Platform(s): PC (Steam and Epic Games Store)
Genre: Real-Time Strategy, RTS, Turn-Based, Fantasy And War

Only six months after the release of Total War Warhammer 3 in February 2022, Creative Assembly is finally releasing the highly-anticipated Immortal Empires beta, as well as the Champions Of Chaos Lords Pack. To put it simply, Immortal Empires is the sandbox mode for Total War Warhammer 3. It not only offers more freedom but it’s also one of the biggest and most ambitious projects in the franchise, combining all three world maps from all the Total War Warhammer games. Meanwhile, the Champions Of Chaos adds four new Legendary Lord factions for players to sink into, who come with their own unique story mode and campaign mechanics.

The Champions Of Chaos Lords Pack introduces four new Legendary Lords who fall under the Warriors Of Chaos banner. These include Azazel, Valkia, Festus and Vilitch. Each of them essentially aligns with one of the four Chaos Gods; Azazel (Slaanesh), Valkia (Khorne), Festus (Nurgle) and Vilitch (Tzeentch). What’s interesting about them is that their Realms Of Chaos campaign narrative doesn’t follow the same one as the other main factions of Total War Warhammer 3. Their main objective is not to reach Ursun to help or take advantage of the Bear God. Instead, they have to work to re-open the Chaos Rifts in order to reach the ancient arena-city of Zanbaijin and claim the Altar Of Souls for ultimate power.

Blood For The Blood God

Their campaign is much less restrictive than the main one involving Ursun. There are no fixed boss battles with representatives of each Chaos God this time around, which was a frustrating and annoying mechanic. All you have to do as any of the Champions Of Chaos Legendary Lords is to expand, get stronger, and sacrifice enough souls to reach Zanbaijin for the final battle. It feels great not being forced to follow the main narrative of the previous Realms Of Chaos campaign, and this structure feels closer to that of a traditional Total War campaign.

I spent most of my time as Valkia The Bloody, who is aligned with bloodthirsty Khorne (you know, Blood For The Blood God and all that). She’s the most straightforward of the four new Warriors Of Chaos Legendary Lords, as she is focused primarily on melee. She has a range of powerful abilities, including Daemonshield, which grants invulnerability for a short period, the Spear of Slaupnir, which causes the ground to erupt in a straight line, and her Gaze of Khorne passive ability, which increases the base weapon damage, armour-piercing, and leadership of warriors in her area of influence.

In addition, I loved the new mechanics unique to the Warriors Of Chaos, including Chaos Gifts. As any of the Champions Of Chaos, winning battles grants you the Souls of your enemies. These Souls can be exchanged for great power and Daemonic reinforcements as the Champions of Chaos dedicate them to their patron god or to the Undivided union of all four gods. These include powerful buffs or being able to spawn select units every few turns for recruiting.

The Champions Of Chaos also don’t have a traditional settlement system. They can only hold certain settlements as capitals, and these are those classified as a Dark Fortress region,, most of which are located in the Chaos Wastes and the Norscan homelands. Not only that, but by occupying a Dark Fortress in a Norscan homeland capital, you will gain the respective Norscan faction as an eternal vassal for as long as you control their homeland.

Oh, and my personal favourite mechanic for the new Warriors Of Chaos is the Warband Upgrades. This basically adds even more RPG elements to the Total War franchise. If you’re familiar with A Total War Saga Troy’s Amazon or horde factions, this pretty much works in a similar way. The Champions of Chaos recruit all their units instantly, either from local provinces or as units granted via Chaos Gifts.

Your units can then be upgraded into more powerful units in the ranks of Chaos, rising from humble Chaos Marauders all the way to Chosen or Chaos Knights. You can also dedicate them to a specific Chaos God by granting them the chosen God’s Mark Of Chaos, which makes them even stronger. However, your units can only be upgraded when they have accumulated enough EXP and reached the required levels, which is where the aforementioned RPG elements come in.

This makes sticking with existing units and making sure they survive battles even more important. You grow attached to them and you want them to grow stronger by participating in more battles, so you can’t just recruit and spam doom stacks right from the get-go, especially at the beginning of the game (which is a typical Total War habit and tactic that I hate). When your army does eventually become a doom stack, you’ll feel a lot more satisfied because this is the army that you cultivated and trained yourself.

Another new mechanic is the Path To Glory. Champions of Chaos can spend Souls on their Chaos Lords and Chaos Sorcerer Lords in order to promote them to Daemon Princes. Your Heroes and Lords can also dedicate themselves to one of the four Chaos Gods. Marking themselves and gaining new strengths from their new alignment. However, doing so costs Souls, and Souls deplete every turn if you use Chaos Gifts, so Souls is an important resource that you’ll have to take care of as the Champions Of Chaos.

Immortal Imperium

On the other hand, I did manage to check out a bit of Total War Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires. Firstly, let me just state that a definitive review of this mode is probably impossible even with thousands of hours of gameplay (and I do have thousands of hours albeit across multiple Total War games, trust me) due to its expansive and massive scope. You have more than 80 Legendary Lords to choose from and the combined world map of three games to conquer and explore. That’s a scale that’s never been seen before in an RTS like this, so kudos to Creative Assembly.

Why? Keep in mind that Total War Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires is in beta and will still be in beta when it launches to the public on 23 August 2022, but I was pleasantly surprised by how stable it is. Earlier this year, I complained that Total War Warhammer 3 is not as stable or optimized as recent releases like Total War Three Kingdoms, A Total War Saga Troy or even Total War Warhammer 2. However, Creative Assembly must have been hard at work, because it’s all pretty smooth now. Overall, the game feels more optimized and stable, even when I played Valkia in both Realms Of Chaos and Immortal Empires.

That said, it’s worth pointing out that Valkia’s starting positions are different when playing in Realms Of Chaos and Immortal Empires. It’s probably safe to assume that that’s the case for every other faction as well. It’s fun to simply be able to do anything you want in Immortal Empires, and you can even tweak a bunch of settings, including how long it takes before certain endgame events occur, or you can even turn them off completely. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Immortal Empires has to offer, but I am happy to say that I will keep on playing it. Even if I’m stranded on a deserted island with only Total War Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires on my laptop, I will likely have enough content until the day I die and even then, I’ll probably have not experienced all of it yet.

As an experienced Total War player, I can certainly say that the sheer diversity and variety of this game are unparalleled. With future patches and updates, Total War Warhammer 3 will only get better.

Early access copy provided by Sega. Played on PC. Total War Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires and Champions Of Chaos Lords Pack will launch for PC on 23 August 2022. Also, you need all three Total War Warhammer 3 games to access the Immortal Empires Beta, while the Champions Of Chaos Lords Pack DLC will be available for the discounted price of RM44.10 until 31 August 2022.