Recent reviews by Elysion

With the release of Immortal Empires, Total War: WARHAMMER III is now the ultimate Warhammer Fantasy experience.

Developed and expanded over many years, this franchise has grown to truly epic proportions. We now have access to 86 Legendary Lords across 22 races, fighting their earth-shattering wars on the largest world map ever created for a strategy game. And the scope of this game is still growing steadily. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Total War: WARHAMMER III is the most comprehensive strategy game ever made. And also one of the best.

Total War's classic mix of a turn-based campaign map and real-time battles fits the setting perfectly and is just plain fun.

The game looks beautiful and is relatively well optimized and bug-free, especially for a Total War game. The patch cycle has also improved compared to previous titles.

Now for the negative: the pricing model.

I've been following this franchise since Warhammer 1 and bought every game and DLC in the series at the time of release. And while I have to say that the various pieces of content are well worth the money, it's absolutely unacceptable that the prices haven't come down in years. The fact that Warhammer 1 still costs $60 is ridiculous and a big barrier to entry for new players.

While players who prefer a story-driven campaign can have fun with the Realm of Chaos base campaign, there is no doubt that the heart of this game lies in Immortal Empires, which requires the purchase of 3 full-price titles. I have several friends that I tried to persuade to buy the game, but once they saw the pricing model they just laughed at me.

I wish Creative Assembly would start offering decent bundles in the foreseeable future as it's a shame more people aren't getting to enjoy this game.

The developers of Hello Games have more than redeemed themselves. We all were with right angry at them for selling an unfinished product and talking out of their asses during the marketing campaign. However, the still ongoing support for this game and the constant flow of free content updates is truly remarkable. Especially considering the bad air around this game, they could have easily left it in the dust and moved on. They did not.

I begin to believe that Sean Murray really has a vision for this game and that he deeply cares about it. He is a developer, not a marketing person and he was hyped like a child about his own game back then. He said things he better had not said.

However, the passion of Hello Games for this product clearly shows at this point and many more updates are in the pipeline. I really believe they deserve a second chance.

Eternal Alpha.