The beardless men come from the effeminate factions.
Developer: The Creative Assembly
Publisher: Sega
Platform(s): PC
Price: $44.99
It would slightly misleading for me to say that I am a big fan of Creative Assembly’s Total War series, but rather, its Shogun games. I purchased Shogun: Total War when it launched in 2000 and I absolutely fell in love. RTS games are my favorite genre, and I once invested an obscene number of hours in playing Age of Empires 2, particularly the Asian factions due to my affinity for ninja. There were no ninja in AOE2, but I felt that Japan’s Samurai were close enough. When I read about Shogun Total: War in PC gamer, I had to have it. That game taught me more about real (but simulated) combat more than anything I had ever played. It also debunked many of my preconceived notions concerning Japanese history through a masterfully-constructed manual included on-disc. However, I had zero interest in Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War because European history bores me and there are already almost too many tributes to the Occidental in film and school curricula, let alone games. However, when Total War: Shogun 2 was announced, I made sure that I purchased it on day one. Once again, I found myself completely spellbound by Creative Assembly’s re-imagining of Sengoku period Japan.
I skipped Empire: Total War, Napoleon Total War, and Total War: Rome 2 for the same reasons that I skipped the others. Nevertheless, I recently noticed Total War: Attila on Steam and thought about the Huns of the Orient, and how they came to power and contributed to the fall of western civilization into the Dark Ages. I thought it would be an engaging change of pace from building the west to destroying it.
Story
Congrats! By defeating the Romans as the Visigoths, you are personally responsible for ushering in the only era in the history of western civilization that technology, knowledge, and religious practice regressed: the Dark Ages!
Rome has gotten too big for its britches and has split into two factions, the Western Roman Empire where Rome is actually located, and the Eastern Roman Empire of Constantinople. Barbarians in the northwest bear down on the West, while the nomads of the East are knocking on the doors of civilization. Attila, the “Scourge of God” is coming.
Content Warning
That man is going to need more than a couple of Aspirin to get rid of that headache!
Sega is being greedy by making gamers wait and pay for the inevitable blood mod, so one need not worry about any of that here. This is a war game featuring countless animations of people being stabbed in the forehead with swords or taking arrows to the knee, but not a single drop of blood is rendered in this game.
Gameplay
While engaging in the imperial endeavors of conquest, be sure to color within the lines, kids!
Games in the Total War series are played through two interfaces: the campaign map and the battlefield. I will first discuss the dynamics of the campaign map.
Total War games are torrential and complex in scale, and Attila is no different. In fact, I would say that Attila goes above and beyond what I would even consider to be necessary features to the point where even a veteran gamer familiar with the Total War series such will find themselves completely lost in all of these features and mechanics. The Advisor does its best to keep players abreast of everything, but even it cannot fully appreciate the scope of what Creative Assembly has…assembled. I noticed that after beginning a legitimate campaign, the Advisor spoke about the offices under my faction screen when during the tutorial, he said nothing about them at all, and I became frustrated with not understanding that I needed a minimum of 20 Influence points—an important stat for those in the family tree and potential agents to have where the method of acquiring more still eludes me at the time of this writing—to put this or that character in an office, or decree them governor of a province. Influence can be used for a number of actions, from embezzling money for some extra funds in the war chest to divorcing barren wives and marrying a fecund one—though most of the time, it was my general who couldn’t man-up, suffering from traits which grant -20% penalties to reproduction such as “curious,” which I believe is code for “queer,” or “flaccid.” Indeed, this game gets intimate with its characterization.
In the fourth century, there are no magic blue pills.
There are too many uses for Influence to name here, but they are important…I think? The only time I truly felt compelled to use them is when one of my subjects began to falter in his loyalty, which means he could have defected or began a revolt. Through the faction screen, it is also possible to change the nation’s religion of choice. The details are legion, and while Creative Assembly did well program the mouse arrow to respond with an informative drop-down window when it sits still on something, I still do not know the difference between some features such as “Control,” “Power,” and “Dominion.” I do not know what the Integrity stat does.
The skill trees for generals return, as do skill trees for armies themselves, called “Traditions.” Some of the stats from upgrades are so negligible (such as +2% to replenishment for units in that province), or at least I cannot fully appreciate +2% to anything when my army’s upkeep is so full that I am making -50 gold per turn, even when I upgrade wealth buildings.
Compared to everything else in the game, the tech tree (for the Huns) is surprisingly simple in its evolution.
Unfortunately, maintaining wealth or earning money in general was something with which I struggled while playing as the Huns, the “showcase” faction. While the other factions have the option to sack, move in gently or roughly, or raze a territory, the Huns can only sack, raze, or subjugate (think Vassal in Shogun 2), because the Huns are nomadic, never settling behind the walls of villages, towns, or fortifications. It is unclear to me what makes the most money, or where the most fertile land is for me to set up my camps, or how I can generate growth to make more buildings or raise agents, because due to my inability to find a sense of direction to go in my first four attempts with the Huns, I found myself picking fights I should have avoided, and lost about four times before I played a campaign that lasted long enough for Attila to be born. I attribute this to my inexperience with the Rome 2 map locations, because I did not have this problem with Rise of the Samurai or Fall of the Samurai because I knew virtual Japan far better than I have ever known virtual Eastern Europe. It also does not help that the territories in the game are not click-able like in Shogun, and thus, the boarders are difficult to discern between provinces, for the larger areas surrounded by rivers or tree lines.
Sucks for that guy.
To segue into combat, once again, besides my prior experience in Total War games and knowing the strength of hit-and-run cavalry against infantry, using spears against horses, and always prioritizing killing the general, I have no idea what to do with some of these units. The simplicity of the Samurai and Ashigaru is absent here. Just look at the screenshot below for all the options available to the Huns, exclusively in the category of missile cavalry!
So, which one is supposed to be top tier?
I forget who initiated this fight, but the lead general had no army to start, but reinforcements were coming. Rather than run to join his reinforcements, the general stood his ground and died. I was outnumbered 3-to-1 in this fight even with a full 20 slots, but it did not matter because by the time they arrived, the general was dead.
This historical battle at the conclusion of the tutorial is a major skill-check that I’m sure sent many TW veterans packing. It took me three tries to get it right.
Oh the humanity!
Presentation
For the purposes of this review, I used mostly “recommended” settings. Some details, like unit sizes and textures, I always pump to the max because I like to zoom in.
Attila, like most Total War games, is gorgeous if one has the system to run it. The music is convincing in its reproduction of the sounds of the Orient, and even while writing this review, I have the music from the Main Menu playing for authorial inspiration. The unit voices are slightly disappointing, because I could barely tell the difference between the Visigoths and the Huns. Yes, there is a slight change in accent, but the lines are virtually the same. I was expecting something more exotic.
I was certainly shocked to find women on the front lines. In Shogun before expansions and mods, female units of any kind are so rare, that by the time onna-bushi and Geisha were available, players were probably already dominating the map even after that awful, awful Realm Divide mechanic.
One of my favorite additions to the battlefield is the cinematic camera, defaulted to the “insert” key. It makes for some great shots when one is routing the enemy or just trying to create quality images for a project like this review.
The ability to reinforce an army via landing seamen during combat is a neat feature, but one I never used because the Huns are not naval. This unit suffered the misfortune of a late arrival when its allies were already massacred, and were met with a hail of arrows.
Final Word
I recommend this game to Total War veterans because the learning curve of the campaign map is a game in and of itself. Total War games are already difficult by industry standards, but Attila raises the stakes. If I felt frustrated trying to figure out who to realistically attack— because while Attila provides objectives, many of them are across map which would require players to abandon their tributary states and leave them vulnerable to other barbarian factions—then I know newcomers will feel completely lost. I also never understood how key features to a strong army and economy, growth, fertility, and income worked. I would camp with the Huns in one province and have +300 income and camp in the next province over and have -100. Sometimes I could build buildings and the next turn I could not. I understood enough to camp my armies in different (but adjacent) provinces to avoid food shortages, but all of that kind of stuff is too distracting from the main attraction of the game, which is to play as the Huns and raise literal holy hell in the West as the “Scourge of God.” I believe that all but the most dedicated gamers will either lose the game or lose interest in it before ninety-six turn requirement for Attila to come of age. Yo, in Shogun 2, I’m already Shogun in that many turns if not already completed an entire (short, easy) campaign!
What a stud!
The Bottom Line