It is no Attila...
Today, it is impossible to play Barbarian Invasion without comparing it against Total War: Attila. To its credit, the former provides a bright and colorful world, with a limited number of cities to promote the kind of open-field battles that originally made Total War so great. However, it is all built on a shaky foundational premise.
This is a series at its best when there are a bunch of evenly-matched warring powers that are spread out across the map, rather than having the world already carved up between dysfunctional superpowers and fringe rivals, as illustrated here. While this same charge can also be levied against Attila, at least that title does not rely so heavily on internal instability to make Western Rome crumble. Toss in the bells and whistles that come with ten years of both graphics and gameplay improvements, and it is easy to see why Attila is the far superior way to scratch that Late Antiquity itch.
For a full review, check out:
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