Ross Harvey

ARCADE TOTAL WAR A Total War Saga Troy feels like such a let down to me. It has all of the effort put into colourful visuals but somewhere along the the line in the actual gameplay, CA have sapped all of the fun earlier titles had. I feel like CA are losing there way with TW. It is clear as they gain ground in sales, their move to the mainstream drives out the feeling of actually managing a nation, through micromanagements, and no strategy beyond rock, paper, scissors, and having simply a bigger army stack than the enemy. AESTHETICS: Like all TW games it seems a lot of effort is put into the visuals, both characters and locations, as well as the world map, I particular like the details in the shallow waters. CAMPAIGN MAP: I feel the campaign map side of things in total war games never gets too much wrong, same goes for Troy. Except for the woeful diplomacy which is nothing more than a purchasing centre, there no strategy involved once again, just make the agreement score go green and you can sign a deal. BATTLES: This is where Troy is a real let down for me. AI gets chucked around a lot about TW games but in this game I'm not sure if its really bad AI, or really good but not fun. Examples include a lack of cavalry, this disrupts the balance of the game. You can expect units of yours to spend the whole battle chasing flanking archers around the map, again potentially very clever AI, but not much fun. Also what i've noticed about TW games recently is that individual men in units don't feel like they exist. Units are essentially under one health bar. To me it just feels odd, instead of fighting with thousands of soldiers, it feels insteads that a big battle is only 20 on 20. It all feels like Total war battles: Kingdom which is based on a MOBA. Why can't we have actual physics based deaths? Flight paths of arrows seem pre-determined to hit a soldier that is meant to die to work out the healthbars calculations of the whole unit. It all feels too meh. I want an arrow to have its own trajectory based on the soldiers skill, and for it to kill anything it hits by way of physics alone. ECOMOMY: I love the idea of bringing over resources into the economic side of TW. It particularly makes sense in an age where bartering would be very prominent, but theres no reason why this couldn't be translated into the future. CA should sack of Sagas, go back to Warhammer, and original full historical titles, and really trace back to to their roots. I picked this game up for free, and sadly that wasn't enough to keep me paying the game for very long. Back to TK and Warhammer II for me.