Never mind the Cyclops, he’s just a big dude wearing a mammoth skull as a helmet whose nose-hole makes it look like he has one eye if you squint really hard from a mile away. Never mind the sirens – they’re just beautiful ladies in togas wielding swords. But this is supposed to be a historic title, dammit, so Troy draws the line on the monsters. Yes, there are heroes capable of taking entire platoons single-handedly, and there are gods that love or hate your guts and interact with your campaign/battles, and yes, there are superpowers you can activate mid-battle like magic spells. Instead of following Three Kingdoms perfect precedent and adding both a fantasy and a historic mode, Troy tries to split the difference. The problem is, the history of Ancient Greece and the Trojan War themselves are very mythological, leaving the developers with an issue – how do you make a historical game of something mythological, especially when you don’t really want to make it realistic? The answer is: you don’t. “Wasn’t Homer stories full of mythological elements? I thought this was supposed to be a historical Saga game.” Well, you are right, my dear hypothetical imaginary person – Total War: Troy is supposed to be a historical game. Helena leaves Melenaus and their nine-year-old daughter Hermione behind, triggering the Spartan King to reach out to his elder brother Agamenon and unite the kingdoms of Greece into a sea-crossing campaign to siege Troy and bring back Helena. As Homer’s Iliad described, Paris of Troy kidnaps Helena of Sparta, wife of the King Melenaus, when the two fall in love with each other. Taking place roughly 12 centuries before Christ, Total War: Troy depicts the Peloponnesian conflict that pitted the kingdoms of Greece versus the might of Troy. And others still, like Troy, try to mix existing mechanics with new takes on the franchise for decidedly mixed results. Others, like Thrones of Britannia, are made by self-confessed non-Total War veterans that try to do completely new ideas and end up repeating some mistakes that were fixed half a decade ago by previous instalments. Some, like Fall of the Samurai, expand on base game mechanics with a never-visited period such as a nigh-Wild West. Total War spin-offs are always a complicated idea.
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