Total War: Warhammer 3 had a rough launch. Rough enough that the tutorial was the best part of the game - and no, that's not a joke. The tutorial mini-campaign genuinely felt more polished and more coherent than whatever the February 2022 version of the Realms of Chaos was trying to be. It's honestly kind of wild looking at the game we have today and remembering just how poorly it all started.

Now normally this is where the music swells and I tell you how the game's redemption arc got started, but Warhammer 3 didn't get a redemption arc. At least not yet.

Video version of this retrospective (~12 minutes)

Instead, we got almost two years of the game drunkenly stumbling around, occasionally doing something brilliant just to remind everyone about how much potential was being wasted, and then immediately running face-first into a wall again.

This downwards spiral eventually culminated with Shadows of Change in August 2023: a DLC so overpriced, so undercooked, and so universally disliked that it finally set off the fire alarm inside Creative Assembly and, ironically enough, foreshadowed some actual change.

A slow recovery

It took a while for something to materialize, but finally in February 2024 Warhammer 3 got its turning point. CA pushed out a massive update that stuffed a ton of new content into Shadows of Change and, unbelievably, made the DLC worth the asking price.

I remember being especially hopeful during this period as the next DLC, Thrones of Decay, dropped in April 2024 with a chunky free update... and both of them were good. No buts or ifs. Just straight up good. And the players noticed. April's update more than doubled the player count compared to the entire previous year.

Jump ahead to December 2024 and we get Omens of Destruction. Not mind-blowing, not terrible, but a definite step in the right direction. And then things got weird again. Because right as momentum was finally building... CA just stopped. For an entire year. And that's not an exaggeration - that's a real, actual year without any notable additions. Just reworks and tweaks, which are nice, but don't hit quite the same.

The next major piece of content wouldn't show up until December 2025 with Tides of Torment which, while somewhat flawed, tried to do something unique and interesting, which I really do like. I especially love The Masque's intro animation! Whoever made that, hats off to you. It's so unbelievably creepy, and it's all for a free character.

And instead of diving back into their time-out box again, this time around CA actually kept the ball rolling. Players who own Warhammer 1 and 2 now get access to the absurdly massive Immortal Empires combined campaign map - for free. Now to be fair, it's kind of like a dealer giving you a free hit to get you hooked, but it's still a nice gesture.

Shadows of Change was the game's lowest point... but also the turning point

The End Times

But you know who's not nice? The big bad bone-daddy himself - Nagash, who CA announced will be the focus of Warhammer 3's The End Times update in Summer 2026, along with Neferata, the Vampire Counts, and a pile of still-mysterious goodies. And the big twist? Despite the name, this actually isn't Warhammer 3's finale. Instead, it seems to be an opportunity to really beef up the late-game crisis and throw every fan-favorite character into the meat-grinder... or, well, bone-grinder I suppose.

And so, after nearly four years of chaos, misfires, and the occasional miracle, Warhammer 3 seems to have finally found its footing. It's not perfect - not by a long shot - and we'll get into those cracks in a moment. But it's genuinely fascinating to look at how far the game has come, so let's talk about Warhammer 3 as it exists today.

Most importantly - Nagash gets his stupidly big hat!

They actually cared

As you'd expect from a game with two "wars" in the title, Total War: Warhammer 3 is all about smashing your favorite little toys together. Everything else, from the city-building, research and diplomacy is there to pace out the carnage and to stop you from instantly summoning twenty giant dinosaurs... not that that ever stopped me.

And unsurprisingly, that part of the game is insanely fun. The game wrings every last drop of flavor out of the Warhammer setting, making each faction, and sometimes each subfaction, feel genuinely unique. I mean sure, on paper a spearman is a spearman, whether it's a bearded dude with a pointy stick or a half-naked lunatic with an oversized backscratcher, but once you're in the fight, all of that just fades away. What you're left with is awesome moments like knights yeeting skeletons thirty meters away during a charge, minotaurs doing cartwheels through infantry ranks, and general mayhem that just never gets old.

This sort of thing extends to the campaign map as well. It's the most detailed strategy map I've ever seen, in a genre that doesn't need it. We didn't need a dinosaur beach episode or a dragon skeleton turned into a waterfall. It could've just been a simple world map like in Crusader Kings or Civilization and nobody would've cared. But CA did care, and so they crafted a world that is just a pleasure to paint over with your faction's colors.

There's so many cool places to find on the map. 

A matter of difficulty

At least at the very start, anyway, because Warhammer 3 has a bit of a difficulty problem. Once you survive the nasty early game - the part where getting tag-teamed by fifty thousand rats can just straight up end your run - the challenge just... evaporates. The AI can vomit out armies from every orifice, swarm you from every side, maybe even win a fight or two. But once your empire stabilizes it's very hard, almost impossible, to actually lose. And to be fair, every strategy game eventually hits this tipping point. The problem is that in Warhammer 3 you hit it way too early. Some DLC lords turn into unkillable demigods by turn 40, turning the rest of the campaign into a glorified victory lap.

Thankfully, this problem with difficulty is not difficult to resolve, and it's all thanks to Gaben's greatest gift to gaming - the Steam Workshop. Warhammer 3's modding community is absurdly prolific. If something annoys you, there's probably three serious mods and two memes trying to fix it.

My personal favorite, and the one I'd recommend you use after your first few runs, is Tabletop Caps: Reborn - a very simple mod that forces you to use varied compositions, and forces the AI to stop making armies made entirely out of obnoxious units like chariots. For such a basic mod it really does massively improve the experience, even though you will still hit that point where you become so strong the only thing that can stop you is you getting bored of winning constantly.

Don't ever fight a battle against 15 chariots. Trust me. It's not a good time.

Putting the 'war' in Warhammer

There are also mods that overhaul the gameplay entirely, but honestly? I never felt the need. The core Total War: Warhammer works wonderfully. It's basically rock-paper-scissors with someone occasionally throwing in an eldritch horror. Guys with pointy sticks counter monsters, monsters eat guys with swords, and guys with swords bully the stick-men. Archers, cavalry and artillery mix the formula up a bit, but it's all very simple to understand and fun to play around with.

And unlike the campaign AI, which relies heavily on cheats to be merely mediocre, the battle AI is mostly competent. It will punish sloppy play, it will outflank you if you aren't paying attention, and it will absolutely force you to use that brain-box of yours when the odds are stacked against you. And that's when Warhammer 3 truly shines - when you're outnumbered, outmatched, and desperately trying to squeeze every ounce of value from units you wouldn't normally touch.

That's how I came to love warhounds. Those puppers die to a stiff breeze and can't duel anything, so I ignored them for ages... until I learned that if you throw them into the right spot at the right time, they'll chew through more enemies than heavy cavalry. So now I always try to include a unit or two as a little wildcard.

And it's moments like these that make the battles fun, even long term. I've been with the series for over a decade at this point, and I'm still excited to dive back in, replay old campaigns, and experiment with all sorts of crazy army compositions.

Dogs are the definition of a glass cannon, but they sure can explode enemies

Sieges still suck

What I'm not excited about are the sieges. It's not that they're not fun, though that is definitely a part of it, but they just don't work properly. The AI always loses its mind trying to navigate the maze-like streets, which eventually results in most of their army just taking a vacation and standing around. The pathfinding is also a mess. Units will randomly break formation and slowly stretch out into spaghetti if you don't stop them. And getting your troops to simply use a gate feels harder than giving a cat a bath.

But even if CA patched every bug, and the AI worked flawlessly, sieges would still kinda suck as the core mechanics are just kinda... messy. Apparently every unit carries a spare ladder tucked between their buttcheeks, so siege engines are seen about as frequently as freshly washed Skaven. And defending the walls - the big, iconic set-piece of any siege ever - is a complete trap. The walls offer less protection and utility than just camping in a random alley and waiting for the enemy to walk into your blender.

The end result is a big, janky, messy pile of frustration. Which really is a shame. I'd love to relive the moment from the original Dwarf trailer - fighting in front of the city with artillery and gunners lining the walls behind me - now that would be the dream!

Artillery on the walls? How quaint!

Is Total War: Warhammer 3 worth playing?

But despite all the problems, the weird decisions, and all the times CA tried really hard to test my patience... I still keep coming back to Warhammer 3. Why? Because there is literally nothing else like it. No other game lets me go from flattening Orks with dinosaurs riding even bigger dinosaurs to playing as short, perpetually angry people with a superiority complex and an unhealthy relationship with artillery - and have people ask me to clarify which one I mean exactly.

So if you're wondering whether Warhammer 3 is worth playing four years later, I'd say that's an easy "yes." It's not perfect, not even close, and it will occasionally make you want to headbutt your monitor. But all of that becomes background noise the moment you start commanding a swarm of rats armed with nuclear weapons. At that point, you'll simply be too busy cackling to even care!