Recently we took some time out to try the latest Alpha test of Creative Assembly’ new RTS Total War: Arena, the newest free to play title from the company that brought you the extensive campaign games Shogun: Total War, Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War, among others. As longtime fans since the initial Shogun: Total War was released it’s fair to say we were really looking forward to trying out this new title and putting it through its paces.

For anyone that isn’t familiar with Arena the game has taken a completely different turn from the traditional campaign focused single player elements from the previous titles where players would control an entire army to try and strategically dominate their opponent either offline or online through multiplayer games. Arena is a purely online multiplayer experience where players, along with nine others on their team, each control their own three units and combined they make up a larger army of 30 units going up against a same sized team in an objective based battle. The battles typically take around ten to twenty minutes offering some quick gameplay with pretty intense battles.

As we stepped into Total War: Arena we’ll admit we were actually a little unnerved; we’ve always enjoyed the single player games but whilst we’ve always been good with the theory of which units should be placed where we’ll admit that actually moving a large force and getting into a battle always became an absolute mess. Where we’d have good intentions trying to maneuver our armies we’d always find our troops out of formation, all mixed together and just crossing our fingers and hoping it worked out for the best. Due to this we never really explored the online multiplayer experience and so now in Arena, as a purely online game, we were hesitant to see how we’d cope. With only three units the answer is surprisingly easy, the game has made a bold choice in the three unit limitations and so now managing and moving your troops is a hell of a lot more manageable.

That is the core feature of the game, controlling three units instead of an army, a first for Total War and it’s definitely an interesting idea. Whilst for many, like us, we lap up the simpler execution of controlling units in battle for many others it now means they are relying on nine other players to bring victory, like any other team based game from First Person Shooters to MOBA. As with these other genres players need to know how to play, they need to know the role of their units or suffer the verbal tirade over chat when your units leave a flank exposed, extend too far forward or friendly fire with ranged units when attacking enemy infantry currently engaged with a team mate. As with other genres having inexperienced players on the team leaves the entire army vulnerable, and given that there’s no working in game tutorial yet we saw a LOT of bad play.

Thankfully for us getting around the make and the general principles of ranged versus melee, utilizing terrain and cover and all that stuff was extremely familiar due to our previous experiences with the Total War series, similarly the controls and movement around the map. The major difference, obviously due to the three unit limit, is how much caution you need to exercise in battle, in a normal single player campaign game then whilst losing troops is rarely the end of the world and three units lost is something you barely notice, in Arena it puts you out of the game and all it takes is one bad decision and to find yourself outmatch against an opponent before you’re dropped. The death of your units isn’t the end of the world, when your last unit dies you get the choice of sticking around in the game to spectate or you can leave and start up a new game with a different Commander.

The Commanders are the leaders of your units, each player gets to choose from a variety of the great leaders from Greece, Gaul and Rome including Leonidas, Vercingetorix, Julius Caesar and more, each of whom has their own unique traits, talents and initial unit makeup. Players can level up different Commanders and, as mentioned above, once a Commander is used in battle then whilst that battle continues they are unable to be used in a different fight. As users play games they will earn a variety of resources including Command Points that they can spend in the Army Tree, essentially a Total War style tech tree but is simply an extensive tree of units that can be unlocked, with greater choice and more powerful units later in the tree from all manner of infantry, ranged soldiers, Cavalry and siege units. The makeup of each Commanders three units will essentially determine what the players preferred role is in battle and, strategically speaking, where they should position themselves on the map and what their personal objectives should be. As well as customizing their choice of units each unit can independently be upgraded and have new items purchased for it including weapons and armor to further specialize it.

Currently there’s a few maps to play in the Alpha with a mixed bag of terrain features including forest passes, swamps, open plains and towering cliffs overlooking roads. When each battle starts we and the other nine Commanders were able to choose our preferred starting location for our units based on ten pre-determined points on the map, this selection period also gave our team the chance to talk tactics based off the types of units we had and the map we were currently on. The option to draw on the map is a useful feature when used tactically, giving a general idea of which units should head in which direction or simply to try and raise moral for the battle by drawing big penises on the map like was so often the case. The combination of skill levels and language barriers meant that any real strategy and teamwork was pretty much out of the window and essentially all our battles turned into an “every commander for themselves” and winning by sheer luck.

As with other games the more people play the better they become at the game, they learn their units and their role and see general tactics that other players employ and so, slowly, players start to get on the same page a little more with how they should conduct themselves in the battle. That said, you do always feel like a small cog in a big wheel as a solo player and it is all but impossible to carry a team if you find yourself in a group with nine people who don’t seem to know what they’re doing (not being disparaging, we were one of the nine!). What the game lacks is that whilst you might be able to play tactically it does at time feel like your efforts, even your personal victories, only fractionally make up the win and typically you only get to make one or two decent plays throughout the match. Unlike other games it does lack the constant gratification of FPS headshots and MOBA enemy takedowns, the pace is considerably slower and 70% of your time in battle is spent moving your troops across the map or waiting to make an ambush.

The scope for individual players to make a huge difference is limited and the true strategic minds can only do so much with their three units and really require other players to either listen to them or have similar plans on a particular map. Organized teams will completely dominate the game and we’d say that playing casually will probably feel like one constant grind fighting alongside new players, where joining a Clan is the only real viable option to play competitively and playing solo being a lot less rewarding.

The overall experience was definitely fun, the graphics, gameplay and general immersion most definitely captured the essence of the single player games and overall the game feels remarkably polished. Our only real issue was the long wait times when queueing for games, but as an Alpha it is to be expected, but there were no stand out bugs for us or generally negative elements. We’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the game and can’t wait to see how it develops as it draws closer to release.

SCORE:

• Pros: Same Total War style gameplay and strategy as original games, high quality graphics, plenty of unit customization.


• Cons: Players are extremely dependent on each other, inexperience can make a team vulnerable, getting random players to follow a single strategy is all but impossible.

Rating: TBD

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2015 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.