Total War: Attila Review

We all know how a Total War campaign plays out, right? Start off with a province or two, build up your economy a bit, amass an army and go off to war, starting off whatever poor sods had the misfortune of settling next to you and working your way out. It’s a tried and tested formula, but it’s one we’ve seen played out a hundred times before, with factions that essentially play the same apart from a few different unit preferences and a buff or two.Total War: Attila does things a bit differently, which is part of the reason why it’s the most enjoyable entry in the franchise for some time.

So, to choose your faction for the grand campaign. Decisions, decisions. The roaming tribes of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths start without a home to call their own, forcing you to travel and loot your way across Europe and Asia in search of safe haven. Don’t like the barren grasslands of the east? I hear the Mediterranean is nice this time of year. Northern barbarians like the Saxons rely on money raised by raiding and pillaging, encouraging an utter lack of concern for the niceties of diplomacy. The two Roman remnants in the East and West must accept inevitable defeats on the outskirts of their territory, and instead fight a defensive war to maintain their most tactically viable and valuable settlements. The Huns, meanwhile (yes, you can play as the big bad wolf) are like a giant wrecking ball rolling across Europe. They can’t maintain settlements, so towns and cities are only targets to be sacked and looted, not captured. Their structures are temporary huts and livestock pens, all ready to be taken down and packed up as the horde moves on to its next target.

In effect that’s a good three or four entirely unique styles of play to be mastered in Attila, offering an impressive amount of depth and replay value, and removing that sense of over-familiarity that had begun to undermine the series’ formula. Here, no two campaigns feel the same. Your ultimate goals don’t change of course, this is a game of world conquest after all, but being offered such distinct variations on how to get there makes such a big difference.

So to, it turns out, does a decent theme. Attila is a game about entropy and chaos, and the breakdown of civilisation. From the very first few turns the relative status quo that’s existed in Europe for hundreds of years comes crumbling down. Armies pillage their way across the continent. Previously settled factions abandon their traditional homes and flee South towards warmer climes. In my game the Caledonians and Picts lost their holdings in Britain to war and disease (my war and my disease, as it happens), travelled down past my well-defended holds, and ended up settling in Northern Spain. The boundaries of kingdoms aren’t simply pushed back and forth as they were in previous Total War games - they’re frequently splintered into pieces.

There’s so much more going on, so much change and strife and so many completely unpredictable situations to deal with. And all the while the wheels of fate turn, and the game’s seven end of act cutscenes (marking certain key dates, and thematically representing the biblical breaking of the seven seals leading to the end times) remind you; Attila is coming. If you’re in his way when he arrives, well. Good luck. There hasn’t been a threat like this to deal with since the Mongol hordes back in Medieval 2. It’s by far the best campaign the series has come up with in recent years.

Returning tools like the technology tree and the building browser make the day-to-day business of organising your empire less of a headache. Provinces can now be assigned governors and edicts, essentially region-wide buffs, without having to claim each settlement. Public order must still be maintained, and in-keeping with the general theme of society slipping into the dark ages, diseases can ravage your armies and towns if you don’t keep a city’s squalor to a minimum. Occasionally, especially when you’re playing as the over-stretched Romans, settlements must simply be abandoned in the face of advancing armies. As the campaign rolls on, the map becomes dotted with sad little clusters of ruins marking out once thriving cities. Such are the times. And man, how darkly satisfying it is to finally conquer a city that’s been a thorn in your side for years, pick its bones clean of loot, and leave it as a scorched mark in the Earth, a warning to your rivals.

The family tree from Shogun 2 also returns, though the game’s political sub-systems still feel vague and impenetrable. Your characters can be tasked with various different plots, from embezzling funds to improving their public standing, but there’s a lack of adequate feedback from your actions – I had a well-respected Saxon leader who was basically as hard as nails, but every time I tried to improve his political reputation, I lost standing within my faction. Why, I’m still not sure. There’s three different ratings that indicate your family’s general amount of power, but exactly what they all mean and how they influence the political situation is just not adequately explained.

I gave up after a while and largely ignored the whole system, aside from responding to the occasional random event that popped up (you can earn different bonuses here, depending on your response), with no obvious detriment to my fortunes. It’s a shame that the mechanics feel half-baked, considering the shortened time frame of the campaign in comparison to Rome 2 lets you get far more attached to your generals and governors – who aren’t getting old and dying every few seconds. You’ll rely on a select few commanders and elite armies for most of the game, and levelling them up with specific skills and abilities is particularly rewarding. Given that Creative Assembly had promised a revamped and improved political system, I’d hoped for a little Crusader Kings-style deviousness, but it all feels disappointingly stale.

There are definitely improvements on the battlefield, even if a few irritating quirks of the engine remain unsolved. Enemy units are a bit too happy to sit there under a withering hail of arrows, and are still too easy to distract with cavalry feints. Barbarian enemies have an annoying habit of packing their armies with unit upon unit of trained war-dogs, which leads to admittedly comical but rather ridiculous battles that look like some horrible out-of-control version of Crufts. These are all minor annoyances though, and in general the AI’s been massively improved since the dark days of Rome 2’s launch. Here I had tense sieges that I lost after battling my way deep into the enemy fortifications, and knock-down, drag-out fights which turned on the loss of an enemy general. On the campaign map I was outmanoeuvred and outsmarted more than once by sneaky flanking forces and unexpected assaults. It’s not perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than I expected.

On the technical side, Attila is still a demanding beast. Even on a rig that meets the recommended specifications, I got some moderate slowdown in the middle of big sieges, and smoke effects caused a few problems both in the battle engine and on the campaign map. Performance could be better, in all honesty, but I’ve put up with far worse in Total War games before. It didn’t ruin my fun at any point, but it’s worth pointing out that if your PC couldn’t handle Rome 2, then it probably won’t fare much better with Attila. Bugs were less common, thankfully. Apart from one recurring crash to desktop issue, solved by rolling the autosave back a few turns, I didn’t have any notable issues.

Attila doesn’t manage to fix every lingering issue with the Rome 2 engine, but it does provide a far more interesting, focused and thematically interesting playpen in which to plan your world domination. We’ve been here before; just as Shogun 2’s narrower focus and elegant simplicity carved away the bloated excess of Empire: Total War, Attila’s shorter time frame and smart streamlining of the more unwieldy aspects of its predecessor makes for a leaner, tougher challenge. There’s restraint here, an underlying admission that Rome 2 tried to do too much too quickly, but also some of the most creative and interesting design choices that the series has mustered in years. The horde mechanics and the intensely challenging Roman faction starts are both excellent additions that require seasoned Total War fans to learn new strategies, and make sacrifices they’ve never had to make before.