Recent reviews by Brick <3 Lamp

Enjoyed the game, liked the story and atmosphere, and the combat while janky at times was definitely innovative. If you are expecting another Dead Space this is not it, the encounters boil down to a series of 1v1s instead of crowd management of swarms of Necromorphs like in dead space. Also there is a much heavier focus on melee combat, whereas in Dead Space if you ended up next to a Necromorph you had already done something wrong usually.

While I would recommend the game, it definitely had its issues. I found the game length to be too short, and there were still some technical issues post patching. In addition, no NG+ and having to play through the whole game again to get Grim Reaper after missing 2 audio recordings at the start of the game definitely brought it down.

Overall, if you are looking for an action horror game with a Dead Space atmosphere and brutal kill animations I would recommend this game. However, if you are looking for a game with replay value or content beyond the first play through, look elsewhere at least until DLC is added.

7/10

Relatively new to the Total War Franchise (playing since after Shogun 2 relase), but this is by far my best experience with a Total War game on release. Combat AI actually makes semi-intelligent decisions, unlike the combat AI in Total War: Rome 2, and the game is much better optimized than Atilla which ran at about 10FPS on campaign map for me on relase.

Never really got into Warhammer Fantasy tabletop, but this game is by far my favourite Total War game to date. Each faction has a unique playstyle involved with it, and while some of the background base management has been removed, there is still enough complexity involved with the turn-based side of things to keep you occupied.

On the downside, the quick resolve battles seem to unfairly damage certain units repeatedly. For example, the monsterous creature that you start with on the Undead Legendary Lord Von Carstein repeatedly liked to get itself either killed or massively wounded on even massively favoured battles. This has resulted in the playing of battles that are massively favoured by my side just to avoid losing crucial units.

Overall, I'd say that the critics had it right and this is about an 8-9/10 game, which will lean towards the top-end once some of the hiccups are patched out.

TL;DR
Pros:
-Combat AI is working as intended
-Unique playstyles for each faction
-Simplified but not overly-simplified turn-based base management
-Lords are awesome
-Optimized (running a pretty mediocre rig, and haven't had issues with game stablility even while streaming)
-Minimal crashes (1 crash in over 30 hours of play)

Cons:
-AI still seems to 'cheat' on higher difficulties, pumping out armies with very little economic backbone needed (not that I mind it, but this really bugs some people)
-Auto-resolve system overly simplified & favouring certain units to take damage (usually valuable ones)
-Orc AI seems to be able to retreat twice in certain situations (not sure if bug, or intended, but really annoys me)
-No Skaven

Overall rating: 9/10, money well spent.