While I stare at the screen bewildered and disoriented, the Huns arrive, their armies marked with four separate horsemen galloping across the green plains. When a small rebel army does appear on the map, I’m not sure if it happened because I failed the previous requirement or if it was always a part of the mission, there to show me what would happen if I failed in a regular game. I’m not sure which buildings can placate the masses, though, and the necessary technologies in the research tree appear to be a couple dozens turns away from being finished. Meanwhile, my advisor sternly warns me to placate the occupied city or else risk a revolt.
I capture the next village via siege after crafting siege equipment, but even then I might have gone to battle too early because I only have siege towers and not the ladders and battering rams I had ordered. I capture another small settlement to the north of my current capital, but I cannot appoint a local governor because I don’t have enough social capital, a resource I was unaware of.
Other than following the A-to-B instructions, I have no idea what I’m looking at.įor the next three hours I summarily fail to meet my given objectives, and I’m never really sure what I did wrong or how to do better the next time. A thick gold outline pulses around the part of the toolbar to show me what I should click on next, but things quickly fall apart when I’m not being guided through the menus. The opening hour is spent teaching me how to use the game’s interface, but I feel like I’m being strung along a pre-determined path (because I am) more than learning what all of the numbers and icons on the screen mean (because I don’t).
I’ve won, with basically no effort of my own. Hundreds of soldiers carrying weather-beaten spears shout with vigour and rout the enemy. I click and order my entire army to smash the opposing forces. My advisor, a bald old man with a screechy voice and an Emperor Palpatine hood, urges me to crush the Ostragoths on the battlefield. So I begin where newcomers are generally supposed to start, with the Prologue campaign where you play as the Visigoths. The hundreds of individually rendered soldiers look great on the screen – at least for those with a computer strong enough to render them – but I’m not sure if anything I’m doing affects the outcome. Combat in Total War is far more complicated, with battles fought outside the overworld where the regular gameplay takes place. Players control one of several civilizations, but my experience playing Civilization didn’t fully prepare me for what Total War had in store. The real-time strategy games sprawl over hundreds of years of history, and Attila represents the denouement, of sorts, for the time period represented in the beloved Rome: Total War, showcasing the decline of the Roman Empire after two previous installments chronicled its rise and glory.
This is the Prologue campaign of Total War: Attila, and it’s the most challenging and intimidating introduction I’ve ever encountered in a video game.Ģ015 is the fifteenth anniversary of The Creative Assembly’s prolific Total War series. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from here. And the Huns, nomadic tribes united under the vicious but enigmatic Attila, ride closer to my borders every day. The Western Roman Empire has offered me a trade deal that probably helps me more than it does them. My Visigoths have beaten the neighbouring Ostragoths with unusual ease.