Put on your armor, your boots and adorn yourself with your most absolute faith, the demons of Chaos are coming to Total War Warhammer 3. The final part of the Creative Assembly license once again deepens a rich universe and gameplay, despite performance at a discount.
[Mis à jour le 18 février 2021 à 14h50] Expected for more than four years now, Total War Warhammer 3 has finally opened the pages of its old grimoire. The little protege of Creative Assembly and Sega once again offers us a mastered recipe, entirely focused on the greatest antagonists of the prolific universe of Warhammer Fantasy. The demons have a voracious appetite, and will make short work of your soul in this final installment of a trilogy on a par with its predecessors. Only negative point, its optimization on PC which is already cringe. Our test and all the necessary information, a little further down in this article.
You are alone in your tent in the middle of the tundra, the icy wind makes the fabric walls flap while a small brazier gives you a little heat. Besides the noise of the wind and the crackling of the flames, you seem to hear a noise. A whisper, no, voices? You are not alone in the immensity of the steppes of Kislev, the four Gods of Chaos have fixed their eyes on you, patiently waiting for their corruption to torture your flesh and your spirit… Anyway, it is of course those light notes that Total War Warhammer 3 intends to take you with. The third and final installment in Creative Assembly and Sega’s trilogy of strategy games delves a little deeper into the prolific universe of Warhammer Fantasy, focusing on its main antagonists. Good against evil, Chaos against Order, a scenario that takes us to the confines of reality and invites us to discover new lands, darker and more sinister. And what fun.
A pleasure for a Warhammer fan who can finally appreciate the physical and literary shaping and enrichment of the Chaos factions. These demonic entities that periodically ravage the medieval-fantasy world of Warhammer and that we were eager to discover in detail, after the timid appearance of Archaeon and his accomplices in Total War Warhammer first of the name. Because that’s where the strength of Total War Warhammer 3 lies: there are bad guys, very ugly and very very bad, and nice people, very beautiful and very very nice, who fight each other through devilishly well scripted campaigns. and whose issues take us to the body. Because Creative Assembly has pushed the cap of the narration a little further, multiplying the cutscenes, the dialogues, the scripted battles, so that we feel a little less alone on this great board game that is Total War. Hats off to that side.
In terms of gameplay, the recipe is mastered and perfected by the British studio. We find the same mechanics as in the previous games, with new factions of course. On the campaign map, we can observe a more complete diplomacy offering us new ways to interact with our allies and enemies, and allowing us FINALLY to understand the price of certain treaties (the confederation is indeed very expensive). In terms of combat, the overhaul of the siege battle system offers us immersive combat, in which the AI is doing quite well. Both the player and the AI have the ability to build palisades and towers, providing more dynamism to hitherto pretty ridiculously bad rampart assaults. The maps are different from each other, the settings immersive, the combat animations realistic… In short, the world of Warhammer Fantasy is more alive than ever. What make us wait impatiently for the integration of the contents of the first two Total War Warhammer in this third episode.
Now let’s talk about its flaws, because there is a major one. Its optimization is absolutely catastrophic. A relatively common fact for a new Total War Warhammer game and which was expected given the performance observed in promotional gameplay sequences, but which still weighs down its gameplay to the point of making it almost unpleasant. Dunce of the game, the campaign map that swallows FPS like the soldiers of defeated armies. Impossible to exceed 30 FPS in places (Kislev) while the performance in battle remains mediocre, all in medium on a high-end PC and in 1440p. Problems that the gaming community is already raising, and which are handicapping the Steam ratings of a game that should win all the prizes. I insist, the optimization of the game is catastrophic, and Creative Assembly must work on the subject, because it is unacceptable that only the highest configurations can hang the 60 frames per second, especially in times of shortages that run. We keep a close eye on the next updates because it would be a shame for a game of this quality to be so penalized by technical aspects.
As the typical sayings of the Warhammer world go: blood for the Blood God, skulls for the throne of skulls. To describe the Warhammer Fantasy universe would take hours, but to make it shorter, we could talk about a heroic-fantasy version of our medieval empires, with a little Lord of the Rings side on steroids. Everything is bigger, stronger, nicer, meaner in short, Warhammer Fantasy is a world where the life expectancy of ordinary mortals probably does not exceed 30 years. It is for these same reasons that this universe fascinates, and this since 1983.
After a first opus devoted to the factions of the old world, with the very popular Empire of Men in particular (and its little brother Bretonnia, inspired by the Kingdom of France – cocorico!) and a second title rather devoted to the empires of the Elves, the Ratmen and Lizardmen, Total War Warhammer 3 focuses on the main antagonists of the Warhammer world: The Daemons of Chaos. Divided into four factions, these horrors from a parallel universe regularly enter the mortal world to reduce it to ashes. Players will therefore be able to control the four factions of Chaos: the violent armies of Khorne led by Skarbrandthe magicians of Tzeentch, the resilient demons of Nurgle and the rather peculiar demons of Slaanesh.
Any self-respecting fantasy story also needs its heroes, and Total War Warhammer 3 seems to be setting the bar pretty high, introducing at launch two factions that had been absent from the first two games until then. Kislev (Warhammer Russians) led by the Tsarina Katarina the Ice Queen and Kostaltyn, and Cathay (inspired by the great Chinese empires) two nations on the front line during the invasions of Chaos. Something to delight Warhammer Fantasy fans who see two extremely popular and very mysterious factions come to life. There is also a seventh faction which will be the traditional pre-order bonus for Total War Warhammer 3: the Kingdom of Ogres. Already introduced as mercenaries in Total War Warhammer 2, these bloodthirsty, insatiably hungry brutes stand halfway between good and evil. These giants can keep the armies of the chaos gods at bay, but also turn any man, dwarf or elf into a snack. Finally, the eighth and last faction of this Total War Warhammer 3 will be none other than Chaos Unified. This faction brings together the four Chaos Gods under one banner, behind a Demon Prince who will be for the first time in a fully customizable Total War. You can choose its attributes to modify its characteristics but also its appearance:
In order to make players wait before an official release date, Creative Assembly has already published a gameplay extract of its next title. In addition to the revelation of the new units of the armies of Kislev and Khorne, we could see a brand new game mode: survival battles. Multi-stage battles where the forces of good must resist the onslaught of demonic armies in order to triumph, introducing a system of building fortifications, recruiting reinforcements and upgrading troops in real-time. An aspect very close to traditional strategy games that will delight fans of the genre. On the magic side, ice joins the different winds of magic, with new spells and buffs. And by going into more detail, we have seen the appearance of a new combat status reserved for heroes, the “Wounded” status which reduces their performance in combat. A relatively welcome rebalancing of the heroes given that they could all too often win a battle alone. We also know that Total War Warhammer 3 will combine the contents of the two previous games. As a reminder, this kind of integration had already been carried out a few months after the release of Total War Warhammer 2, with the introduction of the Mortal Empires campaign. A similar integration should take place in Total War Warhammer 3.
The siege system will also be quite different from that of Total War Warhammer 1 and 2. Long criticized for their weaknesses, lack of flavor and balance, these city battles are going to be greatly improved in Total War Warhammer 3. Creative Assembly say it themselves: they have introduced more variety to the different battlegrounds in town. The capitals of the nations are represented, as well as some major cities, and all the maps will be larger and more complex than in the previous games. Players will also have the opportunity to reinforce the defenses in the streets thanks to the new supply system, by building guard towers, traps and barricades.
Of course, Total War Warhammer 3 is already available for pre-order on Steam and Epic Games, for the sum of 59.99 euros. We already know that the pre-order bonus will include another faction when the game is released. Rumors are rife about its identity, but if we look a little closer, it is very likely that this faction is the Ogre Kingdoms. Indeed their models have been added as free content alongside the latest update of Total War Warhammer 2. It is possible that a more complete version of this voracious nation will join the six factions already present in this third installment.