HomeFeaturesA Total War Saga: Troy
Hands-on preview - Total War Saga: Troy promises demanding, fast-paced strategyHectic of Troy
Hectic of Troy
Total War Saga: Troyis out on August 13thand will be free at launch, and having played a demo battle which pitted Achilles’ Acheans against Hector’s Trojans, I’m intrigued to play more. I’ve chosen the word “intrigued” deliberately, here. Because while the tactical depth of what I played was impressive, and rooted itself emphatically in its semi-mythical setting, its multi-skilled infantry and attention-demanding heroes required a lot of micromanagement, and punished any forgetfulness on my part with a rapid spiral towards defeat. There was a lot to enjoy, in short, but I had to work for it.
There are some great audio touches in Troy: the whistly rushy noises javelins make as they sleet past the camera into the backs of terrified shield lads is really one to savour.
Troy, as you might expect, covers the Trojan War off of the Iliad, and is therefore set earlier than any otherTotal War gameso far. When exactly? It’s hard to say, since modern knowledge of Mediterranean history is murky enough that we can’t even be certain therewasa Trojan War to begin with. But such evidence as there is points towards “around 1200BCE”. That’s the Bronze Age, that is, and it’s not a time where that many games are set.
The Minotaur: in actual fact, just a large, angry pub man.
I’ll be following this post up with another based on an interview with developers at CA Sofia, focusing on the game’s theming, art design and story, and on the campaign layer, which I’ve not yet seen in action. For now though, I want to concentrate on the meat beneath the gravy. And just as in any Total War game, that’s the battlefield where the Total Battles of your Total War play out. And pleasingly enough, that takes me back to talking about the Bronze Age.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Most units have at least one special skill or uncommon ability, such as the ability to charge, hide in any terrain, or pierce armour. On top of that, several units have alternating weapon stances, and are thus sort of two units at once. There are swordsman who can hurl javelins when you toggle their alt fire, for example, softening up the opposing line for the mincing to come. There are also shield lads who can do that cool “shields down, swords up” thing the elves do in the opening cutscene of the first Lord of The Rings film, and go from being arrow-resisting tanks to damage dealers in a single coolSCHLINGsound. While not a new feature for the series, Troy seems to feature these “transformers” units, as I insist on calling them, more prominently than previous Total Wars. And when units can become functionally different units at the press of a button, it adds a welcome new dimension to the strategic puzzle game of the deployment phase.
It also adds a new button to press, however. And to be more precise, another button to remember to press in the thick of the action. While also keeping track of a swarm of infantry units who look pretty similar from 100 metres up in the air, and who are just slightly faster than you expect them to be, zooming around after each other like swarms of Total Wasps. Factor in the question of whose flanking bonus is whose, which spear fighters have armour and which don’t, who can stalk, and where the mud is, and you’re beginning to get an idea of how much there is to bear in mind at any given moment.
Hector and Achilles duel, while the Minotaur watches on like a guy who’s supporting his mate while he gets destroyed at a rap battle.
In other games, I managed to outmanoeuvre the enemy pretty decisively, only to have a tooled up nutter with a fancy shield mow his way methodically through all my exhausted units, even as the last members of his own army fled the field. With that said, I don’t think the balance issue here is either fun-ruining, or insurmountable. The main issue is once again split attention, as heroes are too powerful not to want to squeeze every last bit of efficiency from, but not so powerful that you can leave them to do their own thing for long.
Tactical sensibilities be damned: sometimes I just can’t resist lining everyone up like it’s the intro to the old X-Men cartoon, and swooping the camera down the line as they all smash into each other.
When these moments worked out, they were heroically satisfying. But to pull them off without having the rest of the battlefield collapse into a rout, I had to keep the passage of time dialled down to its lowest possible setting. This meant all the cool clashing and shouting noises faded away, and I lost a lot of the atmosphere the game does so well at generating. In TW: Warhammer 2, I can play to relax, peering imperiously over my ranks of trudging skeletons as they wade lethargically into the enemy, and occasionally dispatching battallions of monsters to trouble spots with lazy sweeps of my invisible gauntlet. Here, at least on hard mode, I don’t think I could get away with that.
This is often how things end up, if you forget about part of the battle for a few moments.
And hey! Some people, who are just faster than I am, might never experience the sense of being overwhelmed at all. For them especially, Troy’s depth should be a real joy. Newcomers and other sluggish dads, however, should bear in mind that it certainly doesn’t play itself. All in all, if my main criticism of Total War Saga: Troy is that it does too many interesting things, it’s not looking too bad at all. Once I’ve had a crack at the campaign mode and had a chance to build a force up from scratch, I suspect I’m going to have a much more comfortable time with it.
Fuck him up, Socrates.
