So, I sunk a couple of hours into this last night and came away really impressed. Granted, my expectations were rock bottom given the sorry state Rome II launched in, but so far Attila’s been perfectly stable and the AI hasn't yet shat the bed catastrophically, which is usually a regular ocurance when Total War games first ship. Beyond that, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much they'd iterated on since Rome II. It’s not a huge departure by any means, but little things like the interface, provence management and character/army skill trees are all subtly better. I haven’t played enough to know how impactful some of the tentpole new features like razing are, but there are tons of really neat little additions that I keep coming across, like the ability to enlist soldiers from an army you just defeated or how environmental details like walls and fences will crumble as your army moves across them.
There's not much to set Rome II and Atilla apart graphically aside from the latter sporting vastly improved anti-aliasing solutions and a higher-resolution depth-of-field implementation, both of which eliminate a couple of Rome II's most obvious visual blemishes. Technical similarities aside, I greatly prefer Atilla’s art direction — the overly saturated pastely look is out in favour of a muted, earthly palette that feels much more thematically appropriate.
Also, it's fucking hard. I started as the Western Roman Empire and, appropriately enough, I'm getting my ass kicked every turn.
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