Intro
As games have progressed throughout the years, so have the ways that you can play games. Whenever a single game has an incredible amount of success, developers must think of clever ways to add mechanics and layers of the old gameplay to make something new of it. This is precisely what Creative Assembly was trying to do with the third installment of the Total War: Warhammer series.
Introducing new elements into a game to prevent it from becoming stale and allow new layers to be experienced through the campaign. Unfortunately, as we delve into this new game mechanic, we see what happens when certain developers become a bit too ambitious with a concept.
The Chaos Realms
First, let's dive into what the Chaos Realms mechanic is. In the campaign of Total War Warhammer III.
Dealing with your average tyrant, demon, God, or beast of a warlord is one thing when it comes to the game, but going on an overarching quest for the bear god Ursun is another matter entirely. Whether you're playing as a demon faction, ogres, one of the Kislevite Lords, or Cathay, you'll be in a race to secure the souls of demon princes to secure Ursun for your faction's gain against none other than Be'lakor. This might sound like a good idea on paper to add variety to the campaign, but unlike the Vortex Campaign Total War Warhammer II, the concept doesn't mesh well with the game overall.
The Chaos Rifts
Next, let's discuss the rifts, easily amongst the biggest migraine causes that many players of the game have experienced. To get the souls of Demon Princes, you need to enter the realm of chaos. To enter the realm of chaos, you need to wait for Ursun to roar with his godly voicebox to tear literal rifts in reality. Chaos rifts, to be exact, that pop up in certain portions of the map, with one in each province.
Now, this wouldn't be so bad on paper if each not only didn't pour out the corruption that brings penalties to your land but also vomits out chaos armies that can ravage, raid and sack your lands. Compounding this issue is that you're handicapping yourself by sending one of your armies through this rift in the chaos realms to get a demon prince's soul. This means that you'll have fewer resources to deal with the rifts that are still around while also leaving you more vulnerable to other armies attacking you. It's very frustrating, to say the least. Made even more frustrating by the fact that while your agents can still close the rifts, it will cost you 1500 gold per rift. If you try to close a rift with an army, you will have to fight a chaos army waiting for you on the other side.
Death By a Thousand Cuts
Remember how I touched on how vulnerable you will be with one of your armies made unavailable? You don't truly appreciate how unforgiving this issue can be until you play factions that aren't equipped or fortunate enough with their geography. Take Kislev, for example. If you play Tzarina Katarin, you're screwed. If you play Rasputin-inspired Kostaltyn, you're asking for an exercise in both hair-pulling frustration and mental torture. Neither of these characters has much of a margin for error when it comes to trying to both defend their faction's lands as well as venturing into the chaos realms for demon souls. One misstep, one miscalculation, and you could be dealing with an endless horde of demons, ogres, and norscans that want nothing more than to make your life miserable.
Keeping your faction above water while fending off stacks of enemy armies while managing chaos corruption is a tall order for even the most experienced Total War players, which can be made near impossible if you play on the harder difficulties. What makes things worse is that since you have a fully armed army in the chaos realms, you can more often than not only have the time and resources to only defend your borders and not strike out against your aggressors, meaning that you'll be dealing with increased aggressive army stacks as the game progresses.
The Ridonculous Race For Souls
None of the issues I mentioned previously would be so bad if you weren't racing to get these souls against the other significant factions of the game. Maybe if a player didn't have to hustle and bustle to acquire these souls whenever the rifts opened, it would allow them to pace this campaign at their leisure, like with the Warhammer II Vortex Campaign. Sadly, in this campaign, you have no choice but to race against the likes of the Demon Prince, Cathay, Ogres, and other factions to reach Ursun before anyone else. Worse, even if you hurry, there's no guarantee that you'll get a soul before another major faction does, especially in the realm of Tzeentch if someone has a head start on you.
And if that happens, you're forcefully expelled from that specific chaos realm and left scrambling to make up precious lost time. It makes for a frustrating and groan-worthy system that leaves players more annoyed than feeling accomplished that they could overcome such a challenge. Such circumstances are due to players having no time to revel in their successes with a litany of other nations knocking on your door.
Conclusion
I'm all for implementing challenging games and concepts for players to overcome. But, with the way the campaign is currently constructed, one can't help but wait for Immortal Empires for the game to debut or to just use a mod that disables the chaos rift system entirely. One can appreciate Creative Assembly's willingness to try new concepts to create excitement for their campaigns. Still, some ideas need to be thoroughly tried out and understood from the players' perspective. It's one thing to make a game challenging.
However, if it gets frustrating and tedious, you risk losing the players. And this is a large part of why so many active players have left the game since its debut and are waiting for Immortal Empires. Hopefully, Creative Assembly can learn from this issue along with others that play the game, especially since there's so much potential and fun that can be gained.
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