Warhammer Total War: Warhammer 2

[Raghar]

One or two people were playing it this weekend already.

 

[Seethe]

One or two people were playing it this weekend already.

Developers. One of them has like hundreds of hours in it.

Was checking this out on steam and found:

PRE-PURCHASE OFFER
This DLC makes the Norsca Race playable, barbaric tribes that serve the dark gods through hunting and pillaging. Hardened by endless blizzards and monstrous beasts, they exist only to lay waste.



This content requires the base game Total War: WARHAMMER on Steam in order to play.

This content requires the base game Total War: WARHAMMER on Steam in order to play.

This content requires the base game Total War: WARHAMMER on Steam in order to play.

LOL fuck CA and fuck GW

Are you surprised that a Total War Warhammer DLC requires Total War Warhammer to play?

 

[Raghar]

One or two people were playing it this weekend already.

Developers. One of them has like hundreds of hours in it.

Two more than there were last week. And developers in CA typically didn't do work on weekends.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Are you surprised that a Total War Warhammer DLC requires Total War Warhammer to play?

Well if you don't own TWW1 that pre-order bonus is useless unless you decide to fork out another $40 or whatever for TWW1.

Seems deceptive to me that a pre-order bonus would give some DLC to a different $40 game that's practically named the same.

Also as far as I'm aware you'll be able to import races from TWW1 into TWW2 so why wouldn't norsca just unlock in TWW2 even if you don't have TWW1?

 

[janior]

they actually doing it like that? wtf this is some next lvl of retarded dlc policy

 

[Seethe]

Are you surprised that a Total War Warhammer DLC requires Total War Warhammer to play?

Well if you don't own TWW1 that pre-order bonus is useless unless you decide to fork out another $40 or whatever for TWW1.

Seems deceptive to me that a pre-order bonus would give some DLC to a different $40 game that's practically named the same.

Also as far as I'm aware you'll be able to import races from TWW1 into TWW2 so why wouldn't norsca just unlock in TWW2 even if you don't have TWW1?

Well, if you don't have the first game, and you do not plan on getting it, you might as well pretend that the pre-order bonus does not exist and not pre-order the game. Personally, I NEVER pre-order games, even with the shitty Chaos bullshit that they've pulled in the first game. I've even waited several months and got the game for 13 bucks, out of spite. The only reason I pre-ordered TWW2 is because I was gonna buy the game no matter what(for the combined map with the new races at least, which I am familiar with already so no risk there), and might as well save 10 bucks by not paying for Norsca.

Note however that you won't be able to play TWW1 races in the TWW2 campaign map. The TWW2 campaign is different from the combined campaign map, which will be a thing only for those who own both games. The whole thing they've pulled off is a bit confusing and stupid, but I hope it's a bit clearer now.

 

[Raghar]

This day they dropped CONSIDERABLY workload, and it looks WH2 is finished, or at least they will not bother with it until release and complains about bugs. I still see something that looks like one or two reviewer copies in the wild.

 

[Spectacle]

I really wish they would go back to basics with the Total War games and reduce the amount of busywork and micromanagement in the campaign. There's far too much pointless gameplay between each actually interesting battle.

 

[Urthor]

I'll be sure to enjoy this game in 5 years when you can actually buy the gold edition with all of the races for a reasonable price

 

[Andkat]

Also when the actually good overhaul mods are finished to correct CA's unending cavalcade of inept design decisions.

 

[Urthor]

Also when the actually good overhaul mods are finished to correct CA's unending cavalcade of inept design decisions.

This is from the company that specifically changed their folder structure to be total overhaul mod unfriendly after The Third Age mod was too succesful and stopped people buying sequels. Iirc the guy who made Darthmod ragequit Total War mod creation because Creative Assembly were providing shit support to actual modders who were doing complete overhauls and not just reskinning random models.

 

[Fedora Master]

Also when the actually good overhaul mods are finished to correct CA's unending cavalcade of inept design decisions.

This is from the company that specifically changed their folder structure to be total overhaul mod unfriendly after The Third Age mod was too succesful and stopped people buying sequels. Iirc the guy who made Darthmod ragequit Total War mod creation because Creative Assembly were providing shit support to actual modders who were doing complete overhauls and not just reskinning random models.

Darth "quit" modding because CA didn't want to work with his spergy ass.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Falksi]

I'll be sure to enjoy this game in 5 years when you can actually buy the gold edition with all of the races for a reasonable price

How on Earth are there still people out there who don't do this?

If ever a Bond-esq villain wanted to wipe the world free of all lowlifes, and create a race of elite people, the virus he released would be one which instantly wiped out anyone still stupid enough to click the pre-order button.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Raghar]

Streamers on twitch would get it 25 th.
And some reviewers are playing already.

There was a patch for launcher to add WH2 into generic total war launcher.

Also these jerks are using Denuvo, so enjoy your loaned game.

 

[kris]

Total war campaign is in dire need of a "storyteller", in particular for the warhammer games. I am thinking a system that brings in new challenges for the player when he has come to a point like in the above lizardmen lets play. for warhammer this would just add to the challenge and fun. Because as it is you always come up to that part were your land is superstable and you got several stacks that cant be defeated. I came thinking about this playing the first game yesterday. Basically you need to be "lucky" to get some challenging rival apart from that Chaos invasion (which some factions might never meet). it just isn't very satisfying having just recruited your first dragon and then only getting peasants to fight (in armies you got to chase around the map).

System would be like:

- Enemies get stronger (yes cheat)
- Not rebellion same faction rivals come up with a stack strong as your own. Possibly as a quest battle.
- Skaven incursion
- high elf expeditionary force.
- Necromancer rises in one of your towns.

and so on.

 

[Mr. Pink]

they probably won't, but it would be nice if they made estalia and tilea playable factions with their own tercio/pike and shot style roster. they're right in the middle of the campaign map and have access to the new world and not-africa so it would be a fun starting position

 

[Raghar]

And we had Total Biscuit stream yesterday. As I said some reviewers are playing already.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'll be sure to enjoy this game in 5 years when you can actually buy the gold edition with all of the races for a reasonable price

They haven't done gold editions in quite awhile. Best it gets for new TW games these days is 50% off DLC.

 

[Raghar]

I had Shogun 2 gold all three games with all DLC with exception of blood pack for 12 $. Well things probably changed.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/09/25/total-war-warhammer-2-review/

Wot I Think: Total War – Warhammer 2
Fraser Brown on September 25th, 2017 at 3:00 pm.

In three more turns, the ritual will be complete, and I’ll be one step closer to controlling the Vortex that holds the forces of Chaos at bay. In two more turns, Skaven and Chaos armies will be at the gates. I’m surrounded. By land and sea they arrive, this howling mass of warped warriors and chittering rat-men. Army, after army, after army, all attempting to stop the ritual. Total War: Warhammer 2 [official site] is a race, and it’s an utterly savage one.

From the safety of the other side of that campaign I can tell you that I survived. Just. Reinforcements made it in time, slaughtering the rats and warriors by their hundreds. It was touch and go for a bit, though, which is fairly typical of Creative Assembly’s bloodthirsty sequel.


Warhammer 2 is massive but like the best Total Wars – Shogun 2, Attila and post-DLC Warhammer – it’s blessed with a focus that keeps the titanic scale of the campaign and battles from becoming too exhausting. Previous games in the series have found focus in different ways – Attila uses the devastation wrought by the Huns, while Shogun 2 uses its limited landmass – and those that haven’t directed the players’ experience at least a little have often collapsed under their own weight.

With Warhammer 2, Creative Assembly have found a way to have their cake and eat it too. It’s one of, if not the, largest and most complex game in the series’ history, but it’s also one of the most focused.

This is largely down to the non-traditional main campaign. Typically, the launch of a new Total War is accompanied by a new grand campaign, a huge sandbox with limited direction. With Warhammer 2, we get the Vortex campaign instead. While its scale is that of a grand campaign, it’s more directed, complete with shared objectives that dramatically change the flow of the game. And most surprising, it comes with a proper story, told through lavish cutscenes.

Instead of being a straightforward domination game, Warhammer 2 has two paths to victory. The first one is closer to what you’ll probably be used to: beat the crap out of everyone and take over the world. The second objective makes things much more interesting. At the heart of the High Elf realm sits a large maelstrom, the campaign’s titular Vortex. Created by the Elves, it stops Chaos from leaking into their world. But it’s been weakened, and each of the four playable factions is in a race take control over it for their own reasons.

To gain mastery over the Vortex, each faction must gather up Vortex currency by establishing new settlements, completing quests and constructing unique, very rare buildings in specific locations. Then, five rituals must be completed, each costing a large amount of currency. And this is where things start to get a little more complicated.

When the ritual kicks off, three settlements are selected, and they become ritual sites. For ten turns, those sites must be protected, and that’s not easy. See, everyone knows when a ritual has started, so there’s a good chance that the other factions will intervene. They might send some armies, but they might also spend gold on a one-off army that will spawn right next to one of the sites. And while this is going on, the forces of Chaos decide to pop in to say hello. And also to murder.

Performing those rituals is the most stressful situation I’ve encountered in a Total War game, and it happens at least five times a game, each attempt being more challenging than the last. There’s potential for every major and minor faction in the world to get involved, and that guarantees the absurdly huge, dramatic battles that Total War does so well, while injecting some delightfully tricky encounters into every playthrough.

No part of Warhammer 2 has been left untouched by the Vortex. Missions, battles, conquest – they all serve to get you closer to taking its power for yourself. It’s the change in pace that feels like the most notable change, however. The first Warhammer provided plenty of missions, and the threat of the Chaos invasion, but ultimately it was still a game about gobbling up land. Not because huge, sprawling empires were better or even more fun to play, but because that was simply the end goal.

With domination now optional, so much busywork has been cut out. Take my Dark Elf campaign, for example. As the Dark Elf leader Malekith, I started in the north of a continent full of houses of my own race. In the previous game, the first order of business would probably involve uniting all of these houses before directing my anger outwards. In Warhammer 2, that’s not necessarily an efficient use of time or resources.

Sure, each additional settlement comes with benefits: more cash, faster recruitment, lots of unique buildings. Conquering cities is still very much part of the game and is generally a good idea, but a more objective-based approach is also required. So after conquering only my immediate neighbours, I used diplomacy with an eye towards seducing the other Dark Elves into a confederation, while I focused on more important matters. Like preparing for the rituals.

With that in mind, I picked my targets carefully. Settlements with buildings that could generate Vortex currency were at the top of my list, but they were accompanied by quests that offered magical items, cash and even more Vortex currency. These RPG-flavoured missions are more frequent than in the last game, and they’ve also been given considerably more context through important characters and story beats. Warhammer 2 doubles down by introducing treasure hunting and dungeon delving, too.

Littered throughout the land and sea are wrecks, ruins and caves that can be explored in brief Choose Your Own Adventures. The results are too random and adventures too slight, but they undoubtedly encourage exploration and, more importantly, make it more likely that you’ll bump into an enemy army or one of the neutral rogue warbands that wander across the map.

It’s a lovely map to explore, full of vibrant tropical jungles, striking frigid wastes and pleasant forests. Not sure I’d recommend a visit to the Chaos corrupted lands, mind you. The campaign map’s diversity means the battle locales are more varied as well, and not just in terms of aesthetics. Battles in the last game largely took place on very simple, flat maps. These made fights a lot easier to read, but at the cost of being tactically interesting. There are still of lot of them in Warhammer 2, unfortunately, but there are also a fair number of choke points, thick forests, river crossings, cliffs and large hills. Geography plays a much greater role, adding more meaningful decisions and thrilling clashes to battles. Desperately holding the high ground or defending a causeway against a tide of foes is always going to be more entertaining than smashing armies together on a featureless plain.

Focus is maintained, despite all of these quests, fights and treasure hunts, because the game constantly reinforces the importance of controlling the Vortex. A meter that shows every faction’s progress sits at the top of the screen, while notifications pop up whenever one of them starts or finishes a ritual. It’s a layer of pressure that never goes away.

It might be the best campaign that Creative Assembly’s ever made, but there’s something to be said for the total sandbox, set-your-own-goals approach of the typical grand campaign. I’m left wondering if this might have an impact on the Vortex’s replayable appeal, though after two playthroughs I’m certainly not sick of it yet. If that changes, then I hope it won’t be until after the launch of Mortal Empires, the mega campaign that combines both Warhammer games and their 117 factions.

None of what you’ve just read would mean anything if the Dark Elves, High Elves, Skaven and Lizardmen weren’t up to snuff, but no need to fret – Warhammer 2 boasts some of the series’ most impressive faction design to date. There’s also a great deal to unpack.

The original factions in the first Warhammer all felt like they were built around one unique hook: the Dwarven Book of Grudges, the Orcs’ WAAAGH! mechanic, the Chaos Warriors’ nomadic shtick. Warhammer 2’s factions, on the other hand, are not defined by one single thing. Instead, they’re multifaceted, each containing numerous unique mechanics and twists inspired by specific racial traits.

So the Skaven are meant to be these infinitely hungry creatures, greedy and ravenous, and this is translated into a food system. When the Skaven are well-fed they are braver, better at fighting and more content. Their food stores can also be used to immediately upgrade settlements when they’re conquered or colonised. But that food can vanish quickly, and with hunger comes cowardice, rebellion and starvation. They’re driven to be more aggressive so they can feast on captives and steal food from their enemies.

They’re all about self-interest, however, so on top of the food system is a loyalty mechanic. Giving lords more troops to command, keeping them busy and fed, offering them new gear and winning battles with them keeps them loyal. Ignore them, and they’ll eventually revolt, creating a schism in the empire. And they’re sneaky, so all of their settlements appear to other factions as empty ruins, and they favour stealthy units in battle. But they’re also engineers, so they can field flamethrowers and explosives, or use an earthquake machine to level a city.

My point is that they don’t fit inside a single box. But what’s more important than the breadth of these faction-specific mechanics is their impact on the battle and campaign layers, and it’s often pretty dramatic. The Skaven are messy. In battle, they’re a constantly moving tide, retreating and returning, and they can push that chaos onto their foes by using green warpfire that panics and giant mutants that terrify. During the campaign, they teeter on a knife’s edge, never too far away from that gnawing hunger. So they have to keep killing. Keep eating.

I had a harder time with them than I did the Dark Elves. These witchy Elves are a lot better organised, largely thanks to their grim slave-based economy. Slaves captured in battle can be put to work in settlements, making the Elves wealthier. But the more there are, the lower public order gets. If it drops to -100, then rebels show up and start throwing shade. As a cash-rich Dark Elf, it’s not too hard to maintain huge armies full of dinosaur cavalry and crossbow-wielding warriors.

The Dark Elves are also uniquely suited to invasions. So, every faction has access to a series of rites, not to be confused with the Vortex rituals. These rites require some kind of sacrifice – it’s slaves for the Dark Elves – and performing them confers everything from faction-wide bonuses to special units. They represent the most powerful abilities in the game, and include that aforementioned Skaven earthquake device. The Dark Elves also get something a bit special: Black Arks.

These are ominous floating vessels that hug the coast and have some limited building options. Their main purpose, though, is to assist in invasions by offering magical support with long-range bombardments and providing reinforcements. They’re a weapon and a floating city all rolled into one big ol’ boat, and they’ve saved my hide countless times, halting enemy rituals and reinforcing beleaguered troops at my own sites. I’ve picked a couple of the better rites to discuss here, but they’re not all game-changers. For every Black Ark there’s a boring +8 to public order.

Given that this is a direct sequel, I wasn’t sure if Warhammer 2 would feel like a new Total War or a very large expansion. It seems like using the same engine and a similar setting has freed Creative Assembly to go down paths they’ve never explored before, though. To experiment. It might also be the reason that the level of polish and user-friendliness has seen a jump, and that includes the UI. It’s smoother, clearer and customisable. But lest the past be entirely forgotten, plenty of old issues reappear.

Diplomacy – one day I’ll get tired of saying this – still doesn’t feel like an organic extension of the other game systems, and is generally lacking in consequences. Want to declare war on your allies? It just takes a click of the button and barely anyone cares. Want a quick buck? Get in a war, demand cash for peace, do it again five turns later. Only the High Elves, with their ability to influence other factions, get to do anything remotely interesting with diplomacy.

Similarly, the economic and trade side of things continues to be woefully underdeveloped, despite being around forever, and doesn’t get much more complex than erecting money and resource generating buildings. They exist simply so you can make the gold that you need to create your armies. None of this comes as a shock, of course. These issues have existed for most of Total War’s history, but it’s important to note that these systems still aren’t particularly engaging.

When Warhammer 2 disappoints, it’s almost always when it shies away from change, letting some of Total War’s weaker limbs languish in mediocrity. There’s surprisingly little that hasn’t been reconsidered, however, and what isn’t entirely new has, more often than not, been expanded or tweaked, usually with positive results.

There’s a confidence to this game. It doesn’t need a comfortingly familiar grand campaign or a traditional structure because it has an identity separate from that of Total War; an identity where a scripted narrative can work, or where starkly different factions are more important than balance. It’s an exceedingly strong beginning to this chapter of the Warhammer trilogy and is a strong contender for the best game in the series.

Total War: Warhammer 2 is out this Thursday, the 28th of September, and will be available on Windows via Steam for £39.99.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-09-25-total-war-warhammer-2-review

Total War: Warhammer 2 review
Brave new world.

No matter how good a Total War game is, the follow-up campaign is always better. Warhammer 2's is no exception.


It's taken nearly two decades, but they've finally nailed it. Warhammer 2 is Total War perfected.

Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be wary of deploying the P word in reviews, at least not before watering it down with some safe, lazy adverb, but 'flawless' would be taking it a bit too far and it's too early in the game's life to be talking about a 'classic' . Besides, as I hone these words, it's past 3am and all the nuanced superlatives are getting their beauty sleep.

Total War evolved? Well, yes. But, no. Oh god, no.

Here's the thing: I can't think of any aspect of Total War: Warhammer 2 that I didn't like or that doesn't work seamlessly for the good of the whole one-strategy-game-to-rule-them-all thing that Creative Assembly has been striving towards like feverish alchemists these past 20 years. Little things annoy, of course, but they're persistent irritants better leveled at the series rather than any single game: for example, the way dissenting forces always seem to go after the player and not any instigating invader. Then there's CA's butchery when it comes to cutting out essential races and then having the gall to charge for blood and offal. Less prevalent but still present are the indecisive movements of AI generals. In other words, the usual stuff.

More specific to the Warhammer line, you could argue against the noticeable lack of dynastic intrigue that was so integral to the Medieval and Rome games, but then we have to remind ourselves that this is the Warhammer world we're dealing with here; Games Workshop's immoderate Middle-earth cover version - an absurdist fantasy mirror into our shared contemporary dystopia rather than some idealised pre-totalitarian neverland. There are spies, assassins, wizards and saboteurs to hustle around the map as solo Heroes or under a Lord's banner, but here, again, the overwrought stats and nested backroom menus are in the service of character and unit upgrades, working to make each new battle that little bit more compelling than the last.

Rolling a family tree has never featured in any source book I've read and no elven princess is going to marry a skaven heir, no matter how much rosewater is flushed through his palatial sewer.

If there's one weakness that binds all Total Wars together - old and new, historical and fantasy, the great and the merely good - it's the often wearying end game; where we'd reach a point in a campaign where careless losses could quickly be replaced, making the last thrust towards a final victory a one-sided, anticlimactic slog. Sadly CA's attempts to keep the tension up, by spamming the player with army stacks, imposing division or invoking breakaway territories, often felt like some kind of punishment, as if the game logic had developed a sudden powerful disdain for humans and gone rogue.

While the first Warhammer didn't exactly solve the problem, with its increasingly frequent and more deadly Chaos incursions, the end game mechanic not only suited the setting and sated the lore, there was a noticeable ratcheting of tension that permeated the game from the start. As with Attila's hordes, you knew Chaos was coming and it paid to plan accordingly.

Warhammer 2's Great Vortex does much the same thing, only better. Swirling in the centre of one of the game's four continents, it's effectively a heat sink that channels undesirable magic away from the world. For millennia it's done its job well enough, but it needs servicing and, depending on which of the races you choose to command, your aim is to pick out the fluff, so to speak, and get it working at peak efficiency again, or bind its power towards your own nefarious ends. Either way you need to hoard a race-specific resource and invoke a series of remote rituals, during which time the Vortex temporarily weakens and the forces of Chaos can break through and attack your sites of incantation.

While the Vortex ritual mechanic isn't fundamentally new - it works a bit like Civil Unrest, but with Chaos armies rather than rebels - it requires a resource that must be sought out, requires periodic activation and invites crippling acts of sabotage, both from Chaos and the other main races. It all makes it feel like you're in the midst of an escalating arms race. The important thing is that not only does it complement Total War's traditional mode of conquest, it works to keep up the heat when interest in outright domination starts to cool. One strategy that it allows that previous Total Wars didn't is that, if you're the turtling type, you can afford to be more selective in your marauding, using allies as a bulwark while raiding for ritual resources. Your coffers might not be as deep, but you might have enough to keep the spawning forces of Chaos at bay before the final showdown.

When a new unit or ability becomes available, you almost can't wait to see it in action, even if it's sure to meet an immediate end at the hands of an overwhelming foe.

While faction selection remains thin, with eight lords again divided equally across the game's four core races, there's no shortage of distinction in terms of the game's unit roster, with regimented High Elves and their glass cannon Dark cousins joined in battle by the enigmatic Lizardmen and chittering hordes of demon-eyed Skaven.

Warhammer 2's roster is less iconic than the first game's fantasy stalwarts, but as someone who's harboured a lifelong indifference towards all the elvish races, was uninterested in the meandering affairs of Lizard-kind and only mildly intrigued by the ways of the Vermintide, I quickly came to appreciate the anomalous versatility of all Warhammer 2's clans. The armies of the undead will always be my favourite (they were my introduction to Warhammer as a teenager, after all), but the Lustrian's combination of lumbering dino-steeds and hard-hitting skirmishers requires a keen eye for tactics and timing. Likewise a plundering Skaven commander is both hindered and helped by having hordes of comedy-strength troops and almost peerless artillery units at the rear.

As expected though, it's the flying beasts, monsters and machines that entice and entertain. The Skaven Hell Pit Abomination is a fatberg of verminous body parts - quite the beauty, all told. The Feral Carnasaur, meanwhile, is a thunderous pair of reptilian thighs that, with a sweep of its leathery tail, can melonball any frontline unit ranged against it. The elven dragons are the least impressive; effective, yes, but a bit on the dinky side, but that's probably down to unrealistic expectations after recently blitzing through the latest season of HBO's fantasy reboot of Keep it in the Family.

Not the most powerful unit in the game, but how can you not love the idea of reptiles riding raptors into battle?

With four new races trying to harness the Great Vortex churning away at the centre of a diverse new map, there's more than enough justification for Warhammer 2's existence, but thankfully there's more to the sequel than a ride west and a shift change in personnel. Races now have army abilities than can be unlocked, allowing, in the case of Slann and Skaven commanders, the option to spawn cheap units behind enemy lines. There are Rogue Armies flitting about the campaign map about made up of multiple races, reminiscent of some fantasy battle adaption I recall from an ancient issue of White Dwarf. My favourite iteration - more of a fix really - is that instead of the first game's somewhat arbitrary limitations on the territories you could conquer, you can now let your forces loose anywhere, with the caveat being that each race has a climate it is most suited to, so that the jungle-dwelling Lizardmen, for example, will find it harder to tame the frozen north than the swamps of the south.

And there's still more to come. Not so much the inevitable DLC, which is always divisive and rather inconsistent (although if, as expected, the armies of the Tomb Kings are on their way, I'll be the first to welcome them), but a promised combined campaign mode, dubbed Mortal Empires, across which owners of both Total Warhammers can assert world domination with their installed race of choice. It could be awful, of course, made interminable by the AI groaning at having to manage so many factions, but my point is that Warhammer 2 is enhanced by Warhammer 1 and vice versa, and will be emboldened still by the final game in the trilogy.

So, yeah, Warhammer 2 may be Total War evolved to near perfection, but for now the epic PC translation of Warhammer Fantasy Battle is incomplete. Like the halflings from a parallel universe being lead away from Osgiliath towards Mordor, much about the future is uncertain and the final Warhammer episode could just as easily be a fitting climax as a painfully over-extended epilogue. Maybe it doesn't really matter, because right here, right now - and, yes, even without upgrade or add-on - Total War has never looked or played better.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/total-war-warhammer-2-review/

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER 2 REVIEW

I don't remember the name of the desert. It was somewhere near the Black Pyramid of Nagash, split down the middle by a crevasse. A narrow band of dirt connected the two sides. The undead, lacking missile troops, scurried across the sand towards this bridge. My High Elves moved to block them with a line of spears, but I'd forgotten that my general's last upgrade was a warhorse. Instead of moving up with the line he raced ahead unnoticed and was now alone, facing down sprinting ghouls, shambling zombies, and the Vampire Countess leading them.

Rather than retreat I ordered the Silver Helm knights to rush in (I'd been keeping them in reserve to flank-charge anyone who broke through the spear line and pushed toward my archers), and instead of a strategic defence the Battle of Nameless Crevasse turned into a massed and messy cavalry charge. In war, they say no plan survives contact with the enemy. In Total War: Warhammer 2 no plan survives my ability to get distracted by how nice the unit animations are.

It's typical for each Total War game to be followed by a smaller sibling, a high quality standalone expansion as Attila was to Rome 2 or Fall of the Samurai was to Shogun 2. Warhammer has gone in the opposite direction. We had one large-scale strategy game of turn-based campaigning and real-time battles in the fantasy setting of the Old World, and now a year later we get another, bigger one—with promise of a third still to come.

Where the first game gave us a fantasy analogue of continental Europe, Total War: Warhammer 2 includes mythed-up analogues of the Americas, Africa, and Britain as well as a horseshoe-shaped continent in the mid-Atlantic called Ulthuan, home of the High Elves. It breaks up the ocean nicely so you're not staring at a ship for 50 turns to get anywhere, although there are also plenty of sunken treasure galleons and lost islands and dead behemoths to encounter along the way as well. Every time you set sail a little story plays out, which is a nice way of livening things up without having to add naval combat.

As well as being the centre of the ocean, Ulthuan is the centre of the campaign. In Warhammer 2 you can win by old-fashioned domination or by meeting the objectives required to take control of the great vortex, a cyclone of magical energy hovering over an island in the middle of Ulthuan that the four playable factions all want to control using a sequence of rituals. It provides more structure to the game, and since everybody's after the same thing, it feels more like a race.

In the historical Total War games the factions are usually pretty similar, which helps make them balanced. Total War: Warhammer emphasised the differences between its fantasy armies. Vampire Counts had no missile troops; Dwarfs had no spellcasters; and Greenskins had no trousers. Those contrasts made for differences in strategy that gave it more life, and replaying the campaign became a much more enjoyable prospect than it was when choosing slightly different Japanese clans. I've racked up over 200 hours in the first game due to that, although the DLC helped extend that longevity.

At first glance the four factions of Warhammer 2 seem less distinct from each other. There are two flavours of Elves, High and Dark, and two kinds of animal-people—the dinosaur-riding Lizardmen and the mad science rats called Skaven. All are good at magic, all have a mix of melee and ranged specialists. In play, they're more different than expected. Like the armies added to the first game as DLC, extra care has been made to make them mechanically distinct in both battles and campaign.

The Skaven, for instance, spread corruption like the Vampire Counts did, but this corruption affects their own troops as well as enemies. Instead of squatting in a castle brooding while the surrounding lands turn dark and then finally slouching across the border, the Skaven are constantly moving, ruining each province—literally, their settlements appear as ruins to casual inspection—and moving on. They struggle with hunger as well; their food supplies run low if they stop raiding. Playing as the Skaven you're discouraged from settling down.

Compare that to the courtly High Elves, who instead only have to worry about a secondary currency called influence they can spend to engage in intrigue, altering how much other countries like each other. The High Elves can, with patience, win over distrustful and distant nations and turn them into allies, while breaking up alliances between their opponents. Their spies can also see any port they have a trade agreement with, lighting up far parts of the map. You can manipulate foreign affairs without even leaving your defensible island home.

Distinctions on the battlefield matter too. The Skaven's menace below trait lets them summon units from beneath the ground to block charges or harass archers. Some Lizardmen go into an uncontrollable rampage when hurt, while the Dark Elves can call in bombardments from their floating black arks if fighting on the coast. Magical units like the Skaven's screaming bell as well as giant monsters like the Lizardmen's carnosaur and Elven dragons all play their part but it's the new abilities that feel like an essential part of the game, that will make going back to its predecessor feel like something is missing.

The ratmen are the most distinctive of the setting's creatures and its most beloved. So yes, if you play as the Skaven you get to throw glass balls full of poison at people, roll around in a giant electric wheel like a hamster, blast flamethrowers with abandon, and hear everyone talk in high-pitched squeaky voices. You get Rat Ogres who knuckle the ground like gorillas and bellow, and the unit animations really are distractingly nice.

There are so many tiny improvements in Warhammer 2 it's hard to list them all. The notifications when you press end turn without doing something the computer expects you to do aren't as obnoxious; heroes are less essential and the AI relies on them less; the map seamlessly zooms up into the tactical level (though I'll have to wait for an equivalent of the mod that let me zoom in for close-ups in the first game); rogue armies made of mixes of different factions roam around to add variety to battles. Instead of constructing buildings that unlock another building's ability to produce a specific elite troop, you are often constructing buildings that unlock parts of the tech tree. These are all individually small tweaks but definite improvements nonetheless.

That does rather highlight the one thing that hasn't been improved, which is the bizarre side of diplomacy. People will still scream “Traitor!” if they have any reason to dislike you no matter how slight, and neighbours will greet neighbours as if meeting travellers from distant lands. Once you get used to the maths behind it the diplomacy starts to make a kind of sense, but the disconnect between what's being said and what's meant is still distracting. So is the endless repetition of the same demands being made every turn no matter how many times you refuse to sue for peace or declare war on a trade partner's enemy.

One new flaw is that the growing scale has resulted in a map with slightly more obvious gaps in it. The Southlands are a patchwork mish-mash of new factions and old, and presumably the pseudo-Egyptian Tomb Kings will be added to it as DLC. It would be great if the army of Araby (which last appeared in a tabletop game called Warmaster in 2009) showed up as well, since their home is currently full of zombies and white guys. Over in the Lustrian jungle, home of the Lizardmen, the Amazons (who still have a team in Warhammer's weird football spin-off Blood Bowl) are another obvious omission.

Though the first game's aggressive DLC schedule upset some players, it was clearly a success or they wouldn't have kept making them. And the free offerings alongside each one seemed generous enough to me—in fact, the Bretonnians were better than any of the paid DLC factions. Among the additions coming for free this time is the ability to combine both games into something called the “Mortal Empires Campaign”, making this ridiculous map even bigger. Total War: Warhammer was a great game at launch that became even better as it grew, and Warhammer 2 feels like it's starting from the point it left off from.

THE VERDICT
92

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER 2
A maximalist sequel that improves on almost every aspect of the first game.