Total War: WARHAMMER II — The forces of Lustria await your command

Overview

Total War: WARHAMMER II is developed by CREATIVE ASSEMBLY and published by SEGA, with Mac and Linux versions handled by Feral Interactive. Steam lists a release date of Sep 28, 2017, and the App ID is 594570.

One correction before anything else: this page is tagged with the category "racing," but the game is not a racing title. It is a strategy game built from two layers — a turn-based campaign where you manage settlements, armies, research and diplomacy, and real-time battles where thousands of soldiers fight it out on a single map.

If you came here for lap times, this is not the game.

The loop is simple to describe and hard to master. On the campaign map you decide what to build, where to march, and who to ally with or declare war on.

When two armies meet, the game drops you into a real-time battle where spears, archers, cavalry, monsters and spellcasters have to be maneuvered as formations. Decisions made twenty turns earlier decide whether that battle is winnable at all.

Features and Systems

Each campaign starts with a Legendary Lord. Your choice changes your starting position, your neighbors, the units you can field and your victory conditions, so different factions produce genuinely different playthroughs rather than reskins.

That asymmetry is the defining trait of the WARHAMMER entries compared with the historical Total War games.

In battle, the fantasy setting changes the math. Historical Total War is largely about lines and flanks; here, single giant monsters can punch through a formation, flying units bypass your front entirely, and area-of-effect magic can delete a packed block of infantry.

That forces real decisions about spacing, and it makes hunting the enemy spellcaster with cavalry a standard opening move.

Multiplayer support is broad. Steam lists Multi-player, PvP, Online PvP, LAN PvP, Co-op, Online Co-op and LAN Co-op, so you can play head-to-head battles or run a campaign alongside a friend.

Steam Workshop support is also present, and mods for UI, balance and extra units are a large part of why the game stays installed. Note that mods can break temporarily after an official update — if a patch lands mid-campaign, check your mod list before continuing.

The Immortal Empires campaign mentioned in official copy combines maps and factions across the trilogy; it is not something this title delivers on its own. What you can access depends on which games you own, so check the store page requirements first if that mode is your goal.

System Requirements in Practice

The useful detail here is that Steam attaches a resolution to each tier: 720p for the minimum spec, 1080p for the recommended one. Load scales with resolution and with how many units are on screen at once, so a full-size field battle is by far the heaviest thing the game does, while sitting on the campaign map is comparatively light.

CPU matters more than the recommended i5-4570 suggests. End-of-turn AI processing grows as the number of surviving factions grows, so late-campaign turn times stretch out — and a faster GPU will not shorten them.

If waiting between turns is what would annoy you, single-thread CPU performance is the better place to spend money.

Storage is 60 GB at both tiers. The game will run from a hard drive, but battle loading gets long, so an SSD is worth it.

The 8 GB memory figure is workable, though stacking several mods while running a browser or streaming software alongside it will feel tight.

What Players Tend to Say

Years after launch the game still holds a strong standing with players. Positive comments usually center on how differently each faction plays, the spectacle of large battles, and the sheer number of hours a modded install can absorb.

Criticism clusters just as consistently: long turn times in the late game, a confusing sprawl of add-on content across the series, and a steep first-few-hours learning curve. Some players also find the mid-to-late campaign turns repetitive.

These are complaints about scale rather than about execution. For current player sentiment, check the ratings panel on this page or the Steam store listing.

Who It's For

• Players who enjoy building up an empire and then testing it in a large set-piece battle
• Anyone who wants to command fantasy armies — monsters, undead, magic — rather than historical ones
• People who want one long game rather than several short ones; each faction restarts the experience
• Modders and mod users, since Workshop support extends the game's life considerably
• Friends who want to run a campaign together over online co-op

Getting Started

For a first campaign, pick a faction with a stable starting position and resist expanding on multiple fronts. The two classic early mistakes are splitting your forces until each stack gets picked off, and taking too many settlements until upkeep and public order collapse.

Build one strong army, remove one neighbor, then move on.

Fight your early battles manually rather than auto-resolving them. Holding the enemy with infantry while cavalry swings around the rear is the single move that most changes your win rate.

Once you're comfortable, auto-resolve the battles you're clearly going to win and save the time.

Caveats and Who Should Skip It

As noted, the "racing" category on this page does not match the game. Automatic classification got it wrong, so if you are shopping for a racing title, this is not it.

On the store page, confirm the product from the title and screenshots before buying.

Skip this if a single playthrough lasting dozens of hours does not fit your schedule — campaigns are hard to break into short sessions, and you lose the thread quickly. Skip it if you want precise control of individual units; battles are decided by formations pushing and breaking, not by micro.

And skip it if parsing dense UI numbers and icons feels like work rather than play, because the opening hours are information-heavy.

The series structure is a real obstacle too. This is the second game of a trilogy, and what you can play changes with add-on content and with which other entries you own.

Don't assume the faction or campaign you saw in a video is included here — read the store page's contents list. That assumption is the most common way people end up disappointed.

Japanese language support is not included in the data behind this article, so we won't assert it either way. Given how text-heavy the interface is, check the supported languages section on the Steam store page before buying.

One last trade-off: a PC below the recommended tier can often run the game by lowering resolution and unit-size settings. But the appeal here is the sight of massed armies colliding, and cutting unit counts hollows that out.

Near the minimum spec, choosing between smoothness and spectacle is unavoidable.