Over the past 24 hours, strategy game Total War: Rome II has picked up over 350 new negative reviews, triggering Steam’s graph-based review bomb alert system. The reason? A controversy surrounding women generals that appears to be largely contrived.

Creative Assembly, the studio behind the Total War series, recently decided to revisit 2013's Rome II—seen by many fans as the weakest game in the series in years—with a brand new expansion.

According to developer Creative Assembly’s Grace Carroll, the Total War series’ Steam community was, until very recently, a mess. Largely left to their own devices, forums became “toxic” and “an awful place to be.” Instead of letting the trash fire burn, though, the developer decided to dedicate resources to putting…

As a decades-long fan of Creative Assembly’s Total War series, I’m still coming to grips with the state of the latest game, Thrones of Britannia. It’s at times the worst Total War game I’ve ever played, and yet at others it’s doing everything I’ve been wanting this series to do for years.

Third Age, an old mod for Medieval II Total War, remains one of the best mods you can get for any PC strategy game. It’s about to get some competition, though, from Total War: Rise of Mordor, a new mod that’s now got a playable alpha available you can check out.

Having made one hell of a detour into the lands of Warhammer, Total War is returning to its historical roots for its next big strategy game. And it’s doing so in a region the series has never visited before: China.

The Tomb Kings, sadly absent from the core campaign of Total War: Warhammer II, are coming as part of an expansion on January 23.

Rome 2 was a dull, sprawling mess of a game, easily the weakest release in the Total War series in the past decade. The Warhammer games that followed have improved on it in almost every way imaginable, so Creative Assembly are going back in time (with some lessons learned) to try and get Rome 2 in fighting shape.

Total War: Warhammer II is a great strategy game. In no small part because it looks amazing.

Let’s keep this simple: Total War: Warhammer was a very good strategy game. Total War: Warhammer 2 is better.

I had some very nice things to say about Total War: Warhammer a year ago when I reviewed it, but over the last week I thought I’d check back in and see how it was faring after 12 months of updates and DLC. I was happy to find that a very good game has got even better.

It’s always a pleasure when I get to showcase the work of an entire team on Fine Art, and doubly so when it’s a game that I really, really like.

I was so ready to hate this game.