Total War: Attila (PC) Review

When talking about Total War: Attila it is hard to do so without comparing it to the prior entry in the series: Total War: Rome II. Following in the same vein, players are set up as one of several tribes in Europe, and are tasked with expanding, growing, and eventually conquering all of Europe in their own individual vies for power. However, whereas Rome II focused on the B.C. era, Attila is set well into the medieval timeframe, complete with Vikings, Danes, Goths, and, of course, the Huns.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward and, sadly, nearly identical to the previous title. Players are given a province with some armies, and maybe a navy, and surrounded on all sides by potential enemies. Taking place over a series of turns, the task is to then build up these armies and send them out to take over enemies, while making peace with friends, trying to build up their settlements, and so-forth. It's all fairly intuitive and, thankfully, easy to understand.

As always, the option is granted to simply auto-resolve any battles, or to, instead, take to the field to manage the battles directly, arranging troops and controlling them to thwart the AI in as best a manner as possible. Many of the staples of battle remain and units function more or less the same, but a greater emphasis seems to have been placed on aggression and combat than before as units can die quickly and break with relative ease. Various abilities, such as fire arrows (Note: Do not use in forests!), can be triggered to various degrees of effects, such as dealing less damage to enemy squads, but reducing their morale at a faster pace.

However, lots of important elements of the series are also retained, such as AI that struggles to successfully attack a settlement, the computer having bafflingly high level agents, and so on. On the whole, though, the game is still very fun to play, and it is really easy to get swept up in a battle, trying to figure out how to trounce an army more than twice the size of the player's, despite a penalty of heavy fog and no strong defensive positions, or the discovery of just how effective siege ships are and managing to flatten an entire opposing enemy transport fleet, leaving a city ripe for the taking.