The open beta of Total War Battles: Kingdom is now available to download and play through Steam, having enjoyed a limited closed beta since its announcement last year.
The name might be Total Garbage Nonsense: Armies, but the underlying game looks rather compelling. It’s a free to play, cross-platform, online strategy game from Creative Assembly, one that aims to take the persistent army management of the Total War series and cram it into a smaller, fun-size battlebox.
The strategy title is set during the some of the scrappiest and castleist years in human history, around the turn of the 10th century, as the world slowly crawls out of the Dark Ages and gets a bit anxious about years now having four digits in them instead of just three.
“How are we going to fit these massive years in our diaries?” they must have said to one another in whatever language these people spoke (or spake, they probably spaketh).
In Total War Battles: Kingdom, you become a Lord, build a realm, manage a fiefdom and fling yourself and your army into large scale battles with neighbouring kingdoms that have an effect on a persistent and cross-platform world.
We’ll be getting stuck in to see just how much of the Total War magic has survived the enshrinkening. You can have a gander yourself too if you like, because it’s free and that’s how money works.