Total War: Warhammer II – The Twisted & The Twilight DLC
Creative Assembly
Creative Assembly has been knocking it out of the park with their DLC packs lately. Fresh on the heels on one of their better ones, Total War: Warhammer II – The Warden & The Paunch—which pit a High Elf faction against a Greenskin one—they’ve recently released Total War: Warhammer II – The Twisted & The Twilight DLC.
This time around, we see the Wood Elves going up against the dastardly (and rather filthy) Skaven. On the ratmen’s side of the equation, we are introduced to Clan Moulder, which is led by Thrott the Unclean. Thrott is eternally hungry due to some sort of Warp sickness and reminds me of Grom the Paunch from the Warden & The Paunch DLC; he even swaggers around with an immense potbelly and yells a lot.
Thrott has access to his Flesh Laboratory, where he and his diabolical mad rat scientists carry out all kinds of unholy experiments to create monsters and buff his troops up. The Flesh Laboratory introduces some interesting new mechanics because as you collect more of what’s called “growth juice” (I shudder to think of what that represents), you can infuse it on your test subjects and imbue them with new abilities—everything from turning them undead to making them explode in dramatic flesh eruptions. However, if you push things too far and get a little too aggressive with your mutations, they can end up backfiring and your subjects end up becoming unstable.
Campaign-wise, Clan Moulder is tasked with scurrying around the map and assaulting the various new Wood Elves settlements scattered across it. In doing so, Thrott hopes to drive the knife eared hippies into submission and take them on in a massive final battle.
On the Wood Elves side of things, we’re introduced to the new Sisters of Twilight, which is actually one being that has been magically split into two. Their mission is a little less dramatic and revolves around traversing the map and regenerating the aforementioned forest settlements and perform sacred rituals on them. You’ll also be presented with dilemma-driven quest battles from time to time to mix things up a bit. This also keeps in line with the Wood Elves’ overall “tall,” non-expansionistic style of play.
Like the Beastmen, the Wood Elves roster has been sorely neglected by Creative Assembly for some time. Thankfully, in the Twisted & The Twilight DLC, they get some much-needed love that rounds out their unit roster quite nicely. Zoats are fantastic defensive units—monstrous units with armor and healing spells that can defend your rear-most units against flankers. Nimble Bladesingers are powerful anti-infantry/anti-armor whirlwinds that slice and dice their way through enemy frontlines. And probably my favorite new units have to be the Great Stag Knights, which finally gives the Wood Elves some bulky shock cavalry that can cycle-charge enemies into oblivion.
Since the Skaven factions have already been blessed with tons of content, Clan Moulder’s unit additions are less impressive. These additions primarily focus on fast-moving flankers such as Wolf Rats and the horrific Brood Horrors.
Drycha, a malevolent branchwraith who you’ll have access to if you own both Warhammer 1 and 2 (and the Realm of the Wood Elves DLC), is an interesting twist on the Mortal Empires campaign. Instead of being all cozy with the Wood Elves, she loathes them and the other Elves. Although she has access to Wood Elves who have fallen under her propaganda, they fight for her with penalties—her main forces consist of other malevolent tree spirits, which is pretty cool.
The Total War: Warhammer II – The Twisted & The Twilight DLC is a fantastic expansion that offers new factions and finally shores up the strategic gaps in the Wood Elves’ military forces. It also adds some fun new gameplay mechanics that build upon the races concerned and should be a no-brainer for Warhammer fans.
RATING: 8.6/10
Total War: Warhammer II – The Twisted & The Twilight DLC has some pretty good looking graphics that make its grand strategy gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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