Now that I've 100% the game and can only derive enjoyment from Legendary (Campaign Difficulty) /Very Hard (Battle Difficulty) anymore I think I can finally leave a well rounded review.

This is definitely one of those games that I wish steam had a "Neutral" review option for. To give you an idea of where my thoughts are coming from, I have over a thousand hours across the Total War Series and started over a decade ago in middle school with Medieval II.

This is easily the most diverse of the franchise by far with the variety of races and the rosters for each one, and it has an incredibly good modding scene. The battles are as cinematic as it gets, and the game is beautiful on max settings. This entry in the franchise also has the most robust multiplayer campaign with the player slots going up to 10 (Medieval III multiplayer campaigns please.) The variety of lords, heroes, schools of magic, and tech trees for all the races allows for a variety of playstyles as well. However, it's really more of an illusion of choice, because when it comes down to it each Legendary Lord has their bread and butter to the point that with all the stat buffs you get between perks and research you'll steamroll armies that are composed of units that ARE SUPPOSED TO COUNTER YOU. Agents (Heroes) will 99% of the time be incorporated in your armies and be objectively better as a battlefield unit than for their campaign map purposes (I've beaten multiple legendary campaigns without utilizing an agent on the campaign map even once, which I feel shows their lack of impact if they're just a side option instead of being absolutely essential for well rounded play.) Sieges (and settlement battles) honestly feel like a downgrade from previous titles. Medieval II did it perfectly with multi-layered citadels, dedicated military settlements being entirely different than cities, etc. In this game there's multiple scenarios where you attack with a lord that just gets a free "destroy castle wall" button right at the beginning of the battle. You should have an inherent STRONG advantage as a defender in a siege situation, and this game just doesn't facilitate that at all.

The largest issue this games suffers from (which plagues essentially every game of the 4x/RTS genre by the way, I just need to point it out here), is difficulty scaling. The AI is DUMB. Want to make the game harder? Give them every cheat known to man stats wise. The only thing AI really know how to do is attack move their entire army at you. Even on Legendary they will regularly send full stacks to their death by initiating battles against you they don't even have any chance of winning (And I don't just mean in battle by the way, I mean the autoresolve will be an 80/20 split in your favor and the AI still attack for some reason).

The game is fun, I'll continue to experiment with mods and play with friends when they ask, but when it comes down to it once you crack the formula there's really no situation where you haven't really won the campaign by turn 50-60 and would just continue it for the sake of reaching the tedious win conditions of a Long Victory. (Which vary WILDLY, Wood Elves and Norsca were beyond annoying to complete whereas Chaos Dwarves I beat a Legendary campaign as Zhatan the Black in 2 hours.)

The core gameplay loop sees you essentially solve the first 10 turn puzzle for each Legendary Lords start, and once you're able to do that consistently, that illusion of depth for the game shatters and you're left with a quick 30 minutes of conquering and then an end turn simulator as you sweep through the map.

I DO recommend this game, the Warhammer lore is one of my favorite universes, and is done extreme justice here. The game is definitely enjoyable up until the point that you've mastered it, and you'll get your money's worth for that time. However after that even with such a diverse cast it's just boring due to the lack of actual challenge. Hitting start campaign feels meaningless (in my opinion), if you know there's no chance of actually losing.