Recent reviews by [AIMA] High Constable

A really fun DLC for sure. Most people feel like the Skaven got the most out of it, and were clearly favorized by CA, but I disagree. The Forge of Daith that the Sisters of Twilight got isn't as good as Throt's Laboratory, but the Wood Elf legendary hero Ariel is much more exciting than the giant Mutant Rat Ogre Ghorritch that the Skaven got. Many people don't like the FoD, but being able to farm a respectable amount of upgradable items from Daith is really beneficial for the Wood Elves (Sisters of Twilight) considering they aren't the most aggressive race and won't be fighting and looting as much as the Dark Elves for example. There is simply no point considering you have clearly cut objectives that don't require you to achieve world domination. In most of my Dark Elf campaigns, I was never able to campaign arm enough magic items to properly kit out all of my heroes and lords, while I can do that in the Sisters' campaign.

The new units you get for both the WE and the Skaven are great. WE finally got a proper damage dealing unit that can go toe to toe with units like Swordmasters and Executioners as well as the insane Christmas-themed shock cavalry. New proper generic caster lords are also nice. The Skaven got cool new monsters and the ability to customize and upgrade their units (clan Moulder only tho) via the Rat's Laboratory.

The campaign starting positions are another perk of these DLC ladies and lord. With the Sisters, you get to bully the Dark Elves and mama Morathi, while Throt can have a lot of fun terrorizing the northern Dwarfs and Norscan tribes.
All in all, this is a satisfactiory DLC, even if it pales in comparison somewhat to the massive rework the Wood Elves have gotten. Lastly, be careful if you leave negative comments on this DLC because Arahan (the silver-haired sister) will find you and step on you :)

Do you like Pokemon? Because this FREE-LC is basically that, only with cool dragons instead of Pokemon. You start in a sandy and mountain region, but sadly there are no rock types to be found. You start with a cool Targaryen-like Lord and his female sidekick Mikaela. You also have a starter Sun Dragon. Your goal is to catch them all, only instead of Pokeballs you have to defeat the dragon in battle to catch it.
The campaign is pretty hard because you will have to fight Skaven Clan Eshin within the first 15 turns and perhaps even Grimgor if the Dwarfs aren't able to contain him early. Do keep positive relations with the Dwarfs because they might team up with Queek Headtaker to take down Grimgor and get a military alliance with the rats.
Dragons spawn periodically and I recommend having only two in the army because both Imrik and Mikaela can get a dragon mount when you rank them up.
Good luck and do catch them all!

Absolutely amazing game. Epic battles, epic abilities, epic landscapes, epic armies and in my opinion, the 2nd best campaign thus far (after TW Shogun 2) It, of course had some problems at launch (my game in particular froze every time i clicked on "Multiplayer Battle"), but fortunately, day 1 patch fixed the issue.

Factions: Well, there aren't many. Empire, Greenskins (Orks and Goblins), Vampires, Dwarfs, Brettonia (only playable in custom battles) and Chaos Warriors (if you purchase the game during first week)

DLCs: I can see Blood and Gore DLC coming out soon, preferably during the summer sale. Brettonia will be a free LC, but you'll likely have to pay for every new faction (hope they come in threes like in Rome 2 at least)

Technicalities: TW Warhammer is a giant leap foward from the unoptimized nonsense TW Attila was, but still isn't as optimized as Rome 2 after 18 patches. There will be many more patches for Warhammer and the game will improve significantly. System requirements are quite reasonable for 2016 and the official ones are completely correct. If you want to play it without lag and enjoy the graphics, you'll need something within the lines of GTX 660ti/GTX 760 or R9 270/R7 370 and a decent Core i5 CPU.

Just to clarify, I tried to enjoy this game several times over, but its state has always been a turnoff to me. So, where to start?

CAMPAIGN AND SETTING
Grand Campaign of Total War Attila is set during the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century AD, aka the "dark age" of Europe. To fit the apocalyptic theme, the color palette is mostly dark and brownish, which some players might find annoying. The campaign itself can be very amusing, especially the nuke-like special effect when you raze a province. The problem, however, is that various nomadic factions use the raze mechanic way too often, which leaves the eastern part of the map looking like the aftermath of a nuclear war.
Other than that, most campaign features are satisfactory. There is a decent family tree, something that Rome 2 used to lack, sanitation, plagues, food, fertility, religion and many other features. There's also no annoying besieger attrition seen in Rome 2 (even though it could be completely removed with the right tech),

FACTIONS
Factions themselves are one of the redeeming factors of this game. There is everything for everyone - from the Roman and Sassanian empires to the African/Arabian tribes, nomadic peoples and, of course, a plethora of migrating barbarian tribes. There are also Slavic tribes. Unfortunately, many of the interesing and unique factions are only obtainable with the paid DLCs.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Official recommended system requirements are:
2nd Generation Core i5
4 GB RAM
2 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti or AMD Radeon HD 5870

The REAL ones are more like (more on optimization in the next segment):
6th Generation Core i5
8 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480

GAME PERFORMANCE
The technical issues is what kills the mood for me. The game's graphics look stunning. There's advanced lightning, reflections and a cool fire mechanic when you torch a settlement with incendiary ammunition. Unfortunately, all this has a price. Total War Attila is so HORRIBLY optimized you need a 1000$ PC just to reach 60 FPS. Sometimes. The reason for this is the game's outdated and underpowered 32-bit Warscape Graphic Engine (the same one used since the Empire Total War!). My PC's specs are Core i7 4790K and a heavily OC-ed RX 480 8GB and while observing the battlefield from high above is fine, if I zoom in on the battle, my framerate plummets to around 20-30 FPS! This is especially a problem if one is using "Ultra" unit size. Even worse is that no GPU in existence can maintain a constant 60+ FPS when zoomed in large battles if all your graphic settings are 100% maxed. Non-Ryzen AMD CPUs are completely useless in this game due to its over-reliance on Intel's single core efficiency.

MULTIPLAYER
While quite promising at first, TW Attila's multiplayer is pretty much dead as of 2018. At the time of writing this review, the game had less active players than even Medieval 2 and Empire Total War. The multiplayer battles aren't all that great simply because of extremely overpowered cavalry which can be really hard to counter. They can often be very laggy as well because of aforementioned poor optimization.

DLCs
Total War Attila's DLCs aren't all that different from those Rome 2 had. There are 5 Culture Packs and 2 Campaign Packs. You get 3 fairly unique factions with each Culture Pack which adds more flavor to the game. While the first Campaign Pack is really nothing spacial, the second Campaign Pack, Age of Charlemagne is much better than the base game and also seemingly better optimized. It's also technically the closest thing we have to Total War Medieval 3 as of now.

MY RATING: 5.5/10