Attila First Impressions

Attila First Impressions

As I did with Rome 2, I thought I�d post my early impressions of Attila before I do a full review. These impressions are based on 10 hours of play in which I completed the tutorial Prologue campaign, all of the Historical battles and several custom battles. I�ll talk about each in turn, and also a little about performance.

Beginning with a defensive siege battle, the Prologue really hammers home the core theme of Attila � survival. As you would expect, it teaches you the basics of battle and campaign management before slowly expanding to include all of the new features of Attila including the Horde system.

 

I spent about 4 hours playing through this prologue which is mostly scripted, but does offer the player opportunities to experiment. The prologue is also where I hit my first bug. At one point it just wouldn�t progress to the next scripted sequence, forcing me to reload an earlier save.

As a tutorial, it does its job and I have to say, some of the battles I fought, particularly a lengthy, desperate defensive siege against an army of Huns (resulting in a valiant defeat) was more intense, atmospheric and enjoyable than any of the sieges I�ve had in Rome 2. On the campaign side, the combination of the family tree with a refined version of the political system introduced in Rome 2 creates what feels like the most in-depth Total War campaign yet. Obviously, I�ll need more time with the system, but I liked what I saw a lot.

In addition to the Prologue, I also played through the 9 Historical battles. These are mostly land battles with a sea and siege battle also thrown in. They�re all good fun and offer a varied mix, but replayability is somewhat limited. Finally, I played some custom battles to test the AI and also push my system performance.

 

The AI, so far at least, appears solid and competent. It seems like a small step up from Rome 2 which is pretty much what I expected. I haven�t seen it do anything stupid, and it has managed to surprise me a few times too, especially when it comes to how it uses its cavalry. The only AI bug I saw was when I tried to push the AI to its limit. Maybe it wasn�t very fair, but I wanted to see how it would react.

In a custom siege battle I gave the AI a couple of battering rams, 4 siege towers and some catapults. It began the siege by using the catapults to attack my gates. So, using some heavy catapults of my own, I destroyed its artillery. The AI responded by advancing with the rams, smartly spreading out its troops into loose formation to reduce casualties. But, before it could reach my gates, I destroyed the rams. The AI then retreated back to the towers and began to load up its men. I was very impressed by this. But this is when it seemed to hit a bug.

With the loss of its artillery and rams, it didn�t seem to know quite what to do next. The map I was fighting on didn�t allow for the towers to simply be wheeled up to the walls (it had a moat) so the AI just seemed to stop. If you�re worried that the Attila AI has Rome 2 release issues though � don�t be. This was the only time I saw it �break� as such, and like I said, it wasn�t exactly a fair test. I�m not sure what a human player could have done in this situation either, other than to retreat.

 

Okay, onto performance. Like Rome 2, the benchmark utility isn�t very accurate as it tries to create an �extreme� situation. Using my custom settings which you can see in one of the screens in this post, I get about 40FPS on the benchmark, but in the actual game I get a very consistent 40-50 in battles with a solid 60 on the campaign map. I could probably improve upon this quite a bit if I switched off the 4xMSAA, but I think it looks a lot better with it on and I�m happy for the trade off.

I did a custom battle test to really push my system � a massive siege battle with a 20v20 in Constantinople and it dropped to about 20-30 when I was zoomed into the streets. Zoom out, and it jumped back to 40 or so. Overall, I�m pretty happy with it and the game looks fantastic, especially the new lighting, weather and fire effects. I do think it could be improved upon in terms of performance, but it�s very solid on release. In terms of bugs, aside from the Prologue issue and that single incident of the Siege AI, I�ve had no problems and not a single crash. Load times are fast, as are turn times.

It�s still early days, and I�m yet to begin a full campaign, but I�m feeling quite positive about Attila. It feels like the game we all wanted Rome 2 to be. I�ll probably do another post soon to talk about my first campaign as the Western Roman Empire.

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