Diplomacy sometimes fails, or perhaps it was never even an option, or maybe you had to run to the defence of an ally when this happens, the inevitable battles will begin. The second part of the game begins whenever a fight lands on your door. This is, without question, the most complicated part of the game, with a UI that is a little overly complicated returning players will likely feel right at home, but new players might feel a bit overwhelmed, especially as they’re left to figure everything out for themselves. Only without the animal characters and the dice rolling. It feels quite like a board game at times, or like Armello, the digital board game. Each army can only move so far though, before using up their action points and you’ll have to end the turn to move things along. On this map, you can make changes to your territory’s towns and cities, arrange diplomatic deals that can benefit your kingdom, or you can send out armies to do various things. You’ll have an overworld map, Britain in this case, which is divided into territories ruled by different factions, all based on real historical data. Thrones of Britannia, like previous Total War games, consists of two forms of gameplay. Each faction is essentially a kind of difficulty selection (although a proper difficulty slider is present and correct), as it determines how you begin your campaign, such as relationships with neighbouring counties or the might of your armies. You can choose from a number of forces across Britain, from the English to the Welsh, or even the viking settlers that remain on the eastern coast then you can mount an attempt to take control of the entire country. Taking place after Alfred the Great had repelled the Viking invasion at the battle of Edington, with Britain now in a rather tense period of fragile peace, you have the opportunity to re-write the next chapter of history. Let’s go back to the beginning though, shall we? The Total War franchise has always prided itself on its historical accuracy (except for the Warhammer games, obviously, but that did involve a different kind of accuracy) and Thrones of Britannia is no different. I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever felt so lost when trying to navigate a game’s systems and mechanics. The game simply said to disband some of the forces, but doing that resulted in no change whatsoever. At one point during the campaign, there was public unrest in one of my towns and all my advisor would do was tell me this was happening: it didn’t once explain how to deal with this and the same goes for when an army was running out of provisions. Sure, you have an advisor that lets you know how your forces, allies and enemies are doing, but that advisor never tells you how to deal with any of it. Unfortunately, this game does not want players like me to play it. I want to say that I finally got to experience the feeling of ruling a kingdom that I always fantasised about in this series. I want to be able to say to you, dear reader, that Thrones of Britannia is the most accessible Total War game to date. That maybe, just maybe, the series had decided to cater for players like myself. When this new game landed on my lap, I thought that maybe the ‘A Total War Saga’ title denoted that this was a spin-off. However, my inability to command even the smallest forces keeps this idea a total fantasy. The Total War games have always held an element of wonder, for me, as their battles are fantastically detailed and their turn-based world maps have conjured up fantasies of ruling a kingdom sending diplomats to other territories to foster healthy relations, perhaps securing trade routes, or maybe even sending in spies or assassins to do the dirtier jobs. Also, you may be a megalomaniacal tyrant. Have you ever watched a film about medieval warfare, or even something like The Lord of the Rings, and thought about how cool it would be to command an army in one of those epic battles? Or maybe you’ve watched Game of Thrones and wondered how you would go about ruling/conquering an entire nation? Well, Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, the newest game in Creative Assembly’s impressive series, might just have you covered on both fronts.
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