![]() Some icons feel confusing and unhelpful, and though the game always tries to help you on your way, on several occasions its instructions merely left me with more questions than answers. Though efforts has been made to strip down the game’s UI and make it easier to digest (as it was in older Total War titles), many elements of the campaign map are difficult to comprehend. ![]() Sorry about the Hun-fun-pun, but I couldn’t resist.Ī few too many of Rome II‘s issues still remain on the campaign map, however. This makes it a damn sight easier to determine who is whom on both the battlefield and the campaign map, as do helpful icons which indicate if a unit is a spearman, pikeman, archer etc. These battles, no matter how small, are almost always tense, exhilarating exercises in quick thinking, smart strategizing, and sheer force of will.Īttila also does away with one of Rome II niggling problems, by once again replacing unit cards with 3-D models of the units, rather than Rome II’s pesky, unreadable cards. Creative Assembly has clearly paid great attention to detail when crafting towns, cities and battlefields, as each one feels like an occupied, dynamic world filled with destructible trees, buildings, barriers, and even fleeing peasants who occasionally get embroiled in battle themselves. Real time battles are intense, surprising and full of tactical choices – easy to grasp, but difficult to master. ![]() Once again, the latter of these two elements proves to be the game’s greatest strength. Battles have long been Total War’s greatest strength, and Attila is no different.Īs usual, Attila is divided into two key parts: strategic movement and resource management takes place on the game’s tactical map, while real time battles take place on individual land, naval or coastal battlefields. In fact, Attila so adeptly crafts an atmosphere of tension, danger and foreboding, one has to wonder whether developing Alien Isolation has affected the way Creative Assembly approaches its darling strategy series. The prologue does a fine job of easing you into the systems in play, while also preparing you for a lengthy and somewhat arduous campaign, one wherein enemies approach from all sides, plague, pestilence and famine wear away Empires, and alliances are uneasy at best. In many ways, it acts as a sort of extended epilogue to Rome II, though I don’t mean that disparagingly – if its precursor was all about conquering and dominating foes, Attila is far more concerned with the player surviving and thriving against the odds, a theme which is summarized rather well within the game’s Gothic prologue. Set in the dark ages, Attila charts the fall of the Roman Empire, the uprising of many European tribes, and the invasion of the Hunnic hordes. Fortunately, Attila also brings back a lot of the simple design techniques and UI features that made older Total War games so easy to master. These changes marked a different direction in the series, one of greater historical accuracy at the cost of satisfying gameplay feedback, and one that Attila has continued with. It was the little things, then, that disappointed me about Rome II, rather than any one major change. For me, the series was at its best around the original Rome: Total War and its follow up Medieval II: Total War. Those games excelled at masking a deep and somewhat complex strategy game behind some easy to understand prompts, icons and menus, with the added bonus of some wonderfully cathartic real time combat to enjoy when the resource management and strategic positioning was getting a little dull. To better understand Total War: Attila’s strengths and weaknesses, it helps to understand what the Total War series does so well, and where its games have lapsed somewhat in the last few years.
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