If you’re coming to Attila with a bit of trepidation, I don’t blame you. So let’s talk about Total War: Rome II, this game’s immediate predecessor. This leaves you at a disadvantage if you want to play any of the horde-style factions-you’re learning on the fly. You take over the Visigoths, but in a scenario where they’ve already settled into a city.

Which makes it all the stranger that the tutorial for the game, the so-called “prologue,” focuses on traditional Total War gameplay. Playing as a “normal” faction feels clunky and unrefined by comparison. The ultra-mobile hordes have a few disadvantages-particularly their slow population growth and the fact that you can’t be building and waging war at the same time-but ultimately it feels like the whole game was designed around this concept. It’s a new way to breathe life into Total War. It’s a fascinating way to play Total War. Many of the remaining areas are under my control by proxy, as tribute states.

Between the Huns slowly destroying the Eastern Roman Empire and me the West, we’ve reduced parts of Europe to nothingness.

In Attila the map is slowly turning one color, but it’s the pale parchment yellow that signifies a “blank” tile-another city razed to the ground. In past Total War games you’d slowly see the map congeal into two or three colors as mighty empires were forged.

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