Total War: Warhammer 2 (with SFO mod)

the big disadvantage that they were surrounded and they were hot total war warhammer 2 sure is a video game but before we even begin talking about it there is some esoteric nerd history you need to be aware of [Applause] the total war series is a survivor this story begins in the ancient times the 90s the world back then was just darkness and fog and from these primordial elements the original video games were born the very first shooters these games are getting really realistic ancient adventure games and real-time strategy games you must construct additional pylons this might seem a little odd but real-time strategy was a huge fad back in the 90s a typical pc gaming magazine of the period might dedicate up to one-fifth of its pages to the coverage of rts's the ancient people sure loved their real-time strategy the old ways were so absurd but there was a problem as years went by real-time strategy games were steadily losing ground to other genres slowly going out of favor with both the critics and the gamer masses one of the issues was right there in the name it would be more honest to refer to these as real-time action games with strategy elements the consumers resented this the genre went into decline exiled from human society rts gamers retreated underground away from civilization never to be seen again some say their ancestors still live there in the deep caverns fighting their time waiting for their masters to return to the overworld over the years many philosopher nerds made attempts to revitalize the genre say what if we make an rts game but it's in space and has a full 3d movement [Music] roger cool idea instant cult classic not enough to save the genre what if we made an rts game but with a focus on army control abandoning the base building aspect altogether but today we'll show them that the red army pose to no one this is so-called one red dome i say again red dawn we have three main objectives destroying the us-6 dharma battalion securing the monkey bridge over the spray and clearing the 17th june straight for use by army command today we'll show them the might of the soviet union interesting experiment called classic not enough to save the genre but what if what if we double down on our game being base free but now it has unit inventories and realistic physics sophisticated damage modelling for vehicles environmental destructibility and an optional manual control mode a new novel way of controlling your units the men of war series had a lot of potential completely squandered by incompetent publisher real-time strategy was deader than disco a user-made map for warcraft 3 exploded in popularity creating mobas everyone knows this story mobas are sometimes seen as inheritors of rts's since they have many similar mechanics and these are great games popular games but it's just not the same it's a very different kind of experience what does this all mean for millennials who grew up playing warcraft 2 and command and conquer deprived of our sacred traditions are we doomed to remain in the deep caverns forever not all attempts to revitalize the genre were failures twenty years ago creative assembly a game development company from the uk released shogun total war the era is 1530. for 200 years the ashkaga shrugnet has ruled japan from their capital in kyoto the gameplay was divided into layers a strategy layer which played like a 4x nation management game and a tactical layer where you played rts battles initiated from the strategic layer the subsequent total war games would share the same basic structure including the popular rome total war released just four years after shogun i've always had a quiet resentment for the total war series you know the kind of mean dumb resentment that nerds sometimes develop towards media products this is [ __ ] it's just like other games i like but not quite i thought the strategic gameplay wasn't as deep compared to civilization or gelsiv or whatever the forex was popular at the time and the rts gameplay wasn't as varied and satisfying as in yuri's revenge take shogun 2 for example over the years i put a lot of hours into this game but a significant percentage of that time was spent playing with only a small handful of unit types spear and bow armed peasants that are a core of medieval japanese army spares and bows spares and bows probably a realistic portrayal of medieval japanese warfare but it's just so god damn boring and one-dimensional room 2 total war was a scandalous release everyone was making fun of the bugs but i didn't care i spent my childhood playing troika games and these were goddamn catastrophes from a technical perspective i can tolerate bugs and jank if the game has a soul but what killed rome 2 for me was the mechanical simplicity of its strategic layer its political and economic systems see rome 2 was released in 2013 but only a year prior paradox interactive published crusader kings 2 which ended up being their first grand strategy title that managed to reach mainstream audiences crusader kings was innovative deep and accessible and it completely killed total war for me every time i looked at the strategic interface in one of those games all i could see was like a children's cartoon version of a real thing total war fans would be deeply insulted by this you idiot you fool you just don't get total war and that's true i didn't not until i played total war warhammer 2. let us begin do you think 40k can fit in the total war framework this is a subject of many heated debates in the community so far there is no consensus but as it turns out warhammer fantasy is a perfect fit the older total war titles were historical games back in 2004 the history channel aired an animated series which used rome total war engine to depict famous historical battles driven on by hunger and anger they smashed through the roman line the franchise never attempted to be a 100 accurate simulation but in a historical setting factions and units need to be at least somewhat grounded in reality but fantasy is free of these limitations in fantasy anything goes you can make all kinds of absurd armies take the empire for example one of the more powerful human states you start with basic swordsmen and spearmen backed by crossbows and artillery fairly conventional at this point you can't even tell you are playing a fantasy game armies in rome 2 or medieval 2 weren't very different from this but the more you play the more things begin to change carl france the faction leader can fly around the battlefield on his pet griffon called deathclaw you can build magic colleges these allow for the recruitment of various kinds of wizards some can summon monsters others heal your troops and yet others have powerful direct damage abilities like the lore of fire a well-aimed spell can net you hundreds of kills the imperial cavalry consists of conventional horse mounted knights but there are also these guys who ride monsters called demigriffs they hit like a truck the army is supported by skirmishers rifle armed dragoons in the mid game you can get dragoons with grenade launchers and things just keep escalating there are steam tanks katyusha rockets and magical laser artillery [Music] the unit diversity is phenomenal you have so many toys to play with it's honestly such a breath of fresh air if you own the dlc there is a nice roster of religious units and heroes as well unbreakable fanatics immune to fear and morale damage they'll make short work of anyone falling to chaos but we are not fallen we are ascended says archie on the ever chosen so a buddy of mine drafted me into playing a co-op campaign and after a short deliberation we decided to play as the empire's main nemesis i urge my master that now is the time to march south the north men grow restless we must harness that and send the tribes in a great tide southwards there is a lot of drama surrounding the warriors of chaos both in the lore and in total warhammer community these guys are a fantasy equivalent of chaos space marines except they are badass mutated viking warriors their ultimate goal is to burn the world chaos warriors are a dlc faction a pre-order dlc for warhammer 1. the reason we are talking about it here is because warhammer 2 has a special game mode called mortal empires it combines content from both warhammer 1 and warhammer 2 into one gigantic super game every legendary lord every faction from the first warhammer is playable in the second if you own both titles that is mortal empires is amazing and it's very much the default way of playing the game this appears to be the community consensus almost all multiplayer campaigns you see hosted in the lobby are hosted on the mortal empires map the goal of the chaos faction is to burn the world but these guys are not quite as potent or scary enough to be a proper threat for the forces of order so we need to fix that sfo grimhammer 2 is a popular mod for the game that makes all kinds of balancing changes this is how the chaos warriors tech tree looks in vanilla and this is how it looks in sfo interesting that in the lore archeon succeeds in ending the world essentially destroying the fantasy warhammer setting and paving the way for a reboot i think the miniatures weren't selling but we won't be playing as archeon we'll be playing as sigvault the magnificent very much a contrarian choice he is the least popular of all chaos champions sigvault is a scion of the chaos deity slaanesh the dark god of iphones porn processed food and pop music slanash is the god of pleasure of experiencing everything to the fullest a god with a strong connection to arts and creative acts a god of writers actors and pretty boy sigvault is one of his greatest champions marching through the world of men eradicating anything too ugly or crude onward to destruction speaking of our first challenge will be the norskens the northern tribes of men respect strength above all so we defeat them and draft them into our service the horde grows in order to invade the empire we need to go through kislev a fantasy amalgamation of various feudal slavic states kislev is kiev with two extra letters but it's governed by tsars like russia who practice powerful winter magic but then they also have polish-winged hussars as their elite cavalry it's a mix of a bunch of eastern and central european cultures warhammer the fictional universe was created back in the 80s in the land of europa and euvropans fancy themselves more cosmopolitan and sophisticated compared to americans but despite the close geographical proximity they never bothered to learn much about the slavs i'm not exactly an expert but i'm pretty sure kislev doesn't even have a real army in the tabletop although in the lore they do have all sorts of unique units and gimmicks none of them are represented in game in total war kislev military is basically a copy of an imperial army but not quite as varied they don't stand a chance against siegwald's horde since you can't have two people playing as chaos warriors in co-op my buddy had to pick something else chaos aligned he will be playing the beastmen a breed of chaos mutants that combine human and b-steel features another dlc faction these guys are kind of a laughingstock of the total warhammer community and possibly the weakest army in the game even with the mod my friend was really passionate about beastman for some reason and when i asked him why he said well it's because they're outcasts underdogs nobody really likes them it's fun to root for the underdog but then i was reading the lore and apparently the underdogs in this particular case are cannibal rapists in game their gimmick is that the units are cheap and bad at most things they do but there sure is a lot of them a true horde there are several beast leaders to choose from but we'll be playing as maligor the dark omen a powerful shaman and sorcerer with a pair of raven wings he kind of looks like illidan from warcraft except badass coincidentally my first ever experience with warhammer fantasy was via an old strategy game which was also called dark omen it was quite good and popular with nerds back in the late 90s i wonder if it still holds up i am zarina katarina ruler of kislev malagor starts on the opposite end of the world map and it will be a while till our forces can properly support one another meanwhile in the north after ravaging through kislev we battle the norsken tribes again norsken warriors are some of the most fiercely devout followers of corn the chaos god of war according to the wiki the word corn in ancient cypriot greek literally means to [ __ ] blood fascinating lore and a factually correct description of what we ended up doing in this battle sigvault got owned by a mammoth tyr footier the norsken mammoths are some of the strongest units in the game our army routes we got humiliated on the battlefield i decided to accept this loss and not to reload i considered heading south deeper into civilized lands but i think what we should do instead is take a detour deeper into norska to pacify the tribes while we were busy getting owned by potential allies near the northern gates of the empire the beastman hordes were about to enter the human realm from the south and in order to do that they need to get past the border princes a collection of politically neutral towns and communities on the southern border of karl franz empire a haven for bandits mercenaries adventurers and all manner of exiles it makes sense that these border territories will become a home for our be steel hordes as well at least for a short while the city of achendorf will be besieged taken and ransacked we battle night and day to protect the passes into the empire but the enemy is too numerous despite being on the same ideological side beastmen and the chaos warriors are complete opposites of one another when it comes to the art of war our dudes are tough well armored but slow beast men are individually unimpressive but mobile favoring ambushes and skirmish tactics the two factions actually synergize fairly well on the battlefield first you send forward waves of beast men to kite the opponent to make their ranged units waste ammo on low value targets and then you hit them with an impenetrable moving wall of chaos warriors we won this battle with relatively low casualties this came as a surprise for both of us as we have a realistic assessment of the beast people combat prowess back in the north we meet wolfrick the wanderer the eternal challenger one of the heroes added in norska dlc for warhammer 1. he was a talented norsken warrior who absolutely loved talking [ __ ] so the chaos deities put a curse on him they drafted wolfrick for a divine mission he will travel the world hunting monsters and powerful champions collecting their skulls and if he fails his soul would be torn apart by demons and this is pretty much what you do if you play as him you travel the world and hunt rare creatures wolfrick is one of the two new heroes added in the dlc the other one is throgg the troll king in the lore throg plays an important role in siegwald's story and his ultimate fate which is understandable they are such a great match an ugly giant monster armed with a club and a rapier-carrying pretty boy and this is how the legend falls sorry will frick but you were just too god damn ugly this entire episode got me thinking is there a rational reason to worship the chaos gods in warhammer stories mortals are usually tricked into aligning themselves with chaos they do this out of ignorance and stupidity but what if archaeon is right what if they really are ascended the gods of the imaterium can make you physically stronger chaos can change you in all kinds of ways both physical and mental it can grant you knowledge forbidden knowledge if you want to be all melodramatic about it so there are good aspects to chaos after all slanash is a patron of the arts as well as excess perhaps if we devise systems of worship that focus on these aspects then chaos would become a positive a vitalist force and did you know that there are chaos gods of order and law carl france certainly doesn't want you to know what else is he hiding from you chaos is the intrinsic part of the metaphysical structure of the universe you can't get rid of it can't destroy it we simply need to learn to live with chaos this is why they call it the lawn war if you think of chaos as a military threat then you have already been defeated in such a confrontation chaos will always win eventually look i'm not saying i have all the answers that's what charlatans do but we will never achieve victory in the lone war without asking these complicated questions so uh are they all beast men or other beast women it's a mystery interesting that the beast people society is what they call reverse racist yes the fewer b-steel features you possess the lower will be your status in the horde hierarchy our army strikes the empire from the north pillaging the coastal settlements the target is the town of middenheim in a vanilla warhammer chaos cannot capture cities at all only destroy them the sfo mod changes the select few cities to be conquerable mittenheim happens to be one of these it will be turned into a chaos fortress and will serve as our base of operations for the foreseeable future look at that the wood elves took notice of us most of the time the wood elves will be content with living inside their forest reservations if you leave them alone they leave you alone but this time things are different in warhammer fantasy chaos has this radioactive quality to it meaning that just by the fact of our existence we are corrupting our neighbors provoking unrest and slowly turn by turn transforming their land into an inhospitable wasteland so the wood elves will try to kill us before that happens there are a number of ways to play wood elves the most straightforward tactic would be to take advantage of the fact that they are fantastic mobile skirmishers but archers are not the only way to play wood elves have tree spirits sort of their equivalent of monster creatures i suppose one way to describe them is like beastmen but competent in the lore the wood elves and beastmen are mortal enemies and so the elven army is destroyed the weakness of our chaos formation is the lack of mobility in order to remedy this i enhanced our stack with norsken skirmishers getting long range artillery would be another good solution siegwald starts with one such unit and if you were paying attention you might have noticed that it served us really well in the campaign what the [ __ ] is a hell cannon exactly look at it some sort of a strange mix of machinery sorcery and flesh the little dudes operating it are the chaos dwarves the dobby jar like they call themselves a rare sight when the dwarf gods abandoned them the dobby jar made a deal with her shoot a bull-like chaos demon who taught them secrets of demon smithing chaos dwarves are interesting because they live in the dark lands the vast inhospitable expanse east of kislev where warhammer 3 will supposedly take place hershoot is not a real god but rather a greater chaos demon who was in the right place at the right time by helping david jarr by saving their race he increased his own power and influence kashut demands blood sacrifices so he's still pretty evil but it's worth noting that he generally isn't quite as much of a dick to his followers compared to other chaos gods and greater demons the worst thing he does to dobby jar are the mutations some of them grow horns and tusks the bow-like features but are these really that bad i'm just saying there are way worse chaos entities out there like the horned rat the skaven god the fabric of reality was torn and from the realm of ruin the skaven's horned god visited its creatures clever child it whispered with the voice of a thousand screeching rats skaven are a race of oversized technologically advanced vermin individually weak stupid and evil they are despised by other races as well as other skaven unfortunately they are also fast breeders and are possibly the most numerous race in the world skaven are represented by several clans each with its own specialization and gimmick like clan pestilence in the lore in order to destroy the empire before the human state becomes powerful enough to actually threaten the skaven clan pestilence engineers the black plague but like most plans the rat fox come up with this one backfired the plague killed a fuckton of skaven and the empire ended up in a stronger position in the end clan mulder a recent dlc clan is known for using warp stone-based magic in order to create mutant abominations these guys live in a place called help it not far from kislev have you noticed how the worst things in the warhammer world are all located next to kislev the most well-known creations of clan mulder are probably rat oggers small rats on roids and there is this bizarre creature called gorage castellian of helpit the rats experimented with transplanting human brains into red bodies and gorick was the first success originally a norsken chaos champion of corn he managed to piss off archaea they ever chosen as punishment archeon threw garage into the help it the rats transplanted his brain into a body of an experimental rat auger with bionic limbs he is like a rat adam jensen but on tren gorice didn't like being a rat at least not at first he went on a rampage killing many skaven but then the leaders of clan mulder took notice of him and they offered gorrich a job he had nothing else to do really seems unlikely archaeon would want him back so he became the leader of clanmolder military blood for the blood god skulls for the skull throne cleanse cryer our engineers they have flamethrowers miniguns energy weapons strange machines and even nukes [Music] i guess if the imperial technology can be described as steampunk that makes skaven warp punk warp stone punk rat punk scryer is a dlc clan and i don't own that one because i don't play rats i really want to like skaven the technology they use looks fun and it sets them apart from other factions but there is something about their fantasy i find repulsive i think it's all the nihilism it doesn't seem like skaven even have a real culture they just eat and kill they don't even like other skaven the only reason they haven't overrun the world is because they keep killing each other not even their god likes them total war warhammer is a strategy game but it's also a role-playing game and i just can't get into skaven look at this the troll king came to visit us at wittenheim like i mentioned in the lore his story is connected to sigwals they were supposed to work together on archeon's orders but siegwald thought the king of trolls was just too ugly and he attempted to kill the creature me and my core partner mismanaged our diplomacy and beastmen ended up at war with throg while the chaos warriors were not the beast people had no backup on the battlefield and got humiliated but that's not really that big of a deal it happens to them all the time the empire is in a bad place strategically we manage to successfully install ourselves in the imperial heartland while the norskens burn and pillage kislev and the vampire counts attack the eastern regions this is a fantasy game so naturally there is an undead faction there are several of them in fact sylvania get it it's like transylvania but without the first syllable back in the days of warhammer 1 the vampire counts were possibly the most original and innovative total war faction ever designed overwhelming the enemy with absurdly sized stacks of skeletons and zombies was cool and new but what's even better was seeing all the giant monster creatures the vampires can field back then a monster-based unit roster seemed like a novel concept until now total war games were historical and in real life very few armies used giant monsters they were elephants and that's about it but then came the sequel and a dozen expansion-sized dlcs these days almost all factions have a selection of monstrous units available to them and some of the appeal of playing vampire counts is just no longer there it's the opposite actually it would be cool if the vampires were more human awakening one of the ancient bloodlines grants you access to converted human units but these are so few in number you can't make a real army out of them at least i don't think you can i'm not really an expert on vampire mechanics having a formation of napoleonic line infantry supported by hordes of skeletons in the front and spell casters in the back is a fun idea i would love to play this it's time for the final challenge of the campaign taking on the remains of the imperial [Music] army [Music] after the destruction of imperial armies with the combined force of sigvald's chaos warriors and maligor's beastmen in a dramatic battle our campaign was concluded we had our ups and downs but overall it was much easier than we expected the sfo mod makes chaos warriors very potent so what should our next adventure be the dinosaur-infested lustria is the hardest continent to explore the settlements are spaced very far from one another jungle terrain imposes hard penalties on movement shallow water makes sea navigation difficult and in many cases impractical the place is settled by sentient lizards undead pirates dark elves skaven human imperialists and norskens for some reason the worst possible people i would rather be in chaos wastes rather than here so lustria is perfect for co-op campaigns elites gather the hans marshall marcus wolfhard leads an imperial expedition into lustria hans marshall's gimmick is that he semi-regularly gets supplies from the old world by supplies i mean units good units you can get demigrif knights and hal storm batteries pretty early as hans marshall fighting dinosaurs with steam tanks and katushas [ __ ] yes the hans marshall's other mechanic is that he gets a posse of unique heroes with their own backstories and side quests they originate from various old world cultures a witch hunter with a phd a bretonnian knight without his horse a dwarven engineer and inventor a wood elf marksman mark's woman actually is it just me or does she sort of look like a human woman in a wood elf costume that's a little creepy but then again these people are imperialists psychopaths and colonizers who are fighting the natives of lustria the chaos hating sentient lizards so pathological behavior is to be expected the sfo mod wasn't updated due to a new dlc release so me and my buddy decided to start a game in lustria i was playing the hans marshall and he took the role of a dark elf pirate lokir felhart of the blessed dread dark elves or drookie are some of the least cool people i've ever seen a joke amongst elves except for the witch king malekith is cool he looks like a morrowind character there is absolutely nothing wrong with the dark elves mechanically the units are strong and reasonably diverse drookie have a unique ability to create black arcs massive floating cities that can construct buildings support friendly land units with long-range artillery strikes and even invade coastal settlements by themselves lockheer starts with a black arc for free we figured this unlikely alliance between humans and dark elves works thematically because both of them are honestly kind of bad people marcus just has a better pr department the campaign was hard both of us lost important fights very early but decided to stick with it to accept our mistakes we didn't reload and the experience was better for it co-op games naturally tend to be easier than single player so you need to challenge yourselves to pick faction combinations that don't necessarily have amazing synergies with one another and we fought so many goddamn dinosaurs lizard men are isolationist remains of an ancient anti-chaos empire the military is comprised of lizards of various shapes and sizes there are little tiny pathetic lizards and then there are some of the biggest units in the game and they can field full stacks of those you will be fighting full stacks of those at some point during the campaign if you are at war with the dinos there are quite a few dino legendary lords both free and paid i don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with them but i'm just not a huge fan of the aesthetic it's a personal preference kind of thing the original warhammer races were created by psychic frogmen from outer space called the old ones they made elves and dwarves but prior to that they made the lizards to serve as their food soldiers and then finally they created halflings and ogres the two races that are not present in the total war games yet the old dark omen game had a unit of mercenary ogres fighting for the empire and they were crazy strong now you've got an ogre at your side your enemies will get real thumping you just see if they don't yes we'll see the old ones also accidentally contaminated the world with orc spores let's talk about warhammer arcs orcs are a race of barely intelligent mushrooms their culture combines the qualities of eastern slavic alcoholics and english football hooligans complete with a cockney accent last time these two got together the map of euvropa was redrawn orcs are dedicated to war and are basically impossible to exterminate you might be wondering what are the differences between the 40k and the fantasy orcs well the answer is that in 40k orc is spelt with a k and in fantasy it's spelled with a c there are no female orcs although the race does have a tendency to randomly mutate so in the older fluff they supposedly could over time develop sexual characteristics fantasy orcs are somewhat more diverse and multicultural compared to their 40k counterparts goblins are just as important as their bigger and beefier cousins goblins are scouts shamans assassins they man the war machines and domesticate grotesque monster creatures like these giant spiders warlord skarsnik is a huge fan of cave squigs bipedal asses with teeth skarsnik of the crooked moon tribe is a dlc character his campaign has a reputation for being very challenging early game goblins have micro intensive mobile but weak units that cannot take a hit they are quite fun to play in co-op actually where your body can assist you in microing's quick charges and managing goblin spider cavalry these are very unimpressive small spiders but it does get better eventually i was one the vampire coast is a naval themed faction in a game with no naval battles and they're all undead well almost all of them are nasa soul spite from the pirate island of sartozza can recruit human pirates of both melee and ranged variety arch commodore luther harkon is a non-neurotypical option possessing a fractured mind he will randomly switch from one personality to another which changes his stats and abilities he lives in lustria because of course he does count noctylus is actually a von karstein necromancer stuck far away from home he specializes in possibly the most fun unit in the entire total war franchise necrofax colossus it's a part undead part vehicle part artillery piece that can get healed in battle by vampiric magic noctulus eventually gets a necrofax colossus mount meaning you can potentially go full mech warrior with this guy with a stack of nothing but necrofax celestia diaphin is a ghost of a dead opera singer she was sent from britonia to the elven continent to sing for the phoenix king the ship was hit by a fierce storm many years later it was seen again navigating the seas crewed by the drowned dead silastra is accompanied by a ghost of a britonian paladin hero who i think is unique being a ghost he is completely immune to normal weapons and the brittonian paladins are already very hard to kill even when they are not ghosts britonia is an elitist cavalry-based faction while the empire is modeled after the predominantly german holy roman empire these guys are inspired by medieval france and there is a little bit of england in there as well the high tier knights are the fantasy equivalent of 40k space marines tough deadly and rare they're supported by mass armies of peasants i wanna say that the 40k equivalent of them would be the imperial guard but that's not exactly true brittonian peasants are much more incompetent the entire faction including all the units and heroes was a free expansion size dlc for warhammer one a very impressive chunk of content in the second game these guys get an additional legendary lord or rather a lady is the britonian not joan of arc i would argue rappance is one of the best characters to learn the game with for one she provides various bonuses to the peasant part of the britonian army increasing the viability of these units for two rippons starts the game with a paladin hero as i already mentioned these guys are great at soaking damage and finally rupance begins her campaign in warhammer not africa fighting undead orcs and rats it's simply a more fun starting location than boring as britonia her main adversaries the tomb kings are another dlc race the desert skeletons are superior i'm not an expert on this particular faction the way the ai uses them it's almost like an undead mirror image of the tactics used by rapunze compared to the evil scheming sylvanians the tomb kings are well to use the nerd nomenclature they are lawful neutral the tomb kings are essentially fantasy necrons yeah they have flying pyramids what of it the ancient egyptians had them too finally these games are getting historically accurate have you heard of the high elves the high elves are an archetypical ancient dying fantasy race the demographic situation is bad every citizen is a soldier the future is bleak the elf country is a dying superpower but it's still super as [ __ ] their military is one of the best and the high elves are the only warhammer army with marines my personal problem with the high elves is that their cities look like toys you know how some vegas casinos have this tacky on purpose kind of look and some of them are stylized to resemble medieval castles the high elf settlements give me the same vibe it's hard to take their culture seriously once you learn that they live inside of oversized toys but there is one high elf who is cool dragon fire runs through my veins prince imrick the dragon tamer starts the campaign in warhammer afghanistan a remote region added in a patch imric is a free dlc character and his adventure is some of the most fun i've ever had in warhammer i've read in the lore that the prince is considered to be somewhat of a douche at some point he attempts to blackmail his way into becoming the phoenix king and after that fails he ends up joining malekith the leader of the dark elves imric was a great free chunk of content but we need to talk about the dlc policy there are problems it's not as bad as you think most of these truly are optional when recording footage for this video i was surprised to discover that i own almost all downloadable content for warhammer 1. i wasn't even trying to acquire it all some of these dlcs are free others i got on sale and some of them were gifts from a friend a good number of the dlcs are actually mini expansions a lot of work goes into them new mechanics new legendary lords voice acting new visual assets and animations these feel significantly more substantial than the dlcs for paradox games and there is no reason to buy an expansion for a faction you don't play or a fantasy you don't enjoy i don't like the fantasy of being a stupid oversized rat so i don't buy their content but i guess other people do and that's fine the developers are regularly accused of having a skaven bias however some of the dlcs are more important than they have a right to be for example you can play dwarfs without buying anything well anything except warhammer 1. this is a stock warhammer 1 faction but in that case you won't get all the regiments of renown for any of the free dwarf heroes so if you want elite units you have to pay a very important feature is paywalled a common complaint is that they make you purchase the blood effects separately but you know what i've never actually bought that one some consider these effects to be essential in a total war game but i think they just look stupid they remind me of dragon age 1 and that's not a compliment sophisticated strategy games like the ones we love always require patches iterations mechanical and content expansions in order to become the best versions of themselves on release day many of these games come out playable and some can even be described as fun but they are never complete this is the nature of the medium the process of iteration can go on for years i used to resent the total war series for being an inferior rts married to an inferior forex trying to do two things at the same time and failing at both and this might have been true for the older titles but with warhammer 2 things began to change both the real-time strategy and the forex parts are evolving the best way to facilitate post release support is by making it profitable paradox and creative assembly are both famous or infamous for their dlc policy the complete experience will cost you several times the price of the base game and yet this approach guarantees years of support fixes iterations bringing the game closer to perfection with each content update so what is the best thing for us as consumers to do never said i have all the answers i'm not sure what the best course of action actually is please be gentle when you [ __ ] us creative assembly the issue is made even more complicated by the fact that the total war series is a survivor there are more real-time strategy games on the market now than just a few years ago but rts remains a niche genre if you like these you don't have many choices anyway total war warhammer 2 is really good the third game will have its own version of the mortal empires campaign expanding the world even further content from all three warhammer titles merged into one personally i'm hoping to see the inclusion of a playable kislav faction it seems almost inevitable that we'll get kislev eventually sar boris bokkha riding into battle on a bear [ __ ] yes earlier i mentioned that in the lore archeon succeeds in ending the warhammer world it happens right here in middenheim the third warp gate was found beneath the and all the stories are concluded very vivid description of heads flying limbs cut off and the chaos the dust the panic the shouting the screaming of what happens when you have several thousand men who know they're going to die and there's no way out the beastmen hordes managed to overrun etheloren the elven forest the shock troops of chaos they participate in the battles against the empire as cannon fodder just like in our campaign eventually they get annihilated by the imperials malagor the dark omen gets killed by the new supreme patriarch vampirism spreads to britonia becoming a popular pastime among the decadent nobles but they do manage to get their [ __ ] together in the end the space marines aided by undead knights make the final lust stand against the forces of chaos dark elves high elves and wood elves unite into a single nation which king malaketh becomes their leader the three factions of elves are now forbidden from fighting one another they also exterminate the beastmen but that is just routine the lizardmen discover that they are in possession of ancient devices called exodus engines this is the last resort kind of thing as the hordes of skaven overwhelm them the lizards activate exodus engines that turn out to be spaceships so the dinos flee to the stars like they did in real life orcs gather into a massive army kill a bunch of rats then kill a bunch of chaos dwarves almost all of them in fact then they invade the warhammer china destroying it almost completely then they sail to warhammer japan and wreak havoc there as well warhammer japan is called nippon eventually the orcs end up in middenheim where they battle the forces of chaos prior to this skarsnik's pets quick dies and he is heartbroken the horned rat makes his move the skaven clans unite and invade the world as an unstoppable force the rats ally themselves with archaeon with an intention to betray him later but that's okay archeon was only using them as cannon fodder because at that point he ran out of beastmen when the world ends the horned rat moves skaven blight into his warp realm and becomes a true chaos god on par with corn or cinch that's a quite a career the rat certainly did better than hashit the patron demon of chaos dwarves who got owned by the avatars of gork and mork the orc gods after a series of events sigvault ended up battling krell a powerful undead champion krell was winning he caught sigvault's pretty face and broke his rapier the scion of slanash had a portrait of dorian gray kind of moment he saw his mutilated hideous face in a reflection and went berserk beating the [ __ ] out of krell and killing him with his bare fists sigvault was no longer a pretty boy this was when his old buddy throg the troll king found him taking advantage of the moment of weakness throgg bashed sigvald's skull and pissed on his corpse and that was the end for the patron of the arts until he comes back as a demon prince in the reboot bam [ __ ] you throg the lens of men kislev most of the empire and britonia are in ruins the combined forces of water actually manage to retake mittenheim carl franz ascends becoming sigmar himself in the final confrontation he battles archaeon and they are both consumed by the warp as the world ends [Music] do the big disadvantage that they were surrounded and they were hot

Channel: Warlockracy

Views: 111,620

Keywords: video games, gaming, game design, warlockracy, Total war: warhammer 2, total war: warhammer, total war warhammer 2 review, Archaon the Everchosen, warhammer fantasy battles, warhammer lore, Let's play, Real-time strategy

Id: LUbyMsaxLA0

Length: 51min 5sec (3065 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020