Total War: ATTILA

Atilla genuinely might be the most unconventional Total War game in the entire series... that also doesn't suck in the process.

It is a game that is unlike any other in the series and in doing so and taking that risk it genuinely has one of the most unique challenges there is in any Total War game, and *the* challenge in the Western Roman Empire.

That said, one thing to get out of the way, and why it is so unique, Atilla... is *NOT* beginner friendly, and that honestly might be what I appreciate most about it. Not because I want to gatekeep a series that I love, but because it is a game that takes the risks we always complain about nowadays that companies won't take. It is a game meant to push your skillset to it's absolute limits, and it refuses to be anything else.

This game takes the entire Total War formula, and quite literally reverses it. This is not a game about building an empire, half as much as it is a game about survival. While especially for the barbarian factions you obviously still want to build and expand, what really matters is how you the player endure once that's actually set up. The mini ice age, Atilla the motherf*cking Hun, public order disputes, this game is absolutely ruthless, and is the only game in the series that in a way kind of explores what the aftermath of the empire you built would be like.

That said, of course, most of what I have stated is not exactly unique, plenty of people have stated similar things to this, but it is as overstated as it is because it is absolutely the truth.

What this game does, honestly I'd say way better than any other Total War game, is cement the feeling of a genuine apocalypse, yes, including the Warhammer games.

Not that those games are bad necessarily, they're very well made, but the thing about the Warhammer games is that you always start with one region, and build up from there, and by the time Chaos or another endgame faction arrises, you've already built up a massive force and so many allies that with enough experience it kind of takes away from the endgame. Chaos, the Skaven, even the Dwarves, they kind of become a minor inconvenience most of the time unless you have bad luck or poor positioning.

Atilla does not have that issue. You have the Western Roman Empire, the biggest one in the game, the strongest, the most appealing... if you're a sadist. You have the barbarian factions, where you do everything you can to migrate away from the Huns and build up your strength slowly to prepare yourself against them and the other massive hordes that will look to take what's yours, or you have the east, who, outside of the Eastern Romans actually kind of avoid the Huns (for the most part) and actually have a little bit of a chance to play the game more conventionally.

Every faction plays differently as much on the campaign map as they do in the battles themselves, and it makes the game super replayable and intriguing seeing how your usual strategies handle being pushed like this. A ton of what worked in other Total Wars *WILL NOT* work here, because, as stated before, this game pushes you to your limits.

That said, this game is not perfect, obviously. Underrated as it kind of is in the series, part of the challenge absolutely comes from something called "Bullsh*t difficulty."

Why do you run from the Huns, instead of just speed blitzing them and instantly annihilating them? Because that actually will not work. They will actually just keep respawning until Atilla shows up. Oh, you slaughtered him and his entire army in battle? No you didn't, he's wounded, and you have to do it 3 godd*mn times before he actually dies, and that army you destroyed will instantly be replenished back in the north unless if you leave enough of them alive, in which case you actually will leave them weaker as they'll be forced to use cheap mercenaries and local levies to build their strength up.

The WRE, as much as it is a testament to your skill, it's *also* a testament to your patience. I cannot imagine trying to play as the WRE on Legendary, and I fully admit I have not done that. Imagine every end turn taking 45 *minutes,* NOT because your computer is that garbage, but because you get attacked *that* badly...

Oh yeah, and on Legendary manual saves are disabled, which means hope to god you got some time to kill! Because there is *no* saving that end turn sequence for later.

Climate change is kinda BS, because it never fixes itself without mods, which means your fertility will just die and never come back for some regions, which just gets super frustrating, the Huns doomstacks as intense as they are, are, again, also super frustrating when you kill 3 of their armies in a desperate, bloody battle, only to see them show back up in a few turns because you were dumb enough to think killing them down to the last man would actually punish the AI.

This game is far from flawless, is the point, but it's also genuinely one of the best of the "modern" Total Wars. I love this game, but it's not beginner friendly, unless if you want a *REALLY* steep learning curve, and it is a prime example of CA not understanding difficulty and AI. The challenge is relentless, and the game is so unique it makes it super replayable, and it can be a really good time, but it is also a very tedious time at points.

Pick this game up if you want to push your Total War skills and understanding to it's limit, while having an experience that is genuinely unique to every other game in the series...

Or for the mods, because, yeah, the mods are actually kinda crazy. 1212 AD is just straight up Medieval 3, and I love rebuilding the Roman Empire for the umpteenth time just like I did back in Medieval 2. Great game, flawed, but the risks it takes pay off in the end and it is a reminder of how fun and unique taking those risks can make a game. I wish it was more commonplace in the industry.

Playing the campaign is a rough experience. AI spawns reinforcements out of their asses and shit. Not exactly the best experience.

The AI is shit to play against

win calculation when you want to skip a boring siege battle that you would obviously win if you were playing is also cooked.

it says 20% and i end up wasting 20 mins playing an easy ass boring battle.

Let me be very clear: I did not start this game with the intention of becoming a divinely chosen tax collector for the Mediterranean.
I just wanted to vibe in Arabia, maybe conquer Damascus, drink some camel milk. Next thing I know:

North Africa? Mine.

Ethiopia? Mine.

Sassanid Empire? Deleted.

Constantinople? Nervously chain-smoking at the gate.

Campaign Breakdown:
You play as whoever is the leader in your state, for me, Ali ibn Ali Talib RA, and lemme tell you—this man is out here juggling:

Rebels

Governors with zero loyalty

Some dude in Egypt named “Zayd” who keeps trying to become a caliph and overthrow the Medinian government on Twitter with his 8.5 followers

And while all that’s happening… I’m fighting full-stack Byzantine armies who spawned on a literal rock in the sea and STILL somehow have better public order than I do.

🧠 Political System?
It’s not a minigame. It’s a psychological thriller.
My control hit 30 and suddenly my entire council started posting subtweets about me.
I tried to adopt a general to keep him loyal—he stole my influence and ran off to Mauritania.
I executed one rebel and my governor in Carthage caught an attitude and started wearing purple. 💀

🤡 The AI?
BRO. Rebels don’t just rebel, they start entire kingdoms now.
I ignored one rebel city for 3 turns and when I came back, they were calling themselves the “Neo-Sassanid Caliphate of Tunisia.”

The Ghassanids? Puppeted them. Thought we were chill.
They turned around and colonized Cyprus out of spite. 💀

🐪 Bonus Chaos:
I used the console to remove fog of war. I regret this. It turns out the entire map is on fire. Everyone’s fighting. Iberia is just 3 guys screaming.

I gave my army infinite movement and watched them walk from Mecca to Morocco like it was a field trip.

Accidentally created a puppet state, forgot about it, came back 20 turns later and they had invented democracy somehow.

✨ Final Thoughts:
This mod is not a game. It’s a trial. A spiritual refinement.
You will sweat. You will cry. You will click “Continue Campaign” and the game will crash from the sheer weight of your sins.

But you will come out of it stronger. Like steel.
Or Damascus swords.
Or your one loyal governor who’s been holding down Alexandria since turn 9 without asking for a raise.

100/10, would humble Constantinople again.

This is a bare like, I bought this after playing Warhammer series and bought it for the mods, so a lot of the mechanics were already in later titles. As the last of the historical launches, this was a bit of a meh to me, Rome was okay, Shogun was a disappointment, this one was a mess to me. Province/Country management is all a shell game of arcade style mess, your public order, religion, food are all things there, never an issue until they are, then they are a solve in 3 turns. Those mechanics are fine in the game, but the usage of them and the turn around is completely uselessly stupid.

The base game and base starting campaign is the worst for Rome/offshoots, it is a long slog of micro your econ and keep your armies up north okay while putting down the south, usual stuff. However in a pitch battle you will lose to the Huns. I had a max settlement with max garrison, with a full stack elite force in the way of the horde, I won with the 60 min timer because the ai was stupid. There is no way an infantry based army loses in a city against a Hun army, the army make ups are completely 1-sided and stupid, your army will break with no reason, while the enemy which should break does not.

This game more than any other before it, makes the argument of auto resolve, with the exception of 5-8 battles, depending on campaign length, I have no reason to fight a battle, it is always 1-sided, no need to fight because it does not matter. You broke fighting and warfare in a TOTAL war game, my main gripe has always been garrisons vs standing soldiers like Med 2, making me choose troops I am paying for is better by far, how they affect public order and such needs a shift, but I should always choose the troops, not build a garrison building, laziness has destroyed the franchise

Attila is an adept refinement of Rome 2. From the desperately paced campaign map down to each individual skirmish on the ash-specked earth, it’s a cleaner, better thought-out experience. There are more impactful decision to make, and better utilities with which to make them. The political systems are still some of the least user-friendly in the grand strategy space, and there are some surprising oversights in how non-player factions are portrayed, but Attila’s overall strengths put it among the best forays in the Total War series.

Love the difficulty, the atmosphere, and the replayability this game has through its mod support.

When you buy this game, go to workshop find yourself a mod that reduces or removes the effect of the "Global Cooling" that affects on fertility, and you will have a much better in game experience.

While Total War: Attila does have its drawbacks, it nonetheless is a magnificent title to come out from the team at Creative Assembly, and is a great successor to Total War: Rome II. Growing up, I always payed the original Total War: Rome and Total War: Rome Barbarian Invasion, and when I first saw this title come out I was transported back to my younger days. Being one of the first to have a dynamic family tree in a game set at the end of Roman hegemony, as well as a changing climate system, and diplomatic marriages was an immediate eye catcher for me. Along with an overall darker, more foreboding tone both in terms of in-game narrative structure with the constant threat of the Huns and other Eastern nomadic tribes, as well as the choice of colors for the campaign and battle maps makes this game an immersive experience.

i can run every over total war game fine, i can play ready or not, overwatch and siege at a smooth 120 fps but this game makes my laptop stutter and lag as if i was trying to run cyberpunk on max settings

10 years later and they still haven't fixed many of the common bugs reported by countless fans.

Personally, i'm very annoyed by the fact that in the Last Roman campaign, the Thagaste region is not coloured to my faction/

Game just looks bad and none of the factions are fun.

Quite disappointing. This is a very buggy game. Unit groupings don't really work, units won't do what you tell them, sometimes selecting a unit will give you know options of giving it orders, the mod manager keeps crashing etc etc.

When it works it's impossible to get anywhere with it because public order always drops and the only buildings you can build make it drop faster, so all your settlements will revolt all the time.

Total war rome 2 better and it less laggy and there more unit and its more fun and this game graphic are WORSE despite being newer game.

It is a very good game that you should get if you want something difficult and hard to play but i personally would play the medieval mod as it completely reforms the game and is much more fun.

Not as good as Rome 2 or Empire, but probably my third favourite Total War game of all time.

The reason is simple, you can play survival as the Western Roman Empire, you can also try to reform the entire Empire as the Eastern Roman Empire and on top of that the Barbarian factions such as the Danes and Saxons are extremely fun to play as.

The tactics match those being used in the 4th-Century onwards, the ships and naval units that you can also disembark into shock troops and skirmishers are very well designed and if you ever get bored of the migration period you can have a miniature version of early-medieval total war to play with (Age of Charlampagne) which allows epic battles over Al Andalucia, Italia, Francia and the British Isles.

Overall the third best total war game of all time after Rome II and Empire, in my opinion.

Total War Atilla is a pretty fun game, at first you'll get confused by all the buttons and what to do but sooner or later you'll get used to it and find yourself loving the game.

As a Total War veteran I can heartily recommend this game, with the MK1212 mod anyway, I've never played the vanilla game. I use the mod to scratch the Medieval 3 itch.

Possibly the worst optimized game I've played recently. I have a fairly high end computer but I'm averaging <10FPS. Cant even finish the first battle because of the chop.

Pathing is my biggest issue with this game, I am very familiar with total war and in my opinion, get literally any other one. you'll have more fun (also it keeps crashing even tho I checked, I can run this I meet the rec specs for it)

Very bad optimization (works like crap without changing ini. files), no improvements from past games, shit tutorial + useless enciclopedia + no one gives any useful advice on google (probably because nobody plays this crap), same "rng" agent (spy, priest, champion) bullshit from 20 years ago (65% chance = always failure even with save-scumming). Same idiotic AI: enemies rally, you don't; enemies' agents succeed, yours don't (rank 342564526); you offer them anything, they refuse. Too bad their history is on point, but that's it. I am terribly sorry I have spent my money on this dead franchise. Their employees clearly don't get with the times and try to recycle the same game over and over, under new graphics.

I wouldnt waste money on it. i only bought it because it was on sale. TWR 2 is better by far and you cant even change your capital. that kinda ruined it for me tbh.

Really tried giving it a chance but I cant enjoy it, id rather play a total war the traditional way. Starting small

Should have been a Rome 2 DLC also freezes every 2 mins making it unplayable just buy Rome 2 Empire Divided if you like late Rome

So far it's a fantastic survival horror game.
I have played extensively Rome 1 and Medieval 2, and fiddled a bit with Shogun 2. Atilla is a departure from the typical Total War feel.

It's much more about empire management than the other titles I have played.
You know the intro cinematic to Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings, where you have the two kings playing chess? Every turn begins to feel like that after awhile.

You're not just moving armies about the map, you're carefully considering how to settlement build, anticipating rebellion, calculating your political maneuvers, and even conducting much more fleshed out diplomacy.

I tried this game a couple times and couldn't get it, but I committed to learning this time and it is a very good Total War game so far, but very different. It's a thoughtful balancing act and there's a lot of complexity to it.

After 10 years, I gave this game another try. I’ll just list what annoyed me and what makes it a very weak game. I’m judging the game without mods because I believe it’s the developer’s job to make a playable game.

Cons:

Limited unit variety and no unique/region-specific troops.

Simply ugly and unclear campaign map, uninteresting building and unit descriptions.

70% of the Mediterranean coast consists of inaccessible cliffs, and armies move through "tunnels" between mountains and forests.

Unskippable campaign map animations and a camera that keeps spinning. If you don’t know ancient geography, you lose orientation and have no idea where you’re being attacked.

A corruption mechanic that can’t be countered and reduces income by ~50-70%. You build your economy, construct buildings, conquer cities, yet your income keeps dropping – pointless.

As always, terrible AI, forcing you to fight manual battles because the game poorly calculates auto-results. Nothing’s improved – battles look identical to other TW games, and almost every one is winnable with minimal effort.

Sieges are nonsensical – you can win every battle by placing units in a narrow alley. City walls are useless; the easiest cities to defend are those without walls. xD

Annoying army limit and constant balancing between settlement stability and food supply. A rebellion breaks out in a remote settlement, and you can’t just recruit a garrison – you have to march an army across the map for several turns. xD

Huns spawning out of nowhere. xD I prefer games where the AI is actually good, but here the computer keeps cheating. Desert villages fielding massive armies of elite units, etc.

Weak diplomacy – supposedly, you can trade with someone, but it’s definitely very hard. xD

Building slot limits in settlements, no population counter.

Removing good mechanics from previous games in the series!

Pros:

You can save the Roman Empire from collapse – that’s about it.

Historically accurate key cities.

Maybe someday I’ll return to this game for another dose of disappointment.

i might be a little late but this game is goated

Apart from a few stupid decision like "death" trait for the Huns and ridiculous levels of anti-player bias, this is one of the best Total War CA ever made. I receive insane amounts of joy playing as West Rome. Warhammer cannot provide you with the challenge Attila does. Maps are by far the best among all series. Siege battle by far the best among all series. It does so many things right. I wish we had good old CA today.

Me viKING me sail me plunder me get rich me make local angy me run away me come back bigger viking me plunder again! yay

A solid game with engaging mechanics or if you like pain and want to play the Roman Empires, but its outdated engine hampers performance. Even on high-end PCs, optimization issues persist, and on lower-end systems, performance can be significantly worse, especially with mods and overhauls. Given its age, the full price feels steep; perhaps consider it on sale unless you're a die-hard Total War fan or like the theme period and setting.

changing this to negative review,

after years of work , i got a new Pc.

this game does not run on new Rigs...
this was on of my fav games, really sad i cant play it any more

This is actually a really good game covering an interesting time period. It had a few confusing flaws, but overall it's quite fun.

Very good game. Still misses the details of Medieval 2 or Rome Total war in terms of faction management.

This is probably the pinnacle of the historical Total Wars. The numerous mods are new time periods, and much more complexity, increasing the re-playability of this title.

Divorced my wife because she had a 20% chance of having illegitimate offspring. I died and she appeared back in my family tree. Had my ghost persuade one of my daughters to have her assassinated. Can't wait for the familly reunion in Valhalla!

Lack of ui scaling makes game unplayable at 4k

Best game of the series...wish they would make a TW Attila 2

game is amazing with mods i highly recommend this game if you like RTS games or other total war games

The game gives the opportunity to feel awe at the events of antiquity!!! I like the open world of strategic level, the ability to make any decisions. Very realistic atmosphere of the tactical level. High IQ of AI

very good cut scene and excellent objectives

Just ignore Attila and Kill him using 100 stacks of Melee Calvalry

very good game and with workshop will be endless one

This is the only game in my top 12 "games played by hours" that I haven't reviewed, and that's something of a travesty since this is one of the best Total War titles, even in the current era.

The standard Total War model is there - you have a strategic map where you build your pop centers and armies, and then move around your armies / nomad camps, and when you fight you go to a battle map where your two armies slug it out in real-time, RTS style, except without buildings on the map to provide reinforcements - the armies you bring to battle are all the forces you get for a battle (unless there is a reinforcement army nearby, and then it shows up after a couple of minutes of fighting).

This is probably the first Total War game to provide you with a ton of possible nations at game start and the selection can be pretty daunting. The nations are divided into types that give each nation an overarching playstyle - the Roman Empire nations (West and East) are trying to hold themselves together, the various types of barbarians (Goths, Huns, etc) are trying to invade it (and other stable nations), and the other stable nations (like Persia) are trying to do something of a combination of both. It works pretty well, it's fun to invade and pillage as a barbarian nation but it's also fun (even more so, for me) to try and hold the crumbling Empire together, which really is in a bad way at game start as you would expect. There are a fair number of late antiquity units to build your armies from at game start, and there are tech upgrade paths as well so you can build better buildings and hire better units as the game goes on.

A nice touch is how a few historical events fire over the course of the game, like the Little Ice Age, basically making everything worse and worse and making it even harder for the Empire to hold itself together (and giving the various barbarians extra incentives to conquer and pillage them).

Haven't played this extensively in a while but I still have nothing but fond memories of this game, years after my last difficult playthroughs. Strongly recommend.

How did I ever get 211hrs in this game idk, but every few years I try to revisit this game to see if it got any better and it's always the same, constant crashing. This is actually a great game, has lots of cool features that are missing from future titles, fire spread, unit formations for example, it just suffers from horrible optimisation.

A logical successor to Rome II and a more "classic" Total War compared to Three Kingdoms, Pharaoh, or Troy. While CA is off making who-knows-what, this game already has amazing mods that bring back the glory days of Medieval and Third Age (LOTR mod) — but with modern visuals.

The base game and DLCs feel average and uninspired, but the modding scene is where this title truly shines. If you’re buying Attila, buy it for the mods — not the vanilla campaign.

poorly optimised game, its like playing Star Citizen half the time, I love this fucking game too much

its a good game that doesnt deserve a load of hate it receives because it should be a rome 2 DLC. I think its good like this and encourage people to play

This game was refined and grew on me. I think its a great piece of the total war series.

32 bits means that this game can maximum use 4 GB of your GPU. Impossible to play at 4K resolution. My favorite part of all total war games, buy now I can't play)

l LOVE THIS GAME! Every campaign is good, pretty much everything is good.

This is in my opinion one of the best installments of the Total War franchise. After this it has felt they have been chasing a nostalgia they have slowly been losing over the next installments of titles. With many different factions and different troops, the details included (If you have a decent upgraded computer) I love learning the history of the factions and their troops, especially how Rome and their empire changed from the Split to the Invasion of the Huns. The only few gripes would be the more recent you go with Total War games the more SEGA's Pay to Play with Micro transactions and DLCs including having to pay extra for gore become more apparent. I wish the higher ups would remember their roots and try to capture that magic once more that made it such a unique title instead of it feeling like potential and game play are traded for quick cash grabs and lazy effort for historical accuracy and respect for the original player base and what they loved about the original titles like Rome and Medieval