was referring to earlier.

Unit variation is a problem. If you didn’t like 3K because of the similar unit types, then you really won’t like Troy. Troy is, by design, an infantry focused game given the setting. Range units (particularly skirmishers) still play an important role, but cavalry is nearly non-existent.

Chariots can be recruited, but I’ve never been a fan of chariots in TW and I can’t say I’m a fan of them here, even though it’s incredibly easy to cheese your way to victory with them due to the lack of proper collisions.

I don’t know what’s going on with the unit engagements in Troy but none of them feel right. 3K, admittedly, struggles a little with this too, at least in terms of infantry clashes. But cavalry and range in 3K are pretty much perfect. In fact, 3K probably has the best cavalry movement / impact in the TW series.

 

But Troy is all about infantry, and the infantry clashes feel incredibly weak. Charging units just kind of slide into each other without any sense of weight or impact. Infantry has three weight classes in Troy – Light, Medium and Heavy. But honestly, all this really means is – Medium beats Light and Heavy beats Medium. Heavy infantry really doesn’t cost that much to recruit or upkeep, so you’ll soon be rocking a full stack of entirely heavy infantry because there’s no reason to recruit the lighter and inferior weight classes.

Also, given how effective range can be against non-shielded units, there’s really no reason to use them at all. I mean, it’s not like you need a few non-shielded spearman to help protect your flanks / rear lines against cavalry because you’ll rarely see them on the field – and if you do, your range units will make short work of them anyway.

Playing Troy, I soon realised that all I really needed to win every battle was a lot of heavy, shielded infantry supported by some range. The AI, to give it some credit, tries to build its armies with a mixture of unit weight types, but there’s really no benefit to doing so. Heavy will always win, so why use less? 

The unit balance needs work, to say the least, as does the collision system. The good news is that these are things that can be fixed. But in its current state, I can’t say I enjoy the battles of Troy despite the lovely maps. The combat needs some serious work to bring it up to scratch with Warhammer and 3K.

The campaign side of the game, however, is in a pretty good state, although it clearly still needs some work and there’s also some . . . dated aspects to it that really started to annoy me. I’m talking, of course, about agents. Agent spam in Troy is a f**king nightmare as you progress through a campaign. Unlike heroes in Warhammer that serve a dual-role both on the battlefield and campaign, agents in Troy behave just as they did in older TW games – they can target and perform various actions on characters or settlements, or provide passive boosts to a local region or an army they’ve embedded into.

There are two types of agent in Troy – regular and epic. Epic agents only serve for a short period of time but can cause devastating effects – such as pretty much wiping out an entire city garrison prior to your siege. The regular agents are what you’d expect – priest, spy and diplomat types, but f**k me, there are way too many of them.

A big part of the campaign is gaining favour with the Gods, and that’s a pretty neat mechanic I suspect is being tested ahead of Warhammer 3. But gaining favour requires building more temples and temples let you recruit more priests. With every faction doing this the campaign map quickly becomes littered with priests roaming the map, targeting your settlements and characters en mass.

At one point I had four of the f**kers just following one of my armies around trying to block my movement every single turn. I know the idea is to counter these agents with your own, but it’s like playing a tedious, never ending game of whack-a-mole. Every time I get rid of one, two more pop up.

I’m so glad I’ll soon return to 3K where agents no longer exist and their role has been incorporated into new mechanics such as character assignments and the underrated spy system. I can tolerate agents / heroes in Warhammer because of the dual-role they serve and the unique skills (like magic) they possess. But Troy doesn’t have that and as a result, the way it uses agents feels dated and it just isn’t fun to engage with.

Another issue I have with the campaign is the size of the map. It might seem like a strange complaint but Troy is, or should be, really about the war between Troy and the Greeks. But because they’re so separated and consumed with fighting within their own territories, that ‘war’ never really sparks into life – at least it hasn’t in the campaigns I’ve tried. I guess you could argue that the war comes later once each side is more unified, but it’s a real slog to reach that point.

 

Diplomacy is also kind of annoying. I like the new barter system with the multiple resources but f**k me, does the AI just not stop coming to you with completely shit deals. Turn after turn they bother you with requests that make little to no sense. Also, it’s really not hard to acquire all the resources you need in a relatively short period of time by conquering your local regions, so you don’t really need to barter anyway.

And for a series which is supposed to be about experimentation, Troy doesn’t really experiment at all. The new ‘weight’ system doesn’t really do anything meaningful in terms of how units fight, move or interact. The bartering system is really just what we had in 3K but not really as interesting because it also doesn’t include weapons, horses or other unique character items. And for a game based around one of, if not the most famous siege in history, Troy does nothing new or interesting with sieges.

Compared to the previous Saga game – Thrones of Britannia – which felt like an expansion to Total War: Attila, I can at least say that Troy is a step up in a lot of ways. It feels like its own game with its own identity – not just a reskin of Warhammer / 3K. They’ve done a great job with the visual presentation, but the campaign and most importantly the battles need a lot of work and rebalancing.

I hope Troy gets the support and updates it needs because there is, potentially, a really good Total War experience here, but in its current state it’s just not something I can really enjoy and I just don’t want to waste more time playing it when I can go back to Warhammer 2 or 3K and enjoy far more engaging campaign and battle experiences. I might go back to Troy in the future and do a proper review. I might not. But I’ll keep it installed (for now) and keep an eye on how it progresses.