Played for a bit now, its about what I expected from what I saw in streams and reviews.
The game is certainly solid as far as fun is concerned and hasnt shown me any deal breakers from my early campaign foray.
That said, it does come across as a stripped down installment which will really need those patches, dlc and expansions to make something amazing. The streamlining of campaign management features has not been compensated enough with faction flavor and character progression imo.
Theres also a lack of depth with building trees and im not a fan of those basic icons, i like looking at a little picture of a building dammit not symbolic representations. Unfortunately the simplification also went into battles, we have hero magic and abilities but that doesnt mean formations should be cut down to 2 options with units not caring about spear or shield walls.
There are a lot of other small details that feel lacking, where they've either cut corners or missed an opportunity to emphasize a particular faction's way of doing things. Oh and how can I forget sieges, I suspect they took a shit on them more to save on modelling all the exotic locations than giving a simpler time to AI, a shame either way when something as simple as a hill top would do better in representing wall-less settlements or a copy-paste inland city map instead of 1-2 walls.
Im playing Orcs on VH/VH which is providing a challenge, although aggravatingly a lot is still down to AI buffs and arbitrary player penalties. They havent quite balanced everything, one small thing i noticed is that some experience is a bit too generous. Chasing down and autoresolving an easy routed army seems just as rewarding in exp as taking on a challenging large scale battle. Thankfully things like that, agent spam, unit power imbalances, certain underwhelming magic spells etc is all fixable in patches.
Its interesting to contrast this to Attila. What I really liked about Attila is that it ticked all the boxes, there wasnt any huge gaps, the map was big, plenty of things to do and conquer as time went on, the various campaign variables and inner faction heirarchies were there, there was plenty of choices and units, factions, sea battles, sieges, agents. The battles were fairly fun with workable AI and balance. I couldnt pick out a fault that really let me down. But, at the same time it lacked some oomph, I think as a TW vet ive been there and done that too many times for Attila to keep me coming back and trying to conquer olden times Europe.
But here comes Warhammer and its switched. This game has that X factor. Brand new setting, cool heroes and leveling, magic and nice loot to collect and use. Im excited to get my lords growing from strength to strength like an RPG game, I love the faction variety and wild monsters, flyers and wizards.
Its just frustrating that they have brought all this into the TW genre but (unnecessarily imo) taken out a bunch of existing mechanics. As it is right now I would only recommend buying this game if you're really itching to play and dont have anything to occupy yourself with till the next standalone. As most TW games, this one will only get better over time with the patches and added content but whats really critical for me is that they flesh out the base of the game. Im hoping they look over all the factions, not just new ones, adding extra depth and detail as they go. This could be the best TW ever but if CA/Sega rest on their laurels it will have those niggling oversights that ruin its potential.
