My only hope was that my third friend could bring his Bionicles in to save the day, or that my fourth friend, an isolationist who had been quiet in the corner, might seize the chance for new territory and attack the aggressor’s flank with her Mega Bloks dragons. Joes to confront my army of Lego minifigs, it didn’t matter that the size difference was unfair we were playing in the same sandbox. When my friend maneuvered his cadre of G.I. It’s a startling reminder of playing games with my childhood friends in literal sandboxes, each of us content with the machinations of our own make-believe worlds, only to discover that we were all playing by different rules.

This is a world in which you can spend a dozen hours improving your cities, negotiating with your neighbors, and expanding your borders across an entire continent, only to discover that two, or three, or four other AI factions have spent their time doing the same in a different hemisphere. I call Immortal Empires a sandbox game, however, for the opposite reason entirely. I’m obsessed with Warhammer fantasy lore because of a single map

As opposed to Warhammer 3’s base campaign, which offered a more scripted experience wherein you had to complete specific challenges alongside the usual process of empire-building, Immortal Empires is focused solely on the collision of 278 factions on one sandbox map. Once your armies clash with those of an opposing faction, however, you’re dropped into real-time strategy battles between hundreds, sometimes thousands of troops. It’s basically a parody of Earth: Image: Creative Assembly/SegaĪs in the rest of the Total War series, you play half of Immortal Empires on the turn-based campaign map, in a Civilization-esque game of city construction and economy management. It combines each of the trilogy’s three maps, and all 86 of its playable factions, into one digital facsimile of Warhammer’s original fantasy setting. įor those who haven’t spent the better part of the year poring over every new reveal, Immortal Empires is less an expansion and more of an accumulation. If you want to see the very best of the best for your platform(s) of choice, check out Polygon Essentials. When we award a game the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the title is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule.

Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games.

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