There's no major revolution at work, rather CA has continued to iterate and improve on its already accomplished strategy series.īack to the campaign side of the game, there's a new resource system, and I really like it. In that respect, as we covered in our previous hands-on, Troy brings interesting new additions to the series with a battlefield that's more realistic and responsive than ever before. The battles that I played along the way were typically engaging, and there was one in particular where I managed to scrape a hard-fought victory from an unlikely situation thanks to clever positional play. After battling a local army and its garrison in the next city-state along, and having just done enough to edge what ended up being a brutal battle, before I was able to claim my prize, my enemy's allies turned up and absolutely smashed my remaining forces, killing both of my hero characters. The complicated political landscape also means that it's important to be careful who you attack and when you attack them, as it's very easy to bite off more than you can chew, which is exactly what happened to me. With so many city-states to talk to, my worry is that I'm going to spend a lot of time telling other leaders: "no, you can't have a third of my food stores for nothing in return." It's hard to say how these things will develop because there are a few diplomatic options, many of them built around the game's five resources (more on them later), but the unrealistic nature of many of the requests meant I had to spend time coming up with counter-offers. During the AI turn, there was a lot of back and forth from different faction leaders making demands in exchange for friendship. Diplomacy is at the heart of Troy and there are allegiances being formed all over the place. My first task was to unite my own lands, shutting down a local rebellion before swallowing up a nearby city-state to the south. Troy is no different in this regard, with a themed fog of war decorated with Greek iconography that peels away as you explore to reveal sun-kissed islands that shimmer in the sunlight. Confession time, I'm a sucker for beautiful maps, and on that front, CA has been delivering increasingly stunning campaign environments. I was quite surprised when I found out that there wasn't going to be any naval combat in Troy, given the central role that the Agean Sea plays here (armies that meet on the water will settle their disputes in an island battle), but I wasn't surprised that the campaign map looked great. Total War Saga: Troy, on the other hand, is set around water and not surrounded by it, with the Agean Sea encircled by Greek and Trojan states that will come to blows in one of history's most legendary - and mysterious - wars. They're not for everyone, however, and after two Warhammer games as well as expansive main entries set in Rome and China, the series seems to be heading down a trio of linked yet distinctive paths.įall of the Samurai, which was repurposed and turned into a Saga game after the fact, and Thrones of Brittania, which examined a period of history that I'm particularly interested in, are both similarly sized titles set on islands that are in the grip of turmoil. This more focused approach to grand strategy and epic battles allows the developers at Creative Assembly (in this instance, the Sofia studio) to really burrow into a particular time and place, building mechanics around those eras to really immerse the player in the scenario. I have to say that I'm a fan of the Saga format when it comes to Total War games.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |