TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER III

Immortal Empires is a messy masterpiece.

- Fraser Brown

NEED TO KNOW 

RELEASE 2022

PUBLISHER Sega 

DEVELOPER Creative Assembly

LINK warhammer3.totalwar.com

I was vibrating with excitement when I fired up the Immortal Empires beta. Despite its diminishing returns, I really dug Total War: Warhammer III’s Realm of Chaos campaign, but it felt like a starter designed to whet the appetite before the mega campaign’s appearance. This is what I was waiting for. And, thank Sigmar, Creative Assembly has delivered.

278 factions and 86 playable legendary lords. That’s how many groups are vying for control of Warhammer’s war-torn world. And what a world. Tiny, one-settlement islands, archipelagos surrounded by shipwrecks, massive continents full of deserts, forests and mountains shaped like skulls—it’s a big place.

This collision of three games is, naturally, quite a bit larger than the already mind-bogglingly massive Mortal Empires, but adding all these extra races, factions and landmasses into the brawl does more than just fatten up the campaign. It’s also been remixed, with familiar factions moved around to make use of all this extra space and create interesting matchups. You’ll now find undead and dark elf pirates hanging around Cathay, for instance, who make excellent use of the rivers that cut through the empire.