EPTIf it turns out we really are living in the Matrix then I’ll happily sell out humanity’s saviour to the Agents in exchange for being able to play Total War games all day guilt free. Fuck humanity’s existential rebirth, I’d rather smash oblongs of soldiers into each other. History is exciting! Especially the violent bits. Last year Creative Assembly released Total War: Warhammer and it was pretty much GotY for this fella. I fear any pretence of game critic credibility is shattered when you admit the favourite thing you played was the equivalent of a Dungeons and Dragons/Lord of the Rings mashup written by a pro wrestler and not about, say, analysing the complexities of the human heart but fuck it, this shit is fun. Fun, fun, fun, fun-fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun and fun. Sometimes I’m ok with videogames just being schlock, especially when it’s well made schlock, I’m sure we can all agree.
So, Twarhmer 2 then. It’s like Twarhmer 1 except more of it. It tells two concurrent stories, one a Fantasy tale where some dudes battle it out to see who can throw the most jellybeans into a giant magic sinkhole and one of a development studio battling the law of diminishing returns. After all the DLC dropped, Twarhmer 1 featured nine races each with their own fairly distinct gimmicks and playstyles so with Twarhmer 2 the looming question is if CA can find new ways to keep the game fun. All the reasons why Twarhmer 1 is fun remain. It’s fun to drop magic on wankers. It’s fun to slam monsters into wankers. It’s fun to take a thousand elite archers into battle and play out, with some wankers, an alternate version of the D-day landings where the Germans win. It’s fun to cultivate heroic figures whilst they go around slaughtering shitloads of wankers. It’s fun when the Chaos wankers arrive bearing apocalyptic desires and you slap their shit about so hard they decide to take up gardening and write to their mums more often. As for what Twarhmer 2 brings to the table, well let's get to that.
Four new races! You got your High Elves, a bunch of gossipy seemingly assexual Rivendell extras. Skaven, evil rat dudes channeling the spirit of various 80’s cartoon villains. Dark Elves, a mix of high school Goth rejects and completely mental bitches who believe just a bra and panties count as acceptable workwear (they live in a frozen wasteland, how is this at all practical?). And Lizardmen, a group of genuinely assexual Aztec themed Dinosaurs that ride other dinosaurs into battle. They’re smooshed around some continents with some wankers from Twarhmer 1 sprinkled in for variance. Each are kind of doing their own thing: the High Elves specialise in diplomacy and trade (well, as much as can be said for a game with ‘War’ in the title twice), the Skaven bring eleven billion of their mates to a fight, the Lizardmen construct additional pylons next to Dinosaur theme parks and the Dark Elves love slavery (their homeland sort of resembles the United States geographically and it’s full of psychotic white dudes. Creative Assembly why do you hate America?).
They’re not all great to play though. I find the Lizardmen a little too simplistic and the Dark Elves a bit of a missed opportunity. Lizardmen aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary (secure territory and build stuff on it, how truly groundbreaking) and their units are prone to rampaging out of your control on the battlefield. Helpful if you want the game to play itself for a bit while you go make a cup of tea but not really my thing. Taking slaves as the Dark Elves isn’t as interesting as I’m sure it is in real life and their signature unit the Black Ark- a giant pirate ship you should ostensibly be using to plunder distant shores- hardly feels necessary when there’s plenty of territory to conquer just by walking around. Thankfully the other two races are a right laff. It’s very entertaining using Influence to build a trading conglomerate as the High Elves, putting one’s feet up while the Honourable East Lustria Company makes money hand over fist. Deploying Clanrats directly on the field via a Bugs Bunny-esque tunneling power as the Skaven is immensely satisfying. There’s still plenty of fun to be had here, unfortunately overhanging it all is the game’s other central mechanic which is nothing short of completely fucking irritating.
Broadly speaking In most Total War games your goal is to own a certain amount of real estate and blow up a certain amount of people along the way. Generally well before you’ve reached the murder quota the player’s empire will have become an implacable behemoth devouring all in its path, but hey that’s sort of the reward for skilful play. In Twarhmer 2 you win by amassing a certain resource- that you gain by conquering, natch- and then using them to perform a bunch of rituals before your opponents can. I take issue with all this. A lot of issue.
First, what’s wrong with good ol’ empire smashing? Call me a deranged, slightly overweight ubernerd if you will but I’da thought if you make a game featuring antagonists who are the direst of foes then naturally you’d want to have them slaughter each other wholesale, no? As it stands you can comfortably achieve victory without overthrowing your rivals which seems odd for a product labeled Total War. Second, a ritual takes 10 turns (a long ass time) wherein you have to recall your armies to defend stacks of Chaos dudes the AI spawns. Considering you’re at war constantly it’s difficult to find the appropriate time to start firing off rituals and when you do your empire is so large it takes ages to recall your forces and have them in position. Fourth, the enemy armies spawn in random locations, frequently next to vulnerable towns they’ll burn to the ground before you can respond. Thanks! Fifth, performing the rituals garners no real reward, it’s just a nuisance you have to go through a bunch of times to win. Sixth, whilst you can theoretically win the game by annihilating your enemies this is nearly impossible due to the vastness of the world map and rules regarding which climates your race finds comfortable to settle in, the picky twats. Seventh, your ability to disrupt your opponent’s ability to perform rituals is severely limited. You can spend some cash to deploy an intervention army but it’s AI controlled and, on the harder difficulties anyway, achieves about as leaving nasty messages on their Facebook pages.
It’s a real shame, ya know? Twarhmer 1 had a great objective: kill the wankers your race hates the most, reunite the disparate kingdoms and eventually a great evil appears to act as sort of an end boss. As the dust settles most of the map is left a blasted ruin but hey you’re doing alright! Sure it’s simplistic, but it’s clean and it works. I have plenty of other minor niggles (like how the voice acting isn’t hammy enough, or that the multiplayer battles feel rather limited in what units and strategies you can go for) but they’re hardly worth a mention compared to the shit spraying elephant in the room. However, I actually still think Twarhmer 2 is Basically Good™. Numerous niggling issues from the first one have been fixed including the typical sequel quality of life changes and improved ui. There’s plenty of other, smaller nice things I haven’t mentioned since I ain't got all day. It’s well made fantasy schlock so if that sounds like your sort of thing give it a play! Or don’t! I don’t really care! I ain’t paid to be no schill. Get outta here.
