Shadows of Change - Does it SUCK?

Blake's Takes presents his take on the new DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3. This Review of the Shadows of Change is designed to show off the things you'll get if you pay for them. This is designed to give the community my opinion on the DLC, which can help them form an opinion as to whether this DLC is worth it.

This is a Brief overview of the paid content you'll be getting as well as my opinion on whether the Shadow of Change DLC is good value for money.

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Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
01:23 - The Changeling
02:59 - Mother Ostankya
03:50 - Yuan Bo
04:56 - Does it suck?

[DaThingOnTheDoorstep]

My disinterest towards this DLC has flipped between apathy and antipathy, which is wild considering I used to soak up all the content my go-to guys put out all the way to the Chaos Dwarfs in anxious anticipation to play the content myself. It wasn't just the price and the lack of worthwhile content, but the thing that really ticked me off was that message. Literally that Zombieland gif of Woody Harrelson wiping tears with wads of cash.

[winged_destro]

Blake never fails to drop a fire take 🔥🔥🔥

[SkyShoe]

really good take. I think the main point that people should walk away with is the comparison of this and the champions of chaos. I thought chaos dwarves added some good content but that was also over priced.

[gonk]

I can understand the changling not being your cup of tea. I do find it slightly odd though that you find it directionless when the schemes are your direction.

[inductivegrunt]

Shame how bad this DLC is. I still want it for all the new stuff, especially that giant Wendigo Kislev and Beastmen get, but I'm waiting until a sale in order to get it.

7:23 I think I'm misunderstanding this. How would a myriad of bugs be outside of CA's control?

I'm a QA engineer and I'm painfully aware of the extent of issues in the product I test. However, how effectively I can do my job depends fully on the amount of funding and time is allowed for testing, and if those aren't sufficient over a period of time, the issues pile on top of each other to the point where only a major refactor and re-examination of the product could really solve them. This is what I see happening over at CA: not enough funding resulting in an attritioned, overworked QA team, and rigid deadlines not taking into account that the current state of the QA team doesn't allow for proper testing of the game and not allowing for changing direction where sorely needed - to address the resulting myriad of bugs.

Edit: otherwise fully agree with your take, yuan bo looks incredibly interesting and might get me to play cathay down the line, mother ostyanka is OP and the changeling is boring and likely broken to fight against. Overall not worth the price even when disregarding the more pressing structural issues

[Nobdythere]

Amen. I hope your channel keeps growing. You deserve it.

[JCJ]

This DLC needs so much more content to warrant that price tag. If they added a legendary hero for all 3 factions, hag lords and lore of hags for Kislev, a new hero type for Cathay, a lord or hero type for Tzeentch, and another 3-5 units per faction then maybe the current price tag wouldn't feel like as much of a ripoff, but what I just listed is more content than the DLC currently has. TWW is one of my favourite series but I have such low hopes for its future now if this is going to be the standard for future DLC.

I also just want to add a complaint I have about Mother Ostankya since you mentioned you enjoy her campaign. I don't mind her immortal empires start position, but the fact that you need to ally with another Kislev faction to get access to the majority of the Kislev roster but you start practically on the other side of the world is pretty dumb. Sure you can just spam Akshina Ambushers, but it would be nice if you had access to the rest of the roster without having to journey halfway across the world just to make contact. Her unit roster just feels too small to be enjoyable for me.

[remnault]

Lovely channel here, love the guides and hearing a simple, yet detailed (unit wise) explanation on why there’s a problem. Keep up the great work Blake!

[Crucial_End]

I agree the Changeling looks uninteressting, very much so in fact. They really missed an opportunity with the shapeshifting imo. They should have made it work with diplomacy and given him a special mechanic for that. Like maybe shapeshift in to Karl Franz and you can attack one of his allies and have real Karl take the blame and same with normal diplomacy where you can approach a faction disguised as an ally and request troops etc.

They could have really gone deep and intricate with it, make his campaign about manipulating and sabotaging by actually using disguises and diplomatic trickery instead you just get forms with combat abilities where most forms are pretty useless outside the few really good ones. We get a bunch of fetch quests labeled as "schemes" which are basically just normal battles and then collect a bunch of massively overtuned rewards in a campaign with no stakes as its impossible to lose.

The extreme power creep is another thing I find disappointing it really trivialises the game. The new SEM are just insane. Anti large AND a mortis engine?! On top of that atleast 1 of them have a buff and debuff aura. They just went way too far with it while also offering too little, only 1 generic lord for Cathay and one generic hero for Kislev when all 3 factions are lacking both.

People were also looking forward to the race updates since game 3 races were poorly implemented and we got next to nothing in that regard. They even removed a changing of the ways ability but Kairos still has skills specifically for that ability in his tree despite it being removed 🤯

The trailer built massive hype but the DLC did not surge the player count and there are no one streaming it, those who are usually streaming are playing other games. Im baffled at how CA could drop the ball this far off the court people say its a management/executive problem but the developers are also to blame for really bad design decisions and sloppy work.

[Mrworldin]

For some reason its priced at 14 bucks on the chilean steam, basically same price as tomb kings or chaos dwarves.

[divvu]

Thx for the heads up muh man. If anything, the drama around WHIII DLCs produced at least one good thing, your channel. Keep this up!

[Budaddio]

Always appreciate your takes, Blake! Couldn't agree with you more. Will definitely be waiting for a big sale for this; however, with all the fantastic games either just released or about to be released, I'm perfectly content with removing myself from CA's antics for now.

Keep up the great content!

[slowbro-]

Bro i absolutely love your narration style. Please keep making videos

[TheRewasder]

After hearing you say that you started with the chorfs I went to check. Dude you are still small, and yet I had the feeling that you were bigger, always here. Good job, you're gonna go far!

[yvindlavold]

Tzangors dont even have the beaks like they are supposed to.
Even the little content you get for the price is half assed.

[Silent-Samurai]

You Sir are a Genius. The calm Voice is so comforting and the way you approach the Situation and even Quote fellow Youtuber is great. Please keep up the good work.

[Horsa-sroz]

I am not sure why the myriad of bugs is beyond their control. The fact that so many bugs exist is unpardonable. CA are at best slow to fix bugs and their attitude towards customers was clearly stated in their recent press release.
The initial release of WH3 was very poor, bugs and all. The eventual release of Immortal Empires resurrected the game but continues to receive less support than is needed for such a large undertaking.
Why they release more content for Realms of Chaos is unclear as it seems that it adds little to sales. Even on Steam the main game is listed simply as Warhammer 3. Realms of Chaos is no longer in the title.

I appreciate your opinion on the 3 campaigns as it differs somewhat from others I have read.

[abbald]

You are not the only one. Also for me the changeling doesnt look fun, when you dont have a clear direction or a danger to lose.

Also a good point that we had so long no content. The status of Warhammer 3 is miserable. If everything would work fine, we had already a year full of content more.
But still some fans believe everything is fine and buy these dlc. For my point. I didnt buy the chaosdwarfs yet. So why should i buy a dlc for the same price with less content?

[crayvun]

Appreciate your take, Blake.

I'm doing my part, holding off on buying to make them sweat. Hopefully get it during a sale!