Total War: Attila - Review

The Total War series has long been the game to get, if you want to experience battles from the pages of history, but it has also come with quite a learning curve. The team behind the series took steps to correct this in Rome, but Attila has refined the core formula.

From early on in the game you can tell that the team have taken the feedback players have given to hear, not only are elements more refined, but some are gone completely. In the previous title, players were given the keys to the kingdom as it were and required build the power that we know Rome to have been, but with Attila you can continue to be Romans and attempt to build your power back up, or you can come in as anyone of a number of factions, including the Huns to destroy Rome completely.

I started out as Visigoths, a sort of nomadic people who were attempting to eke out a life in the harsh times, only to be attacked by the Ostrogoths. The opening battles were harsh, but also served as a great introduction into the revamped user interface, which is a vast improvement over the previous title. Gone are over complex menus and small text, they have been replaced by a much more understanding system, the new family tree system was a delight to use, because now it was able to be used.

A little while in, I started playing as the aforementioned Huns, because the game is named after one the famous ones, Attila. The Huns had a very different feel from the Visigoths, which was a welcome change. The one element that carried over though were the advisors, each advisor aims to give you the best possible information to help you win your battles or even create a farm. Knowing when to listen to them can help you out in ways you might not understand. A simple request for more soldiers may not sound like much when you have an army, but adding more to the ranks could sway the tides of a battle.

While the Visigoths were all about surviving and creating the life, the Huns marched for war, with anyone or anything standing in their way coming to meet an early end. Perhaps the best part of this was, your choices, while important in the here and now, have ramifications decades later in the campaign, not to say training a pikeman could change the course of things, but you never know. While you in battle decisions will not impact your out of battle challenges, the decisions you make out of a battle can impact everything, each faction has a ruling family, with each family having desires and objectives for you to meet. At any time though, you may learn of plots to kill those members, which can severely impact your efforts at whatever you were doing.  But that does not mean you must always be on the lookout for these assassins to your lineage, you can arrange marriages with rival factions, for whatever purpose, only to turn around and betray them if it suits you.

However while you are managing your ruling families life, you must also take care of the people you rule and while it sounds simple, it can prove to be one of the most challenging parts of the game. Morale is one of the most crucial elements in the game, troops with low morale will flee battles and citizens left at home will not do their tasks if they feel like they are being abandoned or mistreated. You can place people in charge of your cities to help boost morale, while you take care of the larger picture, but even then, very little can change. Even getting perks, with morale in the name can do little to sway the people, one way of actually boosting morale is to win your battles, but as stated before, the lack of morale with the soldiers can make that hard to do. It is a constant battle of its own and one that is not easily won.

But it is not all bad, players who don’t wish to deal with all the city and people management can use one of the aforementioned nomadic factions, who invade and take footholds in territories and move on from there.  Taking a foothold is a challenge in of its self and depends entirely on where you stand when a battle starts, taking part in a turn based game on the world maps, players are given turns to move their troops around the world, attempting to make progress before It ends, should you encounter an enemy faction then you will transition to the real time battle system that people know from traditional Total War games. Battle formations will help you win the battle, but it also depends on where you are when the battle starts, the high ground will give you a great advantage over the enemy, but if you are not careful you can be flanked and lose that way.

From a presentation point of view, players are treated to some of the most action on screen from any game, having your army defend or attack a well-fortified city is a treat of its own. At any time, you might see archers raining down hell on those who would attack their homes, with catapults and battering rams dealing significant damage as well. When your army mixes with another, being able to zoom down to the ground and watch the battle unfold, even for a few moments is pretty rewarding. But, seeing the same battle from up high, with thousands of soldiers battling it out is also just as fun. It is just a shame that while watching the troops fight is a delight, where they fight is less so, the world is bland and dull and offers little to inspire you. The audio is spot on, soldiers cry for blood, swords bash against shields and catapults heave their shot, with a whistling through the air. Having a good PC is really recommended for this game, because with all that is happening on screen sometimes, mine struggled to keep up.

Total War Attila is a really well made game, it has taken everything that fans loved and loathed from the previous title and enhanced or expunged it, the political system can be a drag and trying to micro-manage multiple cities will really test your patience and planning skills, but when you take part in battles, between two squads or two whole armies, there is little doubt that Total War is one heck of a game. 

The Score

8.0

Review code provided by Sega

The Pros

+Detailed and huge battles

+The revamped and now usable, user interface

The Cons

-Complicated city management can be a pain

-Morale is something that takes too much time to get right