Total War: WARHAMMER III

Literally 10% of a game. Don't Buy unless heavily discounted. I paid for a full game. Here's what I get out of the box: - 9 out of 24 factions are playable - Approximately 10% of the total leaders are playable. - I can buy the rest of the game for MORE THAN $300! This is not a real game. It is an addendum to a previous game. I am genuinely flabbergasted why so many other reviewers are giving TW a free pass on this. I paid for 100% of a game and only get 1/10 of the game! Here are some more issues that other reviewers have overlooked: By far the worst balancing I have encountered in the 10+ total war games I've played: - Just about any lord with a regeneration ability and aoe attack can easily solo entire armies. Why should I even bother training armies? - Some of the monstrous units are mediocre, but many/most DRASTICALLY outperform regular-size units relative to their cost - even killing many regular units with the anti-large trait. - The speed of some of these units is wild. Ogres and obese rats run faster than horses. SERIOUSLY? - Some factions have dozens of redundant units. Others don't have a proper spear unit. - Regular cavalry is insanely weak relative to monstrous units. Spear and halberd units have charge reflection even when they're facing the wrong direction. How exactly does that work? Why bother training cavalry when the enemy is immune? - Any regular-size offensive unit without armor piercing or magical damage might as well just not show up. - Walls are entirely irrelevant. Armies don't have to lay siege and build siege equipment. No, the units simply remove entire ladders from their buttholes, and put them up on the wall. There are two reasons why this doesn't work in real life: 1) Most buttholes aren't that big. 2) THE GUYS ON THE WALL CAN SIMPLY PUSH THE LADDERS OFF THE WALL!!! Seriously, this incredibly idiotic aspect completely breaks the balancing of TW strategy. Any army can just walk in and take your walled settlement with butthole ladders! Horrific ranged unit mechanics: - They can't friendly fire, but instead just STOP SHOOTING whenever their target gets close to a friendly unit. Why on earth would I want them not to fire on a half dead friendly unit when there's a 100-foot-tall dude rampaging through my front lines??? Why can't they just shoot the top half of the 100-foot-tall guy?? - The super narrow front-facing range thing means they constantly do that annoying thing where they refuse to turn their bodies, instead taking 10 seconds to rotate the entire unit, only to realize that the enemy you told them to fire at has now moved, so they must rotate their entire unit again (and again). This problem exists in multiple TW games, to be fair. Worst reliance on NPC cheating mechanics I have encountered in 15 years of playing Total War: - After killing a faction's ONLY TWO REMAINING armies (you can check this from the diplomacy screen - 100:0 strength), I should have free reign to conquer them. Instead, next turn they routinely spawn A FULL ARMY with MAX TIER UNITS (only 15 turns in!) that can generally solo my 2-army wrecking ball. THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE THE NECESSARY MILITARY BUILDINGS TO TRAIN THESE UNITS!!! This makes for extremely unsatisfying gameplay. - Funny how NPC factions can easily support 3-5 armies with ZERO ECONOMIC BUILDINGS while I have 10 level 2 or 3 economic buildings and can almost support two armies. FUN. - The NPC AI was genuinely much smarter many years ago. It peaked in Rome 2, imo. How is it that the NPC AI has gotten so much worse when we're living in the age of AI? This is incredibly lazy! Positive aspects: - Better allied army coordination than previous tw games. - Far more diversity in playstyle than I am used to in total war games. - TOO BAD THAT DIVERSITY IS LOCKED BEHIND A $300 PAY WALL!!! If this wasn't abundantly clear by now: HEY TOTAL WAR: GIVE ME A FULL GAME OR PLEASE KINDLY REFUND MY MONEY! Edit: after trying all the factions I am able to play, I have cobbled together enough play time that I feel obliged to begrudgingly change my official recommendation from "Don't Buy" to "Only Buy at a Steep Discount"

The game is great, the modding community is amazing, but the studio sucks ass. Giving the game a 10 euro DLC every now and then that contains 2 new legendary lords and a few units is stinky as it is, but considering 80% of the game is locked behind ♥♥♥♥ load of DLCs is extremely embarrasing for a game like this. Even the price is absolutely obscene.

80% of the content is locked behind a paywall for a game i payed for.

This is review is coming from someone who has had no total war or warhammer fantasy experience prior to playing this game. [h1]What I like[/h1] I like this game quite a lot and recommend it if you are like me, the kind of person who wants to feel like a commander of both a nation and armies in battle. This game really brings out that power-fantasy. The split between the turn-based campaign and real-time battles works very nice for me, as the decision making for your empire and your troops in battle are different, so having that explicit divide that you bounce back and forth between is nice. The scale is very nice too. Battles are large and full of spectacle that makes every battle feel epic, while still being strategically deep enough (at least for me) that it's worth taking the time to understand battle strategy to win your fights. I also like the world setting as well. I don't know everything about the warhammer fantasy lore but I can say that it's pretty big and broad, so the world never feels boring as you expand. One more thing I like is how every campaign is always different and unique, as a result of AI decision making and random events, meaning that even playing the same faction will never result in the same experience. [h1]What I dislike[/h1] While I do love this game, there are a few things to keep in mind. If any of the following is a deal breaker, either get it on sale or avoid. The loading times are long. If you have a low-end pc, while you can run it, loading the campaign map can take 2-3 minutes each time while loading battles can take 45 seconds to a minute. I upgraded my pc to have somewhat more decent specs as noted in my pc specs attached, and it can still take about 30-45 seconds to load the campaign, and 15-30 seconds to load battles. The learning curve can be somewhat steep. I don't think it's hard to understand but there's just a lot to take in and remember. However, once you do, the game really opens up. Thankfully, there are many, MANY tutorials and guides out there that can explain the various parts of the game. One tip I would give here is this: You don't need to remember every single unit and what they do, just be aware of the what each of the unit stats mean and how they interact with one another. [h1]Regarding DLC[/h1] A very common thing people don't like about this game is the DLC model. This is an unpopular opinion but I personally think it's fine. The actual quality and pricing of each DLC is on a case-by-case basis, but for the actual DLC sales model that CA is using, I don't have a real problem with it. A lot of people feel that the sheer amount of DLC for this game makes it feel like the base game is a very thin slice of the full experience. However, having played those dlc myself, I disagree. The dlcs that are in this game add new factions to play as, but those factions don't fundamentally change the core gameplay. The most these new factions do is add extra game mechanics to their campaign, but even then, you still build an empire and you still command battles as usual, which I would argue is the full experience that comes with base game. So, the DLCs simply add more of the same with a slightly different flavour, which I would say is what a dlc is supposed to be. Not all the DLCs are the same, though; Some I would personally say are better than others, but you don't need them to fully experience the game. The base game would provide dozens of hours of fun on it's own, and once you're bored of the base factions, dlcs can add a dozen more each. Some of the DLC are a bit pricey though, so I would wait for a sale.

I have 1k hours playing this game and half of them stuck in my loading screen. Gonna reach for 2k hours looking at my loading screen again.

Start campaign as Kislev, get railed by faction x, Start new campaign as faction x get railed by Kislev repeat. Much fun 10/10 would get railed again by Kislev and Faction x

I'm going to give all new people some game. Go to cdkeys.com and buy warhammer 1, 2, and 3 for like 35 bucks combined. This gives you all the default races that came with each game and will give you PLENTY to start the game with. Pick whatever sounds the most cool and enjoy. This is my first warhammer game and I've become helplessly addicted. Playing with friends is a lot of fun. The monetization is confusing af but just follow what I said above if you want to give it a full shot and you won't be disappointed. One of the most fun parts of the games are the battles, you can zoom in like a hollywood director to your empire spearing ogres in the gut. 10/10 game, just wish they'd add DLSS and other optimization features because it only runs poorly when playing with friends which is the most fun part of the game.

The game locks you out of entire factions unless you buy the previous games. Conveniently the game doesn't tell you this until you've played several hours of the intro campaign, so you pass the two hour refund period. I understand the need for dlc to fund a game of this magnitude, but this is a dishonest way to add an extra $110 price tag to the full dlc bundle.

Doesnt work in offline mode even though it is primarily a single player game. No good reason for that. Game is 4 years old. Let me play the game I paid for.

游戏挺好玩的，就是老崩溃，不加mod是不可能的，就像是做菜必须放盐味精调料一样！我真服了，某些mod作者更新也太勤快了，人今天刚刚更新8.1版本，他居然就也更新了，问题是这破ca的mod启动器也不提示是那个mod更新了，也不能选择更不更新，我这打几十个小时的存档突然就废了，然后好好的游戏各种崩溃，就很难蹦。ca你倒是管管啊，倒是提示下那个mod更新了，出个禁止mod更新就这么难？我真服了这些老六了，游戏崩溃都成特色了！！！！需要个dlss4，那破蓝使书卡特效bug是想不起来修了是把？？