Recent reviews by Cheap

To sum up my feelings. If they ask what is the best Total War game to jump into in a few months or in a year, I think a good chunk of the voices will point towards Total War: Warhammer instead of Total War: Shogun. Which is funny cause at the core they got quite a bit in common.

The technical side has been pretty good from what I have seen. No major problems and the switch to 64bits has really sped up a lot of the more tedious stuff in the game like the AI-turns.

The switch from a hsitorical backdrop to a fantasy one has also brought quite a few new ideas into the game that really freshen up the whole thing quite a bit. Magic, wildly different units, unique campaign mechanics for each race, a bigger focus on lore based characters as the face of your faction. The only one which doesn't exactly feel perfect yet is magic. But that might be mainly the act of tweaking some numbers. Buffs and Dubuffs being a valuable addition as a force multiplier, but quite a few of the direct damaging spells not being all that impressive while other can devestate whole units.

There might only be 4 races in the base game, along with Warrios of Chaos being available as DLC and Bretonnia being upcoming Free content, but just these fantasy races of WARHAMMER might make this the most diverse Total war game when it comes to armies. A very slow dwarf army with no cavalry to speak but a lot of ranged to back it up, while something like the empire can field a very tradition infantry focussed army with some cavalry or have an army composition that wouldn't look out of place in Total War: Empire.

It certainly isn't perfect, but the package as it is now shows quite a bit of promise and potential. Some clever modding and the coming expansions to expand the world and the roster of races might really expand the scope and tweak some of the minor issues.