Mostly led by the Von Carstein bloodline, they’re extremely down to unleash some spooky scary skeletons upon the entire world. Lore: The Vampire Counts of Sylvania love a lot of things, namely blood, the sort of debauchery that comes from being immortal, terrorizing their living subjects, and plotting to overthrow The Empire. Vampire Counts As far as I know, there is a surprising lack of impalement with these folks. It certainly also helps that they got the fairly standard Fantasy races out the way first, leaving the second game to dabble in the much weirder edges of Games Workshop's canon. While a lot of the first game's 'Old World' factions feel very classic Total War (at least based on the handful of hours I spent with Shogun 2) with a twist, it's really in the second game that you see Creative Assembly getting weird with stuff and leaning more heavily into the fantasy part of Warhammer Fantasy.

I just genuinely think the second game represents an improved design ethos over the first. With this part of the list, we also move from the first game's factions to the second, and I think it's worth pointing out that I didn't intentionally start ranking them this way. Certainly, having 30+ years of Warhammer Fantasy to draw upon helps, but everything I've seen of Three Kingdoms suggests it draws similar lessons with faction mechanics even as it is more bound by 'Historical Realism.' While other recent favorites like Age of Wonders: Planetfall offer a variety of factions and playstyles, Total War is probably the only strategy franchise with the resources to get away with something like this at this scale. One of the main reasons why I want to do this, outside of the sheer self-indulgence of justifying 200+ hours spent with my favorite strategy game in years, is to put a spotlight on the insane amount of work put into this game to make each of these factions distinctive from one another. Oh hey I'm back again with my favorite 'Writing exercise disguised as a listicle disguised as a blog that people theoretically might want to read' by ranking the factions of Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer II from worst to best in the most scientific of fashions.

will probably not be purchasing any of the Shadow Hearts games anytime soon. In unrelated news, I made the mistake of looking up prices for a bunch of semi-obscure PS2 JRPGs thanks to Giant Bomb's recent episode of Demo Derby.

Part 1 is here if you want to see all that sweet sweet faction ranking from the top. Ranking of Factions: Total War Warhammer II (part 2)

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