Yo, before we start, just a quick update on the whole Dragon Age II thing: It’s still coming, but I’ve accidentally gotten sucked into Origins and now want to play through the entire thing without a captive audience watching me the entire time. So… because of this, the Dragon Age and Dragon Age II retrospective is now going to be its own separate deal. I’ll stream more when I feel like it, and I’m not planning on playing Inquisition, but this has become a big enough thing to become separate from the wheel. You can expect my thoughts on Origins… eventually. It’s a long game.

Dungeon Siege III

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment

Release Date: June 17, 2011

Time Played: Around 2 ½ hours

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Special Distinction: The first game to make me quit during a stream

Would I play it again? Eh.

Dungeon Siege III continues the trend of my tolerance for middling and questionable RPGs halting somewhere around middling and questionable action-RPGs in the vein of Diablo. Not everything can be Nox, I guess. Now, to be fair, there’s nothing particularly offensive about Dungeon Siege III, and indeed it seems like the kind of thing that could be a moderate amount of fun… on a console. With a controller. And probably other people along for the ride. There’s no beating around this one: This is a console-ass PC port, one that somehow managed to miss the train on decent gamepad support despite being a game that was clearly designed for a gamepad in mind. I mean, it works, in the sense that the buttons do things when you push them, but not in the sense of replacing button prompts or having anywhere near a reasonable default button layout. I feel like most games were starting to figure this out by 2011. Not this one!

I picked this one over its predecessors for a few reasons: The first is that Obsidian made it, a company I’d argue is probably responsible for some of the better and more interesting western-developed RPGs of the last 16 years. The second is that, quite frankly, there doesn’t seem to be anything remotely remarkable about Dungeon Siege 1 or 2 beyond their technical accomplishments and Jeremy Soule OSTs. I’m sorry if you were a big fan of either of those games, but this is definitely one of those cases where I’m slightly baffled a franchise got to three installments (four if you count Space Siege), a comic book, and multiple terrible Uwe Boll movies with no real outward “hook” other than being technically competent Diablo-likes with no loading past the initial startup.

Now if my general whinging about the quality of gamepad support and series lineage isn’t particularly exciting, then I have great news: Neither are the opening hours of Dungeon Siege III. It’s fine. Well, that’s not to say that there aren’t ideas. Instead of starting from scratch with a classless hero, you pick between four different set characters, all of whom have two different “stances” they can switch between at a time (I went with the fire lady, who can switch between smacking things with a spear up close and blasting them afar as a fire spirit). Progression and character building is streamlined down to the essentials, with each character having a grand total of nine abilities (three per stance, plus three defensive abilities you can use while blocking) and a couple ways of enhancing those abilities between two binary choices (do you want your sick advancing kick to have a chance of stunning enemies or setting them on fire?) It’s also much more action-oriented, with blocking and dodging very much feeling like a meaningful part of your arsenal. The AI companions who you bring along? Not quite as useful.

In some ways, I can get behind this, and if I wasn’t fumbling around with a keyboard (see, this is what brings it all together) I’d probably be more into the relatively simple, decidedly consolized approach to ARPGs this game has going for it. In a world where these sorts of games are all about the endless treadmill, there’s something… almost novel about one that clearly is a bit more hand-crafted and suited for one or two playthroughs. It’s cute, like a throwback to Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, rather than playing in the same pool as the big kids or indeed even mustering up to the post-Diablo III console port world we now find ourselves in. The only problem is that I need a bigger hook than mechanical competence to draw me in with this sort of loot game in particular. Diablo II manages it through raw nostalgia, while Destiny did it with best-in-class shooting on a console. If I had friends to play with (and, to be quite honest, I didn’t have a repetitive stress injury that makes the particular brand of clicky click actively painful) I’d probably have more love for this style of game, but I could barely get my friends to play Diablo II with me when I was a teenager, and you’d better believe I can’t do it now that we’re all adults. I’m focusing most of my social capital on making people show up for remote D&D games, in any case.

Now that’s where the narrative elements come in to fill the gap. Well, at least that’s what I was hoping, at least. It has more of it than the average game of this type, to be fair, and there are a decent number of dialogue interactions between all the murdering. However, other than the fun of recognizing how many NPC voices were done by the same handful of (prominent) voice actors (I counted at least three NPCs voiced by Liam O’Brien, two by Laura Bailey, and three by Robin Atkin Downes in the short time I played,) the best I can say about Dungeon Siege III’s writing is that there was clearly some effort involved. I’m just not sure it was necessary. It was directed by George Ziets, who is probably best known among RPG circles as being the lead writer on Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, which depending on the week might secretly be my favorite Obsidian story. Apparently Zeits wrote a 100 page “lore bible” to help flesh out the world of Dungeon Siege, which I can definitely see from the raw number of proper nouns and backstory being thrown out by every character with little context. What’s a Jeyne Kassinder anyway? Apparently not a very good thing, that’s for sure. I can’t speak to how this game’s development went, or what problems it encountered, so I’ll just leave it at the writing not being compelling enough on its own merits, even if it’s probably better than 90% of the games of this type by sheer value of mildly giving a shit.

So yeah, that’s Dungeon Siege III. It seems, uh, fine, but I think I’m done playing this particular kind of game on my dubious RPG wheel. Also, from this point onward, I’m going to reiterate that I’m not particularly interested in recording and archiving my streams at the moment. That means if you want to watch me fumble around and talk about RPGs with the handful of people in my chat, the best way to do so is live or watch the archives on my twitch page within 14 days. At some point this could change, but for now just keep that in mind. I REALLY recommend you take a look at the archives for my Wizards and Warriors stream, because a lot of what I'm going to talk about in regards to that game needs to be seen for yourself.

Nox

Developer: Westwood Studios (RIP)

Release Date: January 31, 2000

Time Played: About 3 hours

Dubiosity: 1 out of 5 (I’m like EDGE Magazine, I use the whole scale)

Number of times I made comparisons to the classic 2001 Dreamworks Film Shrek during my streams: 2

Would I play more? Yeah.

Of all the games I’ve played for my cursed wheel of RPGs thus far, Nox is probably the least “dubious” of any of them. It definitely falls into the “weird and novel” end of the spectrum rather than the “disastrous” or “janky” ones, much to my own benefit and much to the detriment of anyone who wanted to watch me suffer live on the internet. For as much as I love Two Worlds’ scrappy ambition and think Rise of the Argonauts might eventually get a full playthrough for sheer curiosity’s sake, Nox is the one game that I can point to and say “This feels like a video game that one could’ve played and enjoyed without any compunctions in the time and context that it came out” Or maybe just “hey, this seems alright”

Because, as it turns out, Nox is actually much more interesting than just “The Command and Conquer people’s attempt to make a Diablo” if you take one look at when it was released, a full five months before Diablo II. While Blizzard North’s Diablo is one of the most influential games of all time, I’d argue Diablo II contributions are what solidified the genre into what it is now, for better or worse calcifying everything afterward in its image. It’s hard to see it now, but multiplayer in Diablo 1 was initially an afterthought, and the game’s structure has as much in common with classical roguelikes and dungeon crawlers as it does with clickers where “the numbers keep going up.” Diablo II is the game that introduced things like “class-specific skills” and was even more precision-tuned towards the loot grind that its predecessor had only partially embraced.

It’s in this 3 ½ year gap between the Diablos that we find Nox, which feels less like an endless parade of ever increasing numbers or insane endgame character builds and more like a failed evolutionary branch of the genre. Yes, like Diablo you pick one of three classes for your t-shirted goober from the real world to inhabit (wait is Nox an Isekai) and click on things until they die, the things it emphasizes could not be more different. It’s an ultra-linear game with hand-crafted levels and encounters (including an emphasis on dungeon traps and hidden secrets) that happen in different orders depending on which class you picked. Loot is present, in a sense, but it also seems hand-placed mostly comes in the form of gold and consumables. You do level up, but there’s no stat allocation. Instead of using the left mouse button to do everything, you hold down the right mouse button to move and click the left to attack and pick stuff up (with ASDFG being your hotbar of spells) which gives the click murdering a slightly more direct feel and cadence. It started to feel a little more in the vein of something like Gauntlet than Grim Dawn, less in terms of wandering mazes and fighting endlessly respawning enemies and more in the sense that you’re constantly moving forward and never stopping while you bulldoze all in your path.

If I have a complaint, it might actually be that the game is too streamlined and straightforward to be called an “RPG” on anything other than the barest technicalities. This is an isometric action game, complete with a jump button to avoid traps and big ol’ magic crystals just hanging out in a dungeon to recover your mana if you’re nearby. The game might also be a little too simple for its own good, with my biggest grand strategy for most of the difficult encounters being “kite the enemies until I can drop 5-10 meteors on them.” Still, it’s something I would hypothetically play again, especially in a multiplayer context, even if it’s not nearly cursed enough to be a recurring part of this feature.

An Announcement

So hey, since the next game is Dragon Age II, easily the highest profile game on “The Wheel,” I’ve decided that it’s time to do something a little different for next week. Instead of going straight to Bioware’s first major misstep*, I thought it would be a good refresher for me (and everyone involved, honestly) if I took some time with Dragon Age Origins beforehand. It’s been more than a decade since Origins came out and almost as long since I’ve done an extensive playthrough, so for the next couple of streams I will be playing an actual good RPG. Well, I hope it’s as good as I remember it being. Probably won’t play through the entire thing (at least not over the internet) but it’s going to be a decent amount. Honestly, I need a pick-me-up before I go back to something like Realms of Arkania III; the 90 minutes I played of it felt disorienting in the state I’m in right now. Also it maybe was a bad idea to start on the third game in a series of notoriously obscure German CRPGs, but that’s what I get for remembering a positive time with it a decade ago.

Follow me on Twitch, won't you?

*: I'd argue that Jade Empire is Bioware's first truly bad RPG, but apparently that's a controversial take.

Two Worlds

Release Date: September 7, 2007 (PC, Xbox 360)

Developer: Reality Pump

Time Played: A little under 5 hours

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5

Voice Acting: 10 out of 5

Would I play more? You know what? Yeah. Yes.

The thing that always stuck out in regards to the original Two Worlds was the vague notion surrounding its release that it was “the Oblivion-killer,” a moniker mostly earned because it was a big, sprawling, open-world RPG that came out early in the lifespan of the Xbox 360. For as much as I’ll concede Bethesda’s first big mainstream Elder Scrolls game *probably* hasn’t aged as well as I’d like to pretend it has, that’s not an especially flattering comparison. Two Worlds is the textbook case of a “Eurojank” RPG, punching above its budget with all the earnestness and ambition Polish studio Reality Pump could muster. It’s clunky, awkward, has some hilariously bad voice acting, and managed to crash more than once during my brief time with it. It also seems alright.

I’d actually played a decent amount of Two Worlds II before this, which I’d go as far as to say is slightly too good (albeit, still very Eurojank) to be featured on the same wheel as “the game that killed the Ultima franchise, forever” and “Whatever the heck a Thunderscape is.” The first Two Worlds is somehow even rougher around the edges and lacks its sequel’s inventive magic system, leaving me as the requisite nameless protagonist (a ruthless mercenary type doing his best Don LaFontaine impression while also being slightly too concerned about his sister) to solve quests from the most bored villagers in the world while ineffectually whacking packs of wolves and bandits with a stick. Lots and lots of wolves. Nah, I think it fits in pretty well.

I don’t know what the trend is with European-developed RPGs and the disproportionate threat of local wildlife, but I spent the first hour or two getting messed up by packs of wolves, boar, and even the occasional bear or two. Once that initial hump was overcome and I had gotten a few levels and some decent equipment (the itemization was aggressive enough that I’d often be picking up better stuff every few minutes in some areas) I could start to see the rough appeal of Two Worlds forming in front of me. The world seems pretty damn big (if a little sparse, once you get off the road) and I’m not opposed to poking around and questing around the environment until I find areas I’m a high enough level to deal with. The game autosaves every ten minutes and will automatically resurrect you at the nearest shrine when you die, making lost progress a non-issue, even if my time with combat thus far mostly consisted of clicking rapidly and hoping for a critical hit against the small packs of enemies roving the land.

The RPG elements in Two Worlds are rather straightforward: there are four stats and a big ol’ bevy of various skills between combat, utility, magic, and special attacks. You don’t have all of the skills unlocked at the start, but you can learn them from trainers scattered throughout the world. (I remembered from the second game.) Some, like critical strike and lockpick, seemed pretty vital, while some of the special attacks seemed, uh, questionable at best. The game was generous enough with the stat and skill points in my brief time with it that I was already starting to branch out from the melee fighter build I feel like is always a safe choice in these sorts of games. I’m not going to claim it’s the most intuitive or interesting character building system I’ve seen, but at the very least it seems, uh, capable?

Now, aside from wandering sparse forests while engaging in wonton slaughter, the biggest thing that stuck out with Two Worlds was the endearingly bad quality of performances. There’s not a single line of English voice acting in this game that couldn’t have benefitted from another read or five, and it’s magical. There’s only so much mileage I can get out of goofing on VAs who were most likely not native speakers, but it’s a lot more evident because of how talky the script is. There was some thought put into the world of Antaloor, but it’s hard to pay attention to any of it when “tell, don’t show” exposition is often being delivered with all the enthusiasm of someone on Xanax at a funeral (and sometimes too much enthusiasm delivered on exactly the wrong words or syllables in any given sentence.)

So yeah, I guess I mostly enjoyed my time with Two Worlds, even if I think I’d probably have a better time revisiting its sequel. I think this feature has already broken my brain a little, because there were a couple times I thought to myself “I could see myself playing 20-30 hours of this” as I swiped away yet another silver wolf and harvested its heart for alchemy. Meanwhile, my brother is over in the next room playing The Witcher 3 and having a great time as I write this. Have I made a mistake? I played the demo for that Final Fantasy VII Remake. It seems like it could be good? Nah. Nah. We're fine.

Follow me on Twitch if you’d like to see me stream these games and watch archives of my bad choices.

Welcome back to the most horrifying, terrifying, mystifying, thing on the internet to feature a wheel of chaos since that ill-fated Giant Bomb feature where they pretended to play Donkey Kong 64! It's a bit of a short one for today, because it turns out I don't have much to say about

Sacred

Release Date: March 19, 2004. Underworld Expansion: Aug 2, 2005 (PC)

Developer: Ascaron Entertainment GmbH

Time Played: About 90 minutes (Hey, did a game make me immediately break my "two stream minimum" rule? Sure did!)

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5 (mostly for how much of a pain in the ass it was to get the game running at a reasonable frame-rate and that time I got stuck in level geometry)

Diablo-esque games on the wheel I would've rather played instead: Dungeon Siege III, Nox, Lionheart, and now Dungeon Lords.

Would I play more? NOOOOPE. It's too competent and not weird enough to be on the wheel, but it's too mediocre to be exciting to play in another context.

Given the era in which it was developed and the continent it was developed on, I had higher expectations for Sacred than a drably competent loot-em-up. I think it might be the first game too boring to deserve a spot on the wheel. Indeed if not for the intervention of a friendly, helpful fan of the game in my chat I probably wouldn’t have gotten past the rather… disastrous frame-rate I was encountering before I downloaded a fix, and it probably wouldn’t have been played at all. And honestly? I think I might’ve preferred that.

It’s probably a little weird to react so strongly to a game like Sacred, which seems like an entirely inoffensive, low-friction, open world-ish refinement of Blizzard North’s staggeringly influential Diablo II, but I think my general level of tolerance for these sorts of games is critically low. I’ve been on the record as finding Diablo III’s ultra-streamlined, mildly banal firehose of loot where “the numbers go up” to be a few steps too close to clickers for my liking, while Path of Exile’s nightmare sphere grid skill tree and endless endgame build variety are both too intimidating and demanding of my time to warrant serious investment. It’s difficult to hook me on this stuff in the best of circumstances, unless you base your endless loot treadmill around a more compelling gameplay loop (see: Monster Hunter, Destiny) or hit the exact right balance for me in terms of skill progression, loot progression, and overall difficulty to catch my interest.

Sacred leans a little closer to the “streamlined” camp of post-Diablo 2 loot-n-scoots, with abilities based around cooldowns instead of mana, and quality-of-life additions like mounts and an auto-loot key, but it doesn’t do anything weird or interesting enough to be truly dubious. Some unorthodox character classes, like a vampire knight, demoness, and two flavors of elf, but those aside there doesn’t really seem to be much of a hook for an enterprising dubiomancer to conjure any entertaining blog or stream fodder from it. For my case, I spent the better part of 90 minutes using the Battle Mage’s basic fireball spell on hordes of goblins, roughly two seconds at a time, occasionally upgrading my armor and weapons and kind of wishing I had put Divine Divinity or Beyond Divinity on here instead. Maybe it would be more fun with a different class and/or with more people along for the ride, but at that point I might as well play something from the same genre that does everything better.

As always, you can follow my dumb antics and watch stream archives on my Twitch page. Still haven't figured out what I want to do with my full recordings once the archives leave twitch, but I don't really want to put a bunch of unedited two hour streams on YouTube.

It’s nice to know that after being pleasantly surprised by Rise of the Argonauts’ mid-budget competence, this feature has already started to live up to its name. I might as well set out a couple more “ground rules” for the wheel while I’m here, because shoving more restrictions on myself is fun!

1. I am obligated to play any game picked by the wheel for at least two streaming sessions. Thus far, this has leveled out at about four hours, which I feel like is a… mostly fine metric for evaluating these sorts of games? Most RPGs that aren’t Final Fantasy XIII tend to reveal their general mechanics and overall “hand” by then, but if I feel like I need to play more, or the audience demands it, I’ll play more. I certainly wouldn’t want someone to judge an all-time classic like Baldur’s Gate II from its opening hours.
2. That said, if a game I’ve already played is picked on the wheel, I’m allowed to respin. This should hopefully be more of an emergency measure than anything, but if I find a game particularly dull or… troublesome, I reserve the right to pass over it.
3. I’m pretty happy with my current wheel roster of “things I already own” but if you have any suggestions for the dubious RPGs in your life, I’d love to hear them. Generally trying to stick to western and PC stuff right now, but I’ve already floated the idea of playing something like Lost Kingdoms so console stuff and JRPGs are definitely not off the table.

That should do it. But before we jump into this week’s game, I feel like it might be worth giving

Some Brief Context

I’d be willing to make the case that Westwood was one of the most versatile developers of the 1990s, between their work on the first two seminal Eye of the Beholder RPGs, more-or-less creating the RTS genre as we know it with Dune II and Command and Conquer, dabbling in a trilogy of lighthearted fantasy point-and-click adventures with Legend of Kyrandia, and even making their own take on Diablo with Nox (coincidentally, also on the wheel.) Even if everything they’ve done hasn’t aged entirely well, their output was varied and interesting enough that they deserve to be known as more than just “The Command and Conquer people.”

We’re not going to talk about any of those today, we’re going to talk about their resident first-person RPG series, Lands of Lore, which was more or less their successor to Eye of the Beholder after parting with the D&D license. The first game in the series, Throne of Chaos, is a colorful, charming “side-stepping rock-dropping puzzle-em-up” RPG in the same vein as EotB, Dungeon Master, and Legend of Grimrock with a heavier bent on presentation and storytelling than you’d normally expect from something in that company. For one, they dragged Patrick Stewart off the set of Star Trek and gave him a giant check to deliver like 10 lines as King Richard Gladstone, who of course is then summarily poisoned after the introduction and no longer capable of talking. (13 years before he did the same for Oblivion, no less!) While I think anyone with a vague interest in these sorts of games would be better served playing Grimrock, its sequel, or Vaporum, the first Lands of Lore deserves mention as one of the more playable games of that type, from that era.

I might end up doing a stream of it, if only because it seems like the series went off in an, uh, interesting direction after the first installment. The second game, Guardians of Destiny, is actually the one that precipitated the move to a single character and fully 3D environments, but I’ve still heard marginally positive things about its branching storyline and goofy characters. Also it includes FMV actors, so it must be pretty “good” on that front as well. That said… there definitely seem to be a lot of similarities between it and our current game, so never say never.

Lands of Lore III

Release Date: March 3rd, 1999 (PC)

Developer: Westwood Studios (RIP)

Time Played: About 4 hours (stream archive here, for now)

Dubiosity: 4 out of 5 (an extra point for being a pain in the ass to get running in a window, then another hour of tweaking to play well with my current less-than-optimal streaming setup.)

Number of GameFAQs guides: Just one! That's as many guides as there are for Rise of the Argonauts!

Would I play more? Yeah, probably? But what if I just played the first game or Eye of the Beholder instead?

Lands of Lore III is considered the “bad” one in the series, having been rushed out the door a little too early to tepid response. While I have yet to encounter any major game-breaking bugs, it definitely seems like that’s the reputation it’s known for among genre enthusiasts and there were definitely a couple of things that seemed slightly broken. Coming to it fresh, especially having not played more than a few minutes of the second game, it’s a strange beast for an RPG. I’ve always considered Might and Magic to be on the faster, more streamlined (and, I might argue, better-aged) edge of 90s CRPG design, but I think Lands of Lore might have it beat. You control one character in Lands of Lore III, who levels up simultaneously in up to 4 different classes mostly just by using the abilities tied to them (hit things with swords to level up fighter, magic to level up mage, ranged attacks to level up thief, and heal yourself and craft items to level up priest.) The biggest RPG management aspect comes from the worst kind of management: Inventory management. To its credit, it seems like every item in Lands of Lore III has some kind of use, and I could see that stuff having a lot more appeal later in the game, but during my playtime I was mostly just in need of healing items during the brief occasions I wasn’t melting everything I ran into with a couple of sword swings.

The actual source of my consternation with this game comes from level design, a recurring bugbear for me with a lot of these things. It’s hard to explain, but I think Lands of Lore secretly wants to be more of an action game than it is. The first hour of my time was spent stumbling around the small castle town of Gladstone and surrounding woods, doing the initial quests for the 4 guilds and occasionally struggling with both the controls and the terrible map. While you can see the roots of the hidden secrets one would expect from the classic dungeon crawlers of yore, more often than not I was surprised by how the two dungeons I encountered were either depressingly straightforward (like a FPS level) or weirdly, confusingly labyrinthine (like a 90s FPS level.) There just doesn’t seem to be a great coherent structure to the whole thing, and I think if the map was better the problems of navigation would be mostly solved and it would just be a weirdly linear series of dungeons with a city hub tying it together. As it is now, I haven’t run into anything I’d call distinctive or interesting with the way the game has structured itself, outside of making me decide to quit after getting sick of a particularly confusing lava dungeon sequence.

Another source of dubiosity comes from replacing some of the more charming, tongue-in-cheek writing of the earlier games with a bad case of 90s snark. Coppert LeGré, the presumptive hero of our story, is a protagonist of the “intolerable” variety and his constant quippiness and sarcasm suggest losing his soul to demon hounds from between dimensions was the least of his problems. Now he has to venture between realms to collect shards of a magical mirror keeping things together and hopefully find that soul along the way. There’s definitely an appeal to having a protagonist who’s kind of a shithead (not to mention having a familiar who also makes weird quips) but I’m not entirely sure it’s the same kind of appeal the developers were intending.

Now, my general feelings towards Lands of Lore III are that it’s “unspectacular” and hampered by frustrating design choices rather than outright bad, at least from the 4 hours I played. That said, there’s one thing that has me seriously considering playing more, should the wheel pick it again, and it’s apparently that the game gets weird in some of the later areas. While I stopped in the first of five realms, aka: “obligatory lava level” I’m to understand things get more interesting later on. Apparently you go to a realm that’s just an abandoned Brotherhood of NOD base? That sounds bananas in a way I can get behind.

Just a reminder that you can follow my bad choices and find stream archives on my Twitch page, should you desire to watch my experiences firsthand. I'm thinking about putting edited-down versions on youtube somewhere, but I haven't quite figured the specifics of what I want to do yet.

First off, I want to thank anyone who tuned into my Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run streams and/or donated. It was (mostly) a lot of fun and I managed to raise $500 for COVID-19 relief. You can find a playlist of my archived stream here. Unfortunately, I forgot to hit record for part of it, and I still need to do some editing before I upload my day 2 stream, but if you really want to watch multiple hours of me dying horribly in Temple of Elemental Evil, then doing marginally better in Wizardry 8 while talking about the Total War franchise with GB Moderator ZombiePie, you can certainly do that. However, the thing that has actually stuck with me the most is my final stretch goal, also known as:

The Wheel of Dubious RPGs

Like anyone who has had a Steam and GOG account for about a decade, it’s fair to say I have some random-ass shit dwelling in both libraries, most of it gained from earlier years of ill-advised sale purchases. My recent bad quarantine/stimulus check choices aside, (definitely gonna play through those lengthy PS2 JRPGs, just you wait) I’d like to think age, responsibility, and regret have led me to be more disciplined than I was during the dark era of Steam mega-sales with those daily and hourly deals. We live in a civilized age now, where everything is the same price for the duration of the sale and you can refund things. Also, I kinda already bought everything I wanted to buy around 2010-2014

However, the random-ass shit remains, forever entombed in the “hidden” portion of my libraries, never seeing the light of day… until quarantine drove me crazy enough to consider streaming video games on the internet. Despite having less time and less patience for the old and obscure than I used to, the idea of leveraging what I had on hand for the sake of charity sounded like a fun stretch goal. Unfortunately, I’ve accidentally invested too much thought and energy into it now and you’re forced to reap the results. Every week, I will spin the wheel and stream the game chosen by its dark power, and I’ll probably end up writing something up about it if I feel so inclined. I think it’s a fun gimmick for streaming and gives me a consistent concept to follow, which is probably more exciting than just playing something hot and cool and relevant. (also sometimes I will stream things that are hot and cool and relevant)

Now, at this point you’re probably wondering: What constitutes a “dubious” RPG anyway? The metascore? The obscurity? The cult following? Well, in the legendary words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: “I know it when I see it.” Dubiosity is more than a measure of quality, it’s a measure of being. Not everything currently on the wheel is a burning trash fire, although I have to say I’ve found some choice installments of otherwise beloved RPG franchises that should make for good internet television. I’ve actually been on the record as saying I like some of them (Might and Magic IX might be a blatantly unfinished mess, but it’s still Might and Magic) but my point is that you’re not going to be finding any Fallouts or Baldur’s Gates over here (well, I could play Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel but that just seems like a bad time). I’ve also mostly kept to stuff I already own and can stream on PC, although my copy of Greedfall is on PS4 and I’m more than willing to expand to console stuff and JRPGs if we get to that point.

With that said, here's my little write-up about the first game to make it off the wheel and onto my bad choice computer screen.

Rise of the Argonauts

Release Date: December 16, 2008 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Developer: Liquid Entertainment

Time Played: A little under 5 hours

Dubiosity: 2 out of 5

Would I play more? Genuinely considering a full playthrough.

It was fortunate that this was the first game the wheel landed on (well, after Soulbringer broke everything and soft-locked my computer) because Rise of the Argonauts was the original inspiration for it in the first place. I wasn’t expecting the wheel to land on it again during my stream yesterday, but so the wheel wills, so it shall be. An action-RPG thrown out in the cold, barren mid-December from a developer more known for their RTS work, Rise of the Argonauts (also known as “The Adventures of Jason and Thicc Hercules”) has sat in my steam library for ages, untouched and unplayed until the wheel fatefully selected it. I have to assume I got it in a humble bundle at some point, because I had zero clue what it was until I actually started playing. It turns out that it’s… cut-rate Greek Mythology Mass Effect? Jason’s gotta get that Golden Fleece, there are three different locations he needs to go to, all while assembling a Bioware-esque team of fellow mythological figures and making dialogue choices that are attuned to four different gods of Olympus (Ares is Renegade, Apollo is Paragon, Athena is Lawful Neutral, and Hermes is clever.) There’s not exactly a huge emphasis on meaningful choices, but there sure is a lot of talking and some of the side quests feel like they come straight out of a mid-2000s Bioware game.

So, here’s the thing: I think this game might be totally alright. Perhaps it’s the skewed curve I’m working with here, but in spite of the obvious budget limitations, bad combat, and extremely 2008 PC port, I was having a genuinely okay time streaming Rise of the Argonauts. It has some neat ideas, like its leveling system being about dedicating your accomplishments to the gods, and thus far I’ve found the writing entirely acceptable by that mid-00s Bioware standard (the VA cast includes a bunch of veteran voice actors, such as Steve Blum, Cam Clarke, and Bioware regular/FemShep herself, Jennifer Hale), even if the occasionally bad line read or the unemotive character models takes me out of it. If nothing else, it only has a two on the dubiosity scale (dubiometer?) because there’s not very much bullshit for me to deal with between the talking, fighting, and occasional random crashes. Equipment is streamlined, leveling is straightforward, and there’s nary a half-assed mechanic or obnoxious subsystem in sight. What you see is what you get, essentially, and I think at this point I might just play more of it regardless of if it pops up again on the wheel or not because my priorities are a mess. Also Mutton Chops Hercules is hilarious and I will never stop goofing on the design they went with.

You can find the archive of my most recent stream on my twitch channel, and I’m intending on recording and archiving all of my streams on Youtube after this point. If you'd like to join in on my bad times, I'm planning on streaming 2-3 times a week for the foreseeable future (I'll figure out a more consistent schedule at some point, but for now following me is probably the easiest way to know when I'm doing stuff)

Next Game: Lands of Lore III

Hello internet friends, this year I’ve decided to take part in the Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run, raising money for Direct Relief’s COVID-19 efforts! In a move that is very on-brand for me, I'll be playing a game near and dear to my heart for too many hours in the day! That's right, I'm going to be playing Temple of Elemental Evil for like 14 hours next weekend, and you can help make that experience more difficult/better for all involved!

WHEN?

I’ll be up on Saturday, April 18th from 8AM to 4PM PDT and on Sunday, April 19th from 11AM to 5PM PDT. The goal is to stream for those 14 hours with room for the occasional food/bathroom break. My donation page is here, and you'll likely be able to find my stream on explosiveruns.com as well.

Wait, WHAT?

Based on the classic 1st edition module written by Gary Gygax and Frank Metzner, Troika’s The Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure is remarkable for two reasons: 1. Its strict adherence to both the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 ruleset and the original module 2. The number of times I’ve mentioned it on this website. It’s a weird D&D combat sandbox masquerading as a full video game and it’s also notoriously difficult, which makes it the perfect game to attempt an ironman playthrough of. That means one save, no reloads, perma-death. I’ll be running the game with both the Circle of Eight 8.1 “New Content” mod as well as Temple Plus, both of which clear up some of the game’s more notorious bugs as well as adding additional functionality and content. Quite frankly, I don't think anyone is going to want to watch me sit through the profoundly dull fetch quests that would normally happen to get to level 2.

So where do you come in? Well, everyone knows that a good adventure needs a good party of adventurers. I’ll be playing with 6 slots for playable party members in ToEE, and thus the first 6 donations at $5 or more will be allowed to pick the composition of my starting party (just include it as part of your donation comment!) D&D 3.5 is a ruleset with a lot of room for flexibility and customization, but it’s not exactly known for being “balanced.” If generous individuals wanted to give me a party of nothing but Gnome Monks, or a bunch of Wizards with evocation as a forbidden spell school, I could hardly help but say yes, for as short as that game would likely be. I even am using the Temple Plus mod, which adds a handful of additional 3.5 classes and subrace options, in case you really want to make me use a bad prestige class, or go wild and make those monks Svirfneblin with that oh-so-delightful +3 level adjustment, which is definitely a mechanic that is both fair and “makes sense.” I’ve listed the “legal” races and classes at the bottom in case you need reference.

So what happens if I die?

To be frank, poop can hit the fan pretty hard in ToEE, especially early in the game when an unwary crit can spell instant death. If a character dies early enough in a playthrough, they’ll be replaced by the next donation character in-line (once we get further in, I’ll have to pay good money to bring them back from the dead.) If I suffer a TPK, which is also entirely possible in these opening hours, I have to start over again which means more opportunities to make my life miserable. Don’t worry if you’re not one of the first 6 donations. As long as donations keep coming in, I will be obligated to keep making parties and recruiting new characters.

Escape Clause:

That said, if we start to hit one too many restarts or death spirals, I reserve the right to switch over to another game (probably Wizardry 8, which offers a *similar* chance of ironman TPKs ) This probably won’t happen, but I’ll just put that out there in case my luck gets really rotten. Unlike some of the other people doing this, my tolerance for self-inflicted torture only goes so far.

Stretch Goals:

Consider these bonus incentives (subject to change or expand as circumstances permit) that make things that much better for everyone involved.

$100 - I will be allowed to bring along NPC hirelings! Will that help save me? Maybe not!

$150 - Goal met! I will be forced to do at least one of the elemental nodes before considering the game “beaten.” It will not be the Fire Node.

$200 - I will read excerpts from the original Temple of Elemental Evil module, if only to really emphasize how much of a mess this iconic adventure is as written.

$250 - I read excerpts from the first edition AD&D Player’s Handbook, specifically the weird parts. If you want more of that sweet sweet Gygaxian prose and antiquated game design, this is the goal for you!

$300 - OVERTIME: I’ll go another hour or two with a special BONUS game! Will it be Muv-Luv or Menzoberranzan? Bayonetta or Berwick Saga? Heroes of Might and Magic or Half-Life? You’ll just have to stick around to find out?! (in the event I’m unable to make it work on Sunday, I’ll do my additional time sometime the following week)

$500 - For Five Hundred US Dollars raised for charity, I will spin the Wheel of Dubious RPGs and play the selected game on stream for your entertainment. The full list will be a surprise until we get there, and not all of it is total garbage, but you can expect some real “classics” and eurojank dredged up from the bottom of my Steam and GOG accounts. Also, Dragon Age II, probably. This supersedes whatever else I’m doing, and if we run out of time you can expect similar “make up” streams over the course of the following week.

I hope you’ll join me, to help raise money to make our current weird nightmare reality slightly less nightmarish! Once again, my page is here. If you jump in now, you could be one of the first 6 people!

D&D Races available thanks to Temple Plus

Classes (Classes marked with * are non-core classes. Marked with ** are Prestige Classes.)

Even if I wasn’t currently living through a profoundly strange time for myself and basically everyone in the world, I think this would be a weird time for me and video games. Other than the sudden overabundance of time to play them these last few weeks have seen the release of no less than three sequels to previous “ArbitraryWater Official High-Quality Game of the Year” winners. Nioh 2 (sequel to 2017’s GOTY), Doom Eternal (sequel to 2016’s GOTY) and Resident Evil 3 (sequel to 2019’s GOTY) all together in short sequence. While I’m stuck at home desperately looking for distractions to maintain my sanity. So… I’ve played them.

Nioh 2

On one hard end of the sequel spectrum, Nioh 2 is entirely confident in doing the same thing again, but more. Fair enough. I didn’t give Nioh my GOTY (during a very competitive year) for its incoherent nonsense story of “English Samurai dude very loosely based on an actual historical person” fighting his way through Spooky Sengoku Japan and murdering various demons and historical figures along the way. I played Nioh for its strong melding of character action game combat with a Soulsian template and also loot, for some reason, and in that sense Nioh 2 is entirely successful because it doesn’t mess anything up. Sure, they added two new weapons in the Hatchets and Switchglaive alongside an entire new subsystem with the Yokai Shift stuff (an entire new button to hold while you press other buttons!) but it’s mostly quality of life and lateral improvements across the board. You now have a player-created avatar instead of William, with a pretty impressive suite of customization options, but for the most part it’s, uh, kind of the same game?

But really, it’s kind of the same game. My skills and muscle memory more or less returned intact from 100-ish hours (and a platinum trophy) spent with Nioh 1, so I’m probably the exact worst person to tell you if the difficulty ramp or learning curve is more or less gentle in this one. They certainly are more generous with the enemy variety, if only because they bring in a lot of the foes from the first game’s DLC chapters. The Yokai mechanics certainly give you more options, but this was already a game with an overabundance of options, so one more thing to keep track of isn’t actually all that much in the grand scheme of all the character building and stance switching nonsense already present. Is it a better game? Probably? Yes? Yes. They haven’t fixed any of the first game’s outstanding issues (storytelling, level design, loot management, the NG+ grind) but hey I made a pretty lady character (not as pretty as my Code Vein lady TBH) and it’s never not satisfying to break an enemy’s block by slamming them with a giant sword. I haven’t finished it yet, mainly because it’s just as long as the first one and I got distracted with the other games on this list, but given its absolute lack of surprises thus far I’m going to say my opinion of it isn’t going to drastically change once I do get around to the last few chapters.

Doom Eternal

If Nioh 2 commits the sin of omission by not changing anything, then I’d argue Doom Eternal commits the sin of commission with its newly found laser focus on a resource management loop that was only implicitly present in Doom (Game of the Year) 2016. When everything flows together it’s some brilliantly tense, best-in-class shooting. There’s definitely some hints of a character action game present in the sheer number of options and demanding execution present pretty much any time you’re in a big arena full of demons, and as someone who normally likes a good character action game I have zero problems with that comparison. I should love Doom Eternal. And for 80% of the game I think I do(?) which is less than the 100% of the time I loved its predecessor.

It’s only in 20% of the game where that flow doesn’t exist that it started to be a problem for me. I hate Marauders, and I feel like their specific brand of bullshit is endemic of larger design decisions towards an idea of prescriptive “hard counters” in a first-person twitch shooter that didn’t exist previously. Even when it works, it just feels philosophically at odds with part of the ridiculous power fantasy the game seems to be presenting. When the glory kill = armor, flame belch = armor, chainsaw = ammo flow is broken for even a second, it can spell quick death (at least on Ultraviolence, which I played through entirely in spite of my better judgement,) which can be annoying when the encounters go on as long as they do. It’s the kind of shift that likely ensures I’m not going for the platinum trophy this time around, mostly because of how exhausting I find any given individual encounter (eh, maybe I’ll turn on cheats and grind it out. I have time, after all.) even if I can’t help but respect their willingness to go for it and double down on the gameplay instead of merely opting for more of what worked almost four years ago.

This is just a side thing, hardly as major as my gameplay quibbles, but Doom Eternal’s tone and storytelling is something that I still found irritating even when the shooting was exceptional. There was a droll “corporate” quality to Doom 2016’s storytelling and sense of humor that trod the line between “This is so cool” and “This is so dumb” in a way that was kind of perfect for the kind of game it was. I don’t think it would’ve worked a second time, to be fair, but Doom Eternal’s mistaken pivot towards deep lore and characterizing the Doomguy feels like it misses the mark. There’s some real “90s comic book” energy coming from the whole thing in a way I found genuinely distracting, even as someone who is absolutely a “gameplay first” advocate a lot of the time. Does it kill my enjoyment of the game? Nah, not really. But, like the rest of the game, it’s just sort of disappointing that they didn’t quite manage to recapture the raw “lightning in a bottle” quality that made the last one so good.

Resident Evil 3

It’s fitting that the remake of Resident Evil 3 evokes its original by being a lesser, far more linear and action-oriented follow up to the remake of Resident Evil 2, my 2019 Game of the Year and one I have described as “Being made for me, specifically.” Everything you’ve heard is true! The game took me a little over 5 hours on my initial playthrough, Nemesis only appears in preset scripted events (something that the original game was much better about disguising), and there are certain areas and sequences from the original that aren’t in this one. Despite that, I think REmake 3 manages to differentiate itself in a really strong way, and by the end it had somehow managed to crawl (ooze?) into the upper half of my imaginary series ranking. I might like it the most of the three games discussed here, even if I also acknowledge its shortcomings.

When it comes to the question “How faithful should a remake be to its original source material?” I tend to lean towards a more permissive answer, assuming that I think something should be remade in the first place. The original still exists and is likely still easily accessible, so I tend to want more of a “rebuild” or “reinterpretation” rather than a 1:1 conversion that just looks or plays better. Even by that standard, it’s kind of fascinating how little this modern remake of Resident Evil 3 actually resembles the 1999 Playstation original in anything other than broad strokes. This, I might argue, comes from the fact that the streets of Raccoon City were never as iconic or persistent a location as the Spencer Mansion or RPD were. There are certainly references and callbacks to stuff, but having replayed the original RE3 earlier this year, I can count the number of direct 1:1 areas on one hand. I don’t think this is a bad thing, given that I don’t find the original game is all that iconic and exciting outside of the titular monster man who chases you, but some omissions are more glaring in the face of the game’s resoundingly brisk pace.

You know how most Resident Evil games start in a bigger, more open environment before eventually transitioning into smaller, more linear areas, right around the time you start having enough ammo to murder most things in your path? Well, Resident Evil 3 is basically a game that’s almost nothing but the latter. While I think actual speedrun times for this game are going to end up comparable to RE2’s (the associated trophy is >2 hours, which seems entirely doable,) there’s a whole lot less route optimization involved when you’re being quickly shuffled from one straight line with a handful of branching paths to another. One one hand: you don’t ever really get to immerse yourself in a single environment and learn its layout through tense, measured navigation and discovery. I think the game could’ve used at least a little more of that, either by expanding the downtown area to more closely resemble its original counterpart, or by including at least one or two more steps or sequences on the way to the final conclusion. No one should miss the stupid-ass giant worm fight, and I think NEST 2 is a more than an acceptable replacement for the Dead Factory, but the lack of Clock Tower feels like a glaring omission. Well, as glaring as any location from a game without many great locations can be.

The biggest trade-off of this linearity is Nemesis can’t really be the same kind of persistent stalker that Mr X was in the RE2 Police Station. While people are absolutely misremembering how he worked in the PS1 original (like this game, he only appeared at scripted intervals to chase Jill around for a couple of screens) that game did it smartly enough to make it feel like he was a constant threat. There’s no such camouflaging here, and if you want to pump him full of enough shotgun rounds to down him for like a minute (like the original, he drops cases with weapon parts!) you might just blink before you blow up his initial form. He’s certainly a scary bastard for those brief moments, but for the series’ most iconic enemy it feels like Nemmy gets the short end of the stick.

On the other hand: once the game gets going, the momentum never really stops. Resident Evil 3 is definitely the closest to “Action RE” that the series has been in a while, and giving Jill a Bayonetta dodge is probably as good a reminder as any that several of the leads on this game used to work at Platinum. It’s the rare game in the series that gets better as it goes along, rather than peaking during its first half. The game might be short as hell, but it’s constantly throwing new (visually striking) environments, weapons, and enemies at Jill for that entire runtime, and even the boss fights and segments where you play as Carlos are good. It even has constant music, unlike the RE2 remake’s drastically minimalist score. I’ll give it this, they clearly put some thought into replay value with some of the bonuses you can unlock and the way higher difficulties remix item and enemy placements (in the same style as RE2’s B route or RE7’s Madhouse difficulty.) It’s not enough for me to recommend you, the reader, go out and purchase this video game for $60, especially if you’re only interested in one go (Given the few matches of Resistance I’ve played, I’m going to say right now that’s probably not a great selling point either) but I think this game knows what it wants to do and manages to pull it off incredibly well.

Conclusion

So that’s me and big video games, for the moment at least. Given that I’m quarantined in my parents’ basement for the near future with very little to do other than play video games, watch anime, study a copyediting work book, and furtively polish my resume, I think it’s quite possible that you’ll see another blog or two from me yet. If you have 80 hours to spare, I highly recommend reading through Umineko: When they Cry for its batshit bonkers anime murder mystery insanity. I technically finished it right before the world decided to stay inside, but I think now is the perfect time to recommend a long visual novel. Thanks to the mediocrity of Resident Evil Resistance, I've gotten back into Dead by Daylight, and I’ve also found myself drawn to Warhammer 40K: Mechanicus, which is a smaller budget tactics game that gives an appreciatively un-XCOM approach to moving dudes around squares and shooting at things (might write something up about it.) It's not even the first 40K thing I've played this year either, as I'd just like to reiterate that Dawn of War II is a hell of a game, and playing the Retribution campaign as the Orks was 100% the correct decision.

Similarly, I, uh, spent a non-insignificant portion of my tax refund on eBay-ing some semi-obscure PS2 JRPGs, as I was threatening to do for months. So you can expect me to at least have something to say about Xenosaga Episode 1: Pretentious Nietzschean Subtitle, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, or the two Shadow Hearts games I could get for less than an arm and a leg at some point. Somehow this seemed a more attractive idea than just getting around to playing Trails in the Sky, but that'll probably end up happening too if this goes on long enough.

Oh, and one last thing

I’ve started intermittently streaming on Twitch in a desperate attempt to ease my sense of isolation/anxiety, and if you’d like to watch me play random-ass “Video Games” you can follow me here. More importantly, I’m going to use this newfound knowledge of “Oh wow OBS is actually really easy to use” for a good cause, namely the upcoming Giant Bomb Community Endurance Run next week. It’s extremely on-brand for me, and involves CRPGs, permadeath, questionable donation incentives for a good cause, and perhaps a discussion or two about RPG design philosophies. Full details coming soon. Look forward to it.

Here's Part 1 and Part 2, for your pleasure.

We've managed to reach the end of my Total War: Warhammer ranking list, an endeavor that accidentally became way more of an endeavor than I thought it would be. It's been a nice writing exercise, and a good reminder that I can try and follow a prompt of my own making, but now my RSI is acting up and it's time to wrap things up. Before we get to the Top 4 though...

Let's talk about DLC content and pricing

While Total War: Warhammer II routinely drops to around $20 during various Steam Sales, that'll only get you access to around five of the factions I've ranked here. To be frank it can be somewhat intimidating to scroll slightly downward and look at the sheer amount of additional content you can purchase when you also factor in the first game. Combined, there are no less than six full paid DLC factions (Brettonia is free in both games) and six paid Lord/Unit packs between both Total Warhammers. The good news is that you don't need it, and can easily have dozens of hours of enjoyment with just the base game and free DLC. The bad news is that a lot of those new units fill useful holes in faction army rosters (for example, Red Crested Skinks, the Lizards best source of cheap armor piercing damage, are tied to the Prophet and Warlock DLC) and seem like they'd be at least semi-important if one were to seriously engage in the competitive multiplayer. It can also lead to some awkwardness when interacting with these DLC factions controlled by AI, as you can't confederate them unless you own the associated DLC (something that really only comes up in a major way for Tyrion, who suddenly has to split half of Ulthuan with Allarielle instead of just confederating with her.)

The only thing I'd really consider out-and-out "necessary" is to also grab the first game (which goes on sale for around $15) so you have access to the four base Old World factions and Mortal Empires, which offers a more "standard" Total War campaign if you get tired of the Heart of the Vortex's more focused ritual objective. After that, I'd probably prioritize the second game's two DLC factions, Norsca, and any lord packs for any factions you're interested in. If my rankings weren't enough of a guide, I would seriously caution against getting either Warriors of Chaos or Beastmen unless you want to play them in multiplayer, and take a keen sideways glance at the Wood Elves. Similarly, while I like my boy Volkmar a whole lot, the two lord packs for the first game are only really worth it if you want to mess around with the Old World factions they're tied to. (Even then I'd argue that Crooked Moon and Clan Angrund are meant to be "Hard Mode" starts for their respective factions and probably not worth getting unless you already have a grasp of how Dwarfs and Greenskins play)

Now, onto the ranking!

4. Lizardmen

Lore: The Elves may be ancient, but the Lizards are more ancient still, having been around since the time of the Old Ones and having seen the wheels of The Great Plan having come into motion long ago. They are the ancient enemies of Chaos, and seek the preservation of the world, all according to The Great Plan. Oh, they’re also basically Aztec Dinosaurs.

Campaign Mechanics: Lizards can interlink their settlements with special “Geomagnetic Web” buildings. Doing so improves the strength of province-wide commandments, and gives the lizards a lot of late-game flexibility, as you can choose between serious bonuses to income, recruitment cost, winds of magic, or province defense with only a turn’s notice. They can also take special quests at the behest of the Old Ones, which grants them access to more powerful versions of their units.

Aside from subfaction-specific mechanics, it’s probably worth mentioning that the lizards have to enact special rituals to recruit their Slann Mage Priests, easily the most powerful generic mage lords in the game (and honestly, better than a lot of Legendary Mage Lords) as well as embark on a chain of sidequests to summon Lord Kroak, an ancient, powerful Slann who might as well be a mummified Lizard WMD (unless you play as Itza, at which point you just start with Lord Kroak.) I haven’t really touched on the second game factions’ ritual mechanics, but they’re often quite powerful.

Army Roster: The main Lizard roster is split between Saurus (who are nearly as slow and durable as dwarfs), Skinks (who are fast and usually have poison attacks, but are not nearly as good at holding), Kroxigors (who can deal a lot of damage if you mix them in with your front line) and lots and lots of dinosaurs. Their ranged capabilities might not be the greatest, but their Slann Mage Priests are some of the best magic lords in the game and did I mention that they have dinosaurs? It’s true. They’ve got anti-infantry dinosaurs, anti-large dinosaurs, support-focused dinosaurs, cheap dinosaurs, and the single most expensive unit in the game in the form of the Dread Saurian, all of whom are quite good at causing terror and plowing through the enemy. If you go for the cheaper, feral variants, they have a tendency to rampage (and which makes them uncontrollable when their leadership drops too low) but there are also versions that have ranged utility or magic lizard shrines on top of them for stuff like buffs, damage, and even artillery support. Of course, nothing is stopping you from fielding a doomstack entirely full of Carnosaurs except the cost.

Favorite Legendary Lord: The Lizards are currently the only faction with six legendary lords, which gives any player plenty of options for how they want to play. They’re also the only faction who have it easier on the continent of Lustria, given that it’s their homeland and most of the AI factions there happen to be other lizards ripe for alliances and confederation. You’ve got one of the strongest magic lords in the game with Mazdamundi, two strong warrior lords who make Saurus Infantry cheaper with Kroq’Gar and Gor’Rok, a lord who starts with a flying mount and gives serious bonuses to fliers with Tiktaq’to, and Nakai the Wanderer, a giant albino crocodile who is Creative Assembly’s first stab at trying to make a horde faction that isn’t incredibly boring (results are mixed) and Tehenhauin, whose faction is the lizard equivalent to Crooked Moon (but you know, playable.)

Who among these cold-blooded reptiles could come on top? Well, for as tempted as I am to pick Tehenhauin for all that sweet sweet sacrificing to Sotek, being stuck with Skinks is a pretty rough start. So instead let’s go with Kroq’Gar, whose easily defendable starting location in both campaigns and massive upkeep discount on the basic Saurus infantry basically ensure some serious early-game dominance. Also he can ride a Carnosaur. True, Gor’Rok gets access to Lord Kroak from the get-go

Official Scientific Ranking: I could make roughly half a dozen Jurassic Park references right now, but then I remember that their Hunter and Beast DLC trailer already did.

3. Dark Elves

Lore: The Druchii are your fairly standard group of decadent, murderous Bad Elves. Having been exiled from Ulthuan and forced to settle in the frozen wastelands of Naggarond for supporting Malekith, the Witch King, they bitterly plan for the day they can retake their original homeland… or just burn it to the ground. Still Elves, still assholes.

Campaign Mechanics: All of the “evil” factions in Total Warhammer II have to deal with a loyalty mechanic with their non-legendary lords. Your lords’ loyalty score that increases or decreases based on random events and their own performance in battle, and if it drops too low they’ll become a rebel army. Dismiss too many units from their army and their loyalty will drop, but win manual combat or conduct certain rituals to keep them happy.

The Dark Elves are infamous raiders and slavers, with their economy being heavily reliant upon slave labor from captured enemies. More slaves in a province means more income, but also an increasing penalty to public order. If you play as Crone Hellebron of Har Ganeth, you can also hold a “Death Night” where the slave pens are opened and the populace murders an increasingly large number of them in an ecstatic haze of blood and death, something required to keep her young (you get massive penalties if you don’t hold one for too long.) This turns the Dark Elf slave mechanic from a passive economic bonus into a constant upkeep requirement, but only applies to her faction.

Being a foremost naval power, the Dark Elves are also backed up by their massive Black Arks, which are basically mobile horde factions on the sea. They can recruit armies of their own (with a massive upkeep discount) occupy and attack port cities, and offer logistical support (recruitment, bombardment, bonuses to post-battle income) to all armies within their zone of influence. They can only be recruited with a ritual, unless you play as Lokhir Fellheart, the Krakenlord of Karond Kar (Warhammer names are good and dumb), who gets one every time he captures a major port settlement.

Army Roster: While they still have access to most kinds of units, the Dark Elves are less focused on silly archers than their brethren, instead having very strong infantry backed up by good cavalry and scary monsters. The half-naked, extremely buff Witch Elves and Sisters of Slaughter are basically glass cannon cuisinarts when set upon lesser foes, while Black Guard of Naggarond and Executioners of Har Ganeth offer some of the best-in-class greatsword and halberdier foot soldiers. Back these up with regenerating hydras, medusae, manticores, and black dragons and they’re not only good at tearing through the enemy lines, but also causing terror. Like their other Elf brethren, they’re not much for artillery (basically having the same bolt thrower as the Asur) and they’re similarly a little squishy and/or expensive on average.

However, in a fun inversion to the High Elves, the Dark Elves get better at fighting the longer a battle goes on thanks to their “Murderous Prowess” ability, which procs once enough things have died. It can be scary to wear a Dark Elf army down, only for them to turn things around at the end of the battle (and similarly, it can turn a previously even engagement into one where they can win) and gives them incentive to try and inflict maximum casualties instead of merely going for the rout.

Favorite Legendary Lord: There’s no doubting that Malekith is one of the strongest lords in the game, being scary in melee, having access to the Druchii-exclusive Lore of Dark Magic, and being able to ride around on a Black Dragon should he so feel like it. This is where I’d say “But actually (insert niche, weird lord) is better! But you know what? I’m not going to. Hellebron is “erase enemy lords and heroes in seconds” powerful, but requires a constant influx of slaves, Mommy Morathi gets to spread chaos corruption, but has a far less secure start, Lokhir Fellheart is the Dark Elf entrant in LustriaBowl, and Malus Darkblade’s split campaign start and demonic possession are fun, if a little difficult to get a handle on. Nah, Malekith is a damn monster, which only makes sense for a guy who is basically Elven Darth Vader.

Official Scientific Ranking: Evil Elves are the Best Elves, as any 14-year-old pretending to dual-wield scimitars could tell you with absolute certainty. While the Dark Elves actually do have multiple units who dual-wield scimitars (Black Ark Corsairs, Witch Elves) it’s when you back those scimitar wielders up with everything else that they come into place. I also think they have the benefit of some of the most interesting and varied Legendary Lord starts; there’s not really any redundancy between them.

2. Vampire Coast

Lore: Vampirates. VAMPIRATES. Aside from Norsca, the Vampire Coast is the other faction without a one-to-one tabletop analogue, but as far as I can tell, it’s mostly based around the tale of the insane (Vampire) Pirate Captain, Luthor Harkon, whose mind was fractured by ancient lizard magic while he was looting one of their temples. Listen, all you need to know is that they’re Pirates who are also Vampires. One of the DLC factions for Total War: Warhammer II.

Campaign Mechanics: The Vampire Coast is almost as reliant upon spreading vampiric corruption and raising the dead as their landlubber counterparts. Their armies don’t suffer attrition in untainted provinces, but their settlements suffer the same massive public order penalties, which prevents them from expanding too quickly. Because they’re also pirates, they can build up their own ships (in a similar manner to horde factions or black arks) set up secret coves in enemy port cities to spread corruption or get income, go on treasure hunts around the world map, and just steal shit.

They also have an infamy ranking, which is sort of like the opposite of Brettonia’s chivalry resource (you can spend it to increase the loyalty of your captains, in case it starts flagging.) While being the most infamous pirate in Mortal Empires gives nice bonuses, it’s required to win their Vortex campaign, as you attempt to gain pieces of a lost sea shanty needed to find and kill the Merwyrm that guards Ulthuan. Like the Tomb Kings, it’s significantly more freeform than the ritual victory the four main factions have to deal with and a good change of pace if you want something different and don’t want to deal with the giant combined map of Mortal Empires.

Army Roster: In a strong inversion of their Sylvanian counterparts, the Vampire Coast are one of the most powerful ranged factions in the game, with armies of zombie pirates, zombie pirates with guns, zombie pirates with BIGGER guns, zombie pirates with guns being carried by giant bats, heavy artillery (They have a giant mega-cannon called Queen Bess that can erase large chunks of the enemy army by itself) and a couple of horrific undead monsters, Giant Enemy Crabs, and animated ship hulks for good measure. In fact, the first few shots from any of their gunpowder units do extra damage, which incentivizes proper targeting and ammo management. Oh, and also they have access to the fantastic Lore of Vampires and the Lore of Death, in addition to their own exclusive Lore of the Deep in case you really didn’t get that they’re defensive in a way only rivaled by the Dwarfs.

Sure, you might say, their frontline units are either disposable or expensive and they don’t have any real cavalry, but does that matter so long as you can hold the line long enough for your gunnery mobs and artillery to pelt the enemy to shreds and your monsters to mop everything up? The answer is “actually yes, it does matter somewhat when you’re facing more mobile enemies” but that matters less with the AI than it does with a more canny human player who knows how horses work. In campaign, the Pirates of Sartosa get access to better (living) infantry units and Cyclostra Direfin can summon undead versions of Brettonian cavalry, so those can help fill in some gaps if you desire a more active playstyle.

Favorite Legendary Lord: There’s only one ruler of the Vampire Coast, and it’s Luthor Harkon. Sure, Count Noctilus might start in the middle of the damn ocean, Aranessa Saltspite might have regular human pirates who perform far better than their undead counterparts, and Cyclostra might have ghost horses, but there’s only one insane Vampire to rule LustriaBowl. (he’s a scary hybrid-weapon lord who has access to all of the Lore of the Deep spellbook once you fix his mind, rides a Terrorgheist, and has a bunch of mage-killer abilities to help counter enemy spellcasters)

Official Scientific Ranking: YO HO HO LET’S MAKE THEM WALK THE PLANK AND THEN DREDGE THEIR CORPSE UP AND RAISE IT FROM THE DEAD. Playstyle-wise, they’re somewhere between the Vampire Counts and Dwarfs, having top-tier ranged capabilities like the Dawi, but trading their legendary holding power for a bunch of different spooky tools and access to some of the best magic in the game. Also, need I remind you this is a faction that has both “Shipwreck Golem with three cannons strapped to its arm” and also “Giant Undead Crab Leviathan” as its two premiere high-tier units.

1. Skaven

Lore: Skaven? The Skaven don’t exist! There’s no such thing as “Giant Ratmen” skulking around the sewers, hefting strange weapons and ringing bells to summon their dark god. If such a thing did live in this world, it would be an affront to Sigmar himself! Now keep quiet before a witch hunter hears your nonsense and they hand you over to the Inquisition!

Campaign Mechanics: As you’d expect from a horde of intelligent rats that skulks underneath civilization, the Skaven do not exactly seek a fair confrontation. Like the Beastmen (or Alith Anar’s subfaction) they have an automatic chance of ambushing an enemy when engaging in combat. Their settlements appear as ruins until investigated, and one of their main ways of gaining an edge on the enemy is to expand their under-empire beneath the cities of other factions. Under-empire settlements can be used for benign things, like gathering income or food (unsurprisingly, food is a concern when you’re a civilization of giant rats) or, if you manage to keep them hidden long enough, you can unleash a vermintide army to bolster an already-existing invasion force. They also spread their own brand of corruption, which in addition to the whole “undermine enemy public order” thing, also allows them to summon more units of rats with their “Menace Below” ability (of course, having too much skaven corruption actually causes them public order penalties as well, since the skaven’s biggest enemy is sometimes other skaven.) They can also summon special heroes with rituals who can be used to establish special under-empire buildings, blow up city walls, or spread plagues that cause massive penalties to an enemy’s infrastructure.

Army Roster: The Skaven rely on a combination of sheer numbers, specialized troops, and just straight up unfair play in lieu of, uh, durability. That’s as true in Total War as it was in Vermintide. Having no cavalry, all Skaven foot units are relatively fast, have large unit sizes, questionable leadership, and an ability that lets them run away and recover more quickly when their morale breaks. Theirs is not a frontline meant to hold for long periods of time, with only Stormvermin being an especially respectable basic infantry unit. If this starts to sound a little like the Beastmen, they’re not far off, though while the Beastie Boys are purely rush-oriented, the Skaven have a larger focus on dirty tricks and far more ranged options. They can summon clanrats from the ground to disrupt enemy ranged units, skirmish with gutter runners, escape or blow things up with their three(!) unique lores of magic, lay down an impressive amount of ranged damage of their own thanks to various weapon teams (Ratling Guns, Poison Wind Globadiers, Warplock Jezzails, Warpfire Throwers) or go for more conventional hammer and anvil stuff using Plague Monks, Death Runners, or Rat Ogres to flank. Somehow, their scariest unit isn’t the aptly named “Hell Pit Abomination” but is instead the Doomwheel, which combines all the momentum of a chariot with the added bonus of shooting powerful bolts of death every few seconds. Several of their lords and heroes are even specifically designated for lord killing, as a way of forcing an enemy rout more quickly.

Favorite Legendary Lord: Ikit Claw, Chief Warlock Engineer of Clan Skyre is responsible for the Skaven’s most daring technological advancements and is also an anthropomorphic rat in a suit of power armor. His faction has exclusive access to special weapon team upgrades and also the Warhammer Fantasy equivalent of nukes. It’s hard to go wrong with the Skaven, between Queek Headtaker’s strong lord erasing capabilities and cheaper conventional units (letting you run around with a frontline of Stormvermin far earlier in the game), Lord Skrolk’s bonuses to plagues and corruption, Tretch Craventail’s focus on ambushes, and Deathmaster Snikch’s rat ninja skills and special contracts, but Ikit Claw is the right combination of ridiculous and profoundly powerful to win this distinction.

Official Scientific Ranking: The Skaven are great, not just because they’re a bunch of insane, paranoid ratmen who run around with gatling guns while everyone else has flintlocks, but also because they’re the craziest, most unconventional faction in a game filled with its share of crazy, unconventional factions. Every aspect of their gameplay is focused around that lore, and it seems fairly obvious someone at Creative Assembly is a fan (they also have the best DLC lords, for starters.) As it turns out, so am I.

That does it for me and this accidentally exhaustive series of blogs I wrote, which should probably tell you how much I like this game. That said, even though big meaningful video games are still a month away, I think I might take a bit of a step back from the Monster Hunter/Warhammer haze I was in for most of January and mix it up a bit. I’ve been staring at too many eBay listings for weird JRPGs and now I should probably get to something in my backlog before I impulsively end up expanding it. Thanks for reading!

Part 1 is here if you want to see all that sweet sweet faction ranking from the top. Or, the bottom, as the case may be.

Oh hey I'm back again with my favorite "Writing exercise disguised as a listicle disguised as a blog that people theoretically might want to read" by ranking the factions of Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer II from worst to best in the most scientific of fashions. One of the main reasons why I want to do this, outside of the sheer self-indulgence of justifying 200+ hours spent with my favorite strategy game in years, is to put a spotlight on the insane amount of work put into this game to make each of these factions distinctive from one another. While other recent favorites like Age of Wonders: Planetfall offer a variety of factions and playstyles, Total War is probably the only strategy franchise with the resources to get away with something like this at this scale. Certainly, having 30+ years of Warhammer Fantasy to draw upon helps, but everything I've seen of Three Kingdoms suggests it draws similar lessons with faction mechanics even as it is more bound by "Historical Realism."

With this part of the list, we also move from the first game's factions to the second, and I think it's worth pointing out that I didn't intentionally start ranking them this way. I just genuinely think the second game represents an improved design ethos over the first. While a lot of the first game's "Old World" factions feel very classic Total War (at least based on the handful of hours I spent with Shogun 2) with a twist, it's really in the second game that you see Creative Assembly getting weird with stuff and leaning more heavily into the fantasy part of Warhammer Fantasy. It certainly also helps that they got the fairly standard Fantasy races out the way first, leaving the second game to dabble in the much weirder edges of Games Workshop's canon.

9. Vampire Counts

Lore: The Vampire Counts of Sylvania love a lot of things, namely blood, the sort of debauchery that comes from being immortal, terrorizing their living subjects, and plotting to overthrow The Empire. Mostly led by the Von Carstein bloodline, they’re extremely down to unleash some spooky scary skeletons upon the entire world. Listen, I spent multiple hours reading about Nagash and the dawn of multiple Vampire kingdoms, and I’m just going to take an L on trying to summarize any of it.

Army Roster: The Vampire Counts have zero ranged or artillery units, so if you said they’re another “melee-focused rush army” you’d be fairly correct. Their large, slow, and disposable frontlines of skeletons and zombies are capable of bogging down enemy troops, giving enough time to charge around the back with their elite monsters, cavalry, flying nightmares, etc. Generally speaking, Vampire Count units tend to be more expensive and slightly weaker than their living counterparts, but they make up for it in three important ways. The first is that, instead of routing when their morale runs low like living units, the undead will start to slowly crumble as the magic that animates them begins to fail. The second is that even the most basic undead units cause fear, which passively reduces enemy leadership. The third? Vampire Counts have magic for days. All of their lords have access to the semi-exclusive Lore of Vampires, which contains some of the best spells in the entire game. Enemy ranged units causing you problems? Summon some skeletons on top of them! Frontline starting to sag? Heal them up with invocation of Nehek, or just drop Winds of Death on whoever they’re facing and it’ll probably disintegrate them.

Campaign Mechanics: Vampires are reliant upon spreading the taint of undeath into the living world to sustain themselves, which basically means that their armies suffer attrition and their settlements suffer public order penalties in provinces that are not sufficiently spooky (inversely, living armies suffer attrition and public order penalties in areas with high vampiric corruption.) They also have the ability to raise the dead, which allows for fast recruitment and replenishment on the go, especially if a major battle was fought in the area (it also means you can get access to the Vampire Counts high-tier units even without building the necessary dwelling, which can give them an almost necessary leg-up in the early game.)

As part of their Mortal Empires rework, they also get access to “Blood Kisses” when defeating enemy lords and heroes, which allow them to awaken ancient vampire bloodlines with unique perks and lords. It’s a fun mechanic, since the perks and attached lords are powerful. So powerful, that they’re easily better than any of the generic VC lords, and arguably some of the legendary ones. Not really sure why you’d ever run with a Master Necromancer anyway, unless you really need to save on upkeep costs.

Favorite Legendary Lord: Mannfred von Carstein is notoriously powerful, being the only lord in the game with full access to two lores of magic. That alone would probably be enough, but he’s also good in melee and can even get himself a zombie dragon. But I have to give it to my man Vlad von Carstein instead, who doesn’t have any mount options but does give his entire army vanguard deployment. What’s that? You’re saying such a thing basically mitigates the Vampire Counts’ biggest weakness? Also he’s a monster in melee and has regeneration? Sure, why not? His faction even gets access to Vampire heroes early, which means you’ll have access to multiple lores of magic without much difficulty.

Official Scientific Ranking: From a purely campaign perspective, the Vampires have a rough early game until they can get consistent access to more than just disposable skeletons and zombies, but once they get that corruption ball a-rolling they can have a frightening amount of momentum. It's also never not satisfying to basically wipe the entire enemy front line with a single casting of Winds of Death.

8. Dwarfs

Lore: The Dawi are some fantasy-ass fantasy dwarves. Have you seen a Dwarf? Yeah. They’re like that. Mountains, stone, general friendliness towards Humans and antipathy towards Elves and Greenskins. You get it. For the Karaz Ankor!

Campaign Mechanics: The long memories of the Dawi mean every slight and injustice is remembered and collected in their book of grudges. If you avenge the grudge, you’ll get rewarded but if you let it linger you’ll start to accrue fairly serious penalties. As a result, Dwarfs are heavily incentivized to capture what they can actually hold, lest your public order go in the toilet over some unfulfilled grudges. In an update to their Mortal Empires campaign, Dwarfs also got access to the rune forge, which lets them craft and recycle magic items for lords and heroes, which is both a really neat mechanic, and also perhaps the least amount of “reworking” any of the old world factions who’ve got one have received… especially since it’s just the Tomb Kings’ Mortuary Cult with a slightly different flavor. Not going to complain too much though.

Army Roster: In what will surprise absolutely no one, the Dwarfs are a highly defensive, slow faction with a lot of armor, leadership, and melee defense, backed up by powerful ranged and artillery units, in case it wasn’t obvious that you’ll want them to come to you. I mean, hell, you can equip some of their ranged and skirmish units with two-handed weapons so they can still be dangerous when the enemy closes that distance. They’re the only faction in the game with no access to any of the winds of magic and one of the few with no cavalry, but they compensate with universal magic resistance, their own unique rune magic and a handful of infantry units who are… slightly faster. They have a fairly defined playstyle, to say the least.

Favorite Legendary Lord: Because of their lack of mounts and magic, all of the Dwarf LLs are stuck on the ground and all of them fill a similar role in combat (which is to say they’re very, very good infantry lords who can take and deal a lot of punishment.) So their biggest differentiator is their campaign starts and bonuses. With that in mind, I’m partial to Ungrim Ironfist, the Slayer King of Kharak Kadrin. Lords who hyper-focus on a single kind of niche unit (slayers being meant to blow up enemy monsters and, if something else takes the charge, cavalry) are maybe not the most effective choice when you’re dealing with a wide variety of foes. On the other hand you can do stupid shit like field an entire frontline of cheaper, slightly more effective slayers very early in the game and charge that line of shirtless dwarfs into goblins, so who’s really to say?

Official Scientific Ranking: Dwarfs are fun because half their playstyle involves sitting back and blowing up the enemy frontline before they can get close enough to cause problems (and then hold the line forever when they do show up) something that’s quite effective against their main foe, the Greenskins, but especially effective against another slow faction like Chaos. Where they falter for me mostly has to do with how limited that playstyle can feel at times, especially compared to some of the other defensively-oriented factions in the game.

7.The Empire

Lore: If Brettonia is literally just over-the-top Fantasy France, then The Empire is over-the-top Fantasy Holy Roman Empire (There’s also Kislev, who are over-the-top Fantasy Tsarist Russia, but they’re probably not going to be a distinct faction until the third game.) Like its historical inspiration, the Empire is a fractious collection of squabbling principalities only loosely organized under one banner. Unlike the actual Holy Roman Empire, however, their proclivity for witch hunting is actually justified, given the sheer number of unholy things that want to conquer, corrupt, or destroy them.

Campaign Mechanics: The Empire’s Mortal Empires campaign was recently reworked alongside The Hunter and the Beast DLC, and it’s probably the most involved of any of the Old World factions as a result. Since the goal of an imperial campaign is to unite all of the provinces under one banner, any aspiring Karl Franz has to juggle their imperial prestige and influence (gained by winning battles and various “crisis” events) with the loyalty of various Elector Counts. Get it to 10 and they’ll offer to confederate, but leave it too low and they might eventually rebel. Of course, it’s not a terrible idea to let a particularly troublesome province rebel, since you won’t get a prestige penalty for declaring war on them. Once you have control of a province, you can appoint your own Elector Count from among your lords, which gives them a handful of passive bonuses and access to unique versions of Empire troops who are very powerful. Why yes, I would like greatswords who don’t rout and increase the leadership of nearby troops.

Of course, that’s back in the homeland. In the jungles of Lustria, Markus Wulfhart, Huntsmarshal of the Empire has a much harder time of things, having to fulfill the Emperor’s Mandate (weirdly enough? That mandate is “Imperialism”) while also weathering the wrath of the local populace and courting the favor of Elector Counts in order to obtain much needed high-tier troops and supplies. As he was added in a Total Warhammer II DLC, Wulfhart is the only Empire lord playable in the Eye of the Vortex campaign, and his more customized, distinctive campaign is reflective of Creative Assembly’s shift in design philosophies from the first game to the second. Starting from this part of the list, there’s definitely a concerted effort to offer a very different campaign experience between different Legendary Lords, in the form of starting location (who you’re spending your time fighting against and allying with, basically) and subfaction specific mechanics, such as Wulfhart not having access to higher-tier Empire units and buildings until he reaches a specific level of mandate. I’m probably only going to lightly touch on most of these, but it’s one of the biggest reasons I think the second game’s factions are more interesting than the first.

Army Roster: The Empire has a large, varied roster capable of dealing with any given situation, or at least that’s how they pitch it to you. They’ve got average, unspectacular low and high-tier infantry, decent ranged and skirmish options, and good-to-great cavalry (if not anywhere as dominant as Brettonia) “Jack of all Trades, Master of None,” right? So… here’s the thing. The Empire arguably have the best artillery in the game, at least up there with the Dwarfs and Vampire Coast. While their basic mortars aren’t particularly impressive for anything other than chipping away at unarmored infantry, once you get to Helstorm Rocket Batteries, Volley Guns, and Steam Tanks it’s a different story entirely. Oh, and also they have access to pretty much every generic lore of magic in the game via their various Battle Wizard heroes, in case you needed extra ranged power, healing, buffs, or debuffs depending on your army composition.

Favorite Legendary Lord: Now, sure, you might accuse me of being a contrarian hipster for saying this, but I’m partial to my man Volkmar the Grim, Grand Theoginist of Sigmar and possessor of a mighty mustache. Karl Franz might be the emperor, with bonuses that benefit a broad swathe of armies, but Volkmar’s focus is on flagellants. Like Ungrim Ironfist, he buffs the shit out of a circumstantial unit (flagellants, with their unbreakable leadership, no armor, and high damage output, are mostly meant to flank, delay, or disrupt the enemy) to the point where they become viable as a core part of his army. In combat, he’s basically a super-powered Arch Lector, with access to all the battle prayers of Sigmar (a bunch of area-of-effect buffs that don’t require the winds of magic) and a special War Altar mount that lets him run around like a chariot, causing terror and getting to cast Banishment for free. How can you really argue with that?

Official Scientific Ranking: The Empire aren’t necessarily amazing at anything (well, anything that doesn’t involve blowing up AI armies who sometimes struggle with siege units.) without support, but the fact that they can kind of do everything means they’re a lot of fun to mess around with. They’ve definitely received the most love of any of the Old World factions, but also they’d probably be this high up because they have damn steam tanks.

6. Tomb Kings

Lore: The once great kingdom of Nekehara ruled the sands, in a very “Old Kingdom Ancient Egypt” sort of way, before they were betrayed by the first necromancer Nagash and cursed with eternal unlife. Now they seek to reclaim their long-lost glory, as only a faction consisting of Totalitarian Mummies is capable of doing. It involves building a lot of pyramids. One of the DLC factions for Total War: Warhammer II.

Campaign Mechanics: Unlike the four main factions of the Eye of the Vortex campaign, the Tomb Kings have no need to conduct rituals or defend those sites against the forces of Chaos. Their Vortex campaign is instead something of a scavenger hunt for the lost books of Nagash. These books are held either by neutral armies or in specific settlements, but you don’t need to get all of them to win. This allows for a certain amount of picking and choosing, and it’s an entirely viable strategy to send one particularly powerful army around the world while the rest of your forces play defense. It’s honestly a little closer to something like a Heroes of Might and Magic campaign than something fully Total War, so of course it warranted mention.

The Tomb Kings have the most unique army recruitment mechanics in the game, paying zero recruitment or upkeep in exchange for being severely capped on the number of armies and (non-skeleton) units they can field at any given time. You can recruit more armies by researching (increasingly expensive) technologies, while unit caps are increased by the number of buildings you own. That means a universally rough early game, but a mid-late game that can snowball to the point of absurdity once you control enough territory. Wanna field a giant doomstack of chariots like a dingus? You can certainly do that. Well, assuming you can build enough chariot buildings to do that, since the underside of free units is that the Tomb King economy is extremely shit. I hope you have trading partners or enemy cities to sack!

Army Roster: Like the Vampire Counts, the Tomb Kings’ basic skeletal infantry aren’t good for much more than getting in the way, and even their advanced infantry aren’t going to win a ton of fights on their own. However, whereas the Vampires have great magic and spooky monsters, the Tomb Kings have actual ranged capability and powerful constructs for every occasion (also, tbh, their exclusive Lore of Nekehara is sort of eh) Back up skeletons with Ushabti, tear through enemy lines with a giant-ass scorpion golem, or have their Hierotitan shoot giant lasers because Warhammer Fantasy is good. Sure, they can’t sustain themselves on demand in the same way the Vampires can, but their Realm of Souls mechanic passively regenerates their entire army once they’ve lost enough troops, which means less micromanagement for everyone involved.

Favorite Legendary Lord: Arkhan the Black, Liche King second only to Nagash himself, is unsurprisingly despised by the rest of the Tomb Kings for the whole “Undead” thing. He starts either campaign surrounded by a bunch of things who hate him, with a massive diplomatic penalty towards other Tomb Kings, but a bonus with the (distant) Vampire Counts. To compensate, he has exclusive access to a handful of Vampire Count units (Crypt Ghouls, Fell Bats, Direwolves, and Hexwraiths) which give him an early advantage when his enemies are still fielding skeleton warriors and Brettonian peasant infantry. He’s also a solid melee/caster hybrid with the Lore of Death and a faction-wide bonus to Winds of Magic on top of that.

Official Scientific Ranking: I like the Tomb Kings a lot, but their early game is a universal uphill climb regardless of which lord you pick to start with. They’re similar to the Vampire Counts but with actual ranged options (but worse magic), and it’s a fun change of pace to focus on bolstering their armies with scary Anubis statues and “Necropolis Knights riding constructs that resemble cobras.” That said, removed from their specific campaign mechanics, I’m not sure if I’d like them as much, and in the hypothetical scenario where I get way into competitive multiplayer (which is not likely to happen any time soon) they’re definitely not my first or second choice.

5. High Elves

Lore: I can appreciate any fantasy lore where Elves are always some level of asshole, and the Asur very much fall into the High Elven tradition of long-lived arrogance. Their home continent of Ulthuan is even modeled after classical descriptions of Atlantis, in case you didn’t get the whole “People who have been around for too long and claim to represent some long-lost golden age” thing. Admittedly, they’ve been trying to save the world from the forces of Chaos for longer than those upstart humans have been crawling in the dirt, so they do have good intentions at heart, even if they’re going to sort of be dicks about it.

Campaign Mechanics: Being long-lived and having a lot of free time on their hands means the High Elf nobility loves themselves some decadent court intrigue, and they’re quite good at it too. All High Elf factions have access to an “Influence” resource (usually gained through quests and various random events) which they can spend to meddle around with diplomatic relationships (the Empire has a limited form of this post-rework, but it only applies to their own factions) With sufficient influence, you can befriend a formerly neutral faction, trick two third parties into going to war, or keep someone off your back long enough to deal with more immediate threats. It’s definitely cheesable if you accrue enough of it, but the same can be said for like half the campaign mechanics in this game.

The Asur (and the other two Elf factions) are also capable of drawing the Sword of Khaine from its shrine located at the north end of Ulthuan. In the lore, the sword was a legendary weapon of great power that also eventually drove the Elf King Aenarion to madness, even as he used it to save the world from Chaos. Indeed, the longer you hold onto it, the more powerful it becomes… at the cost of severe public order, diplomatic, and even upkeep penalties. While other factions can steal the sword if they defeat its wielder, at some point they too will succumb to the dark whispers. Basically, it’s the kind of thing that can absolutely, single-handedly turn the tide in a lot of battles, but can also tank an entire campaign if the player holds onto it for too long.

Army Roster: So, you know how The Empire meant to be the “Jack of All-Trades” army? The High Elves say “Nah bro” to that. Or rather, if the Empire is okay-to-good at almost everything with great artillery, then the Asur are good-to-great at almost everything with a single, okay artillery piece. Good infantry, solid cavalry, great archers and mages, even a couple of phoenixes and dragons in case you wanted some air superiority on top of everything else. As it to emphasize this further, most of their units have the “Martial Prowess” ability, which increases their effectiveness when they enter the battle at full strength. So… what’s the catch? That prowess doesn’t come cheap, and most of their units tend to be squishier than average. While you can eventually overcome the former in campaign somewhat thanks to the great High Elf economy, in the more strict environment of competitive multiplayer it’s generally accepted that Elf armies are going to be outnumbered more often than not.

Favorite Legendary Lord: Tyrion is so, so obviously meant to be the go-to choice for someone’s first campaign, it’s not even funny. Dude has one of the easiest starting locations in either campaign, with upkeep discounts for basic HE infantry and a giant-ass flaming sword capable of mowing through infantry and enemy lords alike. So, obviously, he’s boring. If you want an actual interesting Ulthuan campaign, pick Allarielle, the Everqueen (she has some unique mechanics and penalties based on how much of the continent is occupied by non-Asur factions.) Tyrion’s squishy nerd brother Teclis offers a much more difficult start, being the requisite High Elf entrant into the jungle-shrouded blender of Lustria (on the other hand? One of the best mages in the game) so he’s more fun. But you know who’s the most fun? Alith Anar, the Shadow King of Nagarythe spends his time taking the fight directly to the Dark Elves, with a much sneakier, ambush heavy playstyle (and the ability to take assassination contracts for money and influence) He’s also a sniping skirmish lord with roughly the range of a howitzer who can create a illusory double of himself, which is a great way to lure the AI around even if a canny human player might notice said double doesn’t inflict damage.

Official Scientific Ranking: The High Elves are startlingly effective at what they do, which is pretty much everything, which makes them a lot of fun to play. They’re clearly meant as the ideal starting faction for players still learning the game, for as much as I think a potential newbie would be fine starting with almost anyone who isn’t too gimmicky or difficult.

And... only one more to go! This, perhaps unsurprisingly, got a lot longer than I thought it was going to. Here's Part 3.