Welcome to a world where a horde of cruel and disgusting beasts led by a great flying demon wielding a flaming sword threaten to sweep your army away. Even if you don’t know the previous two parts, Total War: Warhammer III will provide you with many hours of good entertainment (unless new patch is available).
I’m not a crazy fan of the Warhammer world , but rather a random connoisseur. In connection with the above, the text that you are reading I wrote based solely on the latest part of Total War: Warhammer III without detailed knowledge of the previous ones and it concerns single-player campaigns.
Today I will be a bloodthirsty demon
We can start the game in two ways: either by passing the prologue, from which we not only learn a lot about the world, but also learn the rules of the game, or by entering a specific campaign right away. Personally, I encourage you to use the first option, especially if this is your first contact with this title.
The prologue perfectly explains how to control the main character, and then the members of his team. We learn how to recruit and train new units, develop skill trees (for points), as well as maintain and develop settlements, or conduct battles and diplomatic discussions (we can negotiate, bribe, and even demand tribute). In addition, we focus here on one character and his path, while being drawn into the story of the lost deity Ursuna, the bear, and the expedition to find him. This episode is an excellent introduction to the actual campaigns and makes a very good first impression.
You must gather your party before venturing forth
After completing the prologue, entering the new campaign option and we see the image from the screen. Total War: Warhammer III allows us to play one of the seven factions. Among them are human squads, i.e. Kislev (clearly inspired by medieval Russia) and Great Kataj (based on imperial China), and apart from them, we have a choice of four Chaos Gods (Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh) and Chaos Demons. For those who pre-ordered the game, there is also the option to choose the Ogre Kingdom. Different factions mean different tactics and a compulsion to understand several mechanisms of civilization’s development. This situation makes it impossible to get bored with this title too quickly, because it presents us with interesting tasks and sometimes makes us think hard.
Okay, what are we gonna do?
Our main task is to defeat the whole mass of different armies and collect four souls of the Demon Princes (during the forays to the Kingdom of Chaos) to reach the final showdown deciding the fate of the bear god – Ursun. We move around the board, and the rival factions try to forestall us and gain the souls ourselves, so we are often confronted with difficult decisions (e.g. whether to escape from the battlefield or to be massacred). However, what I noticed (and read on the Steam forum as well) is that the automatic option to play a battle often misjudges our possibilities. I will admit that I used it several times to speed up certain situations, but going through full fights in most cases gave much more satisfactory results. It was also quite unpleasant for me to move from the prologue to the new Kataji campaign, because suddenly I was inundated with a lot of tasks, enemies and objectives to complete, and I had to keep an eye out to keep the balance of Yin and Yang. I felt very distracted and got the feeling that it was too much at once.
Although conquering neighboring cities, concluding contracts with allies and building infrastructure can be a lot of satisfaction, often such tasks seem to be slightly detached from the main goal, and this is the preparation of one main army led by a lord, which we need to go to. Chaos Kingdoms. Another thing is (or maybe it was only in my case) the situation with updates, which stopped me from updating the game every time. When in the first three weeks anything was corrected and made available for download on my Steam account, it was reported that I could not update the title and the only advice was to delete it completely, then download and reinstall it. It had a very negative impact on my perception of that part of Warhammer – although I rate the gameplay itself exceptionally well.
It is worth giving it a few hours of your life
If you like games with RTS elements, Total War: Warhammer III will be a good choice for you. The story is intriguing and simply captivating through its extensive action. The gameplay is similar to what we know from other titles in this genre, the controls are not problematic, and the visual side is extremely pleasant. If every update did not cause my Steam to crash, I would certainly be speaking only in superlatives about it.