Total War: Warhammer III Review – PC

Summary
6 years later the third and final chapter has arrived in Total War: Warhammer. Which I am sure has a large amount to do with the global pandemic an extended 5-year gap with the third edition compared to the 1 year between the first and second. A 5-year gap however did yield many updates and long-awaited changes that the Total War community wanted. I think the most noticeable upgrades to the third edition of Total War: Warhammer comes in the graphics themselves. Some much-needed upgrades, reworks, and features were added to Total War: Warhammer 3. This game is kind of a beast, I do not believe it is optimized to its maximum potential. . It will take some patience for these issues to get resolved but in the end, I think it will be much worth it.
Good
  • Bad game optimization
  • No mortal empires
  • No immortal empires
  • Some technical issues
8.4
Great
Slow motion camera for special moves - 8
Positive system reworks - 8
Visual and sound production - 9

NO SPOILERS!!!!

6 years later the third and final chapter has arrived in Total War: Warhammer. Which I am sure has a large amount to do with the global pandemic an extended 5-year gap with the third edition compared to the 1 year between the first and second. A 5-year gap however did yield many updates and long-awaited changes that the Total War community wanted. Currently, the game is receiving mixed reviews amongst the communities but overall, a positive welcome to the trilogy.

I think the most noticeable upgrades to the third edition of Total War: Warhammer comes in the graphics themselves. By far the dopest addition on the graphical side is the campaign cinematics. So much more effort was put into the story line cinematics for each faction this time around. Map topography detail, features, and artwork are absolutely stunning! However, at this time the immortal and mortal empire campaigns are not available in 3. This is a bit of a disappointment, but they are under development. Sometimes it’s just the little things that make you smile like the slow-motion camera when using special abilities. All these great graphical updates do come at a cost, while I do think they could do a better job at optimization 3 does use more CPU resources. Overall, I think the visual and audio production of the game is top-notch.

Some much-needed upgrades, reworks, and features were added to Total War: Warhammer 3. There isn’t enough room in this review to list all the changes so I will just go over some of my favorites. Changing campaign and battle difficulties mid-game is a massive quality of life change we needed. Quest battles! Instead of just making a decision that will give you buff or debuff you now can choose to fight it out in a mini battle for a reward. Auto-Resolve has been reworked to show you more data including predicted results of the combat and potential unit losses. Side missions like the grand Cathay cargo missions add a completely different element to the game. War coordination is a no-brainer, we should have been able to micro our allied forces since day 1. Up to 8 player co-op? Yes, please. Finally, survival battles where you need to complete multiple objectives to win a battle. A semi-scripted instance where you can salvage resources to summon reinforcements and hold checkpoints against waves of enemies.

This game is kind of a beast, I do not believe it is optimized to its maximum potential. Fortunately, unit control was smooth as butter at launch. We did run into several technical issues. WTF are these loading screens? Even on an M.2 PCI solid-state drive, they took forever! Playing on ultrawide when switching to the windowed mode we were unable to get the screen resized to fit the monitor. It was a painstaking process when writing this review to move the mouse to the other monitor and have the game minimized every time. We encountered several crashes after minimizing the game multiple times which resulted in losing a turn or two. Total War: Warhammer 3 also had our PC fans spinning at full blast 100% of the time! I can understand some of the frustration vented on Steam forums due to these types of issues. It will take some patience for these issues to get resolved but in the end, it will be much worth it.

I think the current state of the game would be more bearable for the true Total War fans. If you are new to the genre or specifically to the Total War titles you might encounter some frustration. If you are on the fence about purchasing this title you might want to wait for a patch or two before you pull the trigger. As for the enthusiast, I would say jump in right now! Gather up the squads and prepare for hours of good times.

Written by
Gaming since Nintendo! Entrepreneur, gamer, wine lover, America! Come join the fun on the GL Discord!

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