This was a matter of becoming savage or becoming dead, the finer points of morality be damned.
For a moment, I felt like I understood the perspective of these ancient people, notorious for raiding and pillaging. It didn’t matter how much blood I had to spill, nor whose blood it was. When a blizzard caught my nomadic band in the Alps and killed a third of my men, I knew I needed to find food and shelter, now. Having no home province to defend at all costs, and being beset by unstoppable elemental forces changed the way I thought about waging war, and created dire situations that forced me into a ruthless, survivalist mindset. Where most Total War games see your empire expand ever outward, Attila instead forces you to keep a foothold on a shrinking island of safety and prosperity. My Visigoths - one of 10 playable factions - were flung into the resulting barbarian pinball machine, bombarding the weakened Roman Empire while battling other tribes for the steadily vanishing fertile land.
From the East comes the onslaught of the Huns from the North come increasingly harsh winters that will eventually make large portions of the map almost uninhabitable. The dynamic, driving forces of the campaign are the strongest rallying points for recommending this iteration of Total War.
