The Total War engine and game premise was made for this moment. The Warhammer world rests beutifully rendered in glorious detail. The attention to the lore, back ground stories, unit detail and so on is amazing with the campaigns including some of the storied moments from the history of the Warhammer world and access to some of the unique characters only being granted when certain game world events take place.
Battles themselves are what you would expect from the Total War franchise: detailed; full of animation and action; tactical; hinged on player skill and strategy.
Although the units dont have the different abilities of the previous Total War games this is mostly because they don\'t have additional skills in the Warhammer world so wedges, squares, flaming arrows etc are not present in the game. You also cant upgrade the units in the same way, they can gain experience and by levelling up the general or the tech tree (depending on your race) you can improve their weapon and armour quality. Units with different weapons e.g. chaos warriors or warriors with great swords are treated as seperate entities and are recruited etc. in their own ways.
The most impressive part of the game is how differently each of the races plays in the game. Not just on the battlefield either, the units are genuinely different and fun in their own ways but the strategic games are also vastly different for each of the various races. Vampire Counts and Chaos have their own unique ways of recruiting, Orcs can summon a WAAGGHHH!, dwarves and humans rely on trade and infrastructure to keep going and diplomacy tops the whole thing off with a valid and effective system.
On top of this there is multiplayer, quick battles and battles from the history of the Warhammer world allowing you to re-enact some of the famous confrontations from the lore.
Without a doubt one of my favourite games of the year, go get it now!