History YMMV / TotalWar

* BrokenBase: There's a bit of a fracture between fans of the Total War Warhammer trilogy (Fantasy fans) and pretty much every other Total War game (Historical fans) since the two groups are in direct competition when it comes to getting their games made...and groups within the historical fans as well! Total War Three Kingdoms and Troy attempted to bridge between the two communities, having both historical and fantasy-style modes, but it can be argued that it failed to please any side. The old-school Historical fandom is put off by the emphasis in "hero units" and the fact that the "fantasy" mode is where the devs put the true effort, with the "historical" mode just a stripped down version of the game, and the Fantasy fans are unintrested, due the fact that in the end of the day, the "merged historical" games are still "swords, spears and bows".
** In the case of Three Kingdoms, if one ignores the heroes, it very much plays like a mainline historical total war game with some of the most developed campaign mechanics of the series, including a grounded records mode. Plus, previous entries in the series had their fair share of fantastical or unrealistic elements, such as Roman ninjas and Bronze Age Egyptians in Rome 1, but some of the history fans felt the series still is not a true "history" game nonetheless due to the marketing focus on the superpowered heroes in the marketing.

** ''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammerII'' proved to be this for every branch of the franchise. On the historical side, ''VideoGame/TotalWarThreeKingdoms'' and ''VideoGame/ATotalWarSagaTroy'' were divisive because they were both focused around heroic epics rather than a historical time period, giving them one foot in the world of fantasy and the other foot in the world of history, and on the fantasy side the game's own sequel ''VideoGame/TotalWarWarhammerIII'' suffered from a messy launch that annoyed many fans and had many mechanics that felt like backwards steps from where ''II'' left off.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIEunqeXF0s This]] main menu theme when you start ''Medieval II'' for the first time may cause you to wet your pants.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgnVEU2ZzTI War of Kings]] from the ''Kingdoms'' expansion, especially the latter half.

* AngstWhatAngst: If you massacre 3/4ths of a city when capturing it, the city will be happier than if you'd just occupied it. It's not crowded anymore, and that is one of the main sources of unhappiness. The fact that you've almost murdered everyone doesn't have any effect on the survivors' mood.

* EndingFatigue: A portion of the series fans admit to ''never'' actually finishing a Total War campaign, feeling snowballing on the strategic map happen long before victory conditions ever really become in reach and make players never have to fight a real-time battle ever again to get to victory. Many features of the series' entries can be inferred to having been developed to alleviate this problem (such as ''Shogun 2''[='s=] Realm Divide causing GangUpOnTheHuman and giving them [[NotPlayingFairWithResources free veteran armies]] to ensure you'll not going to just auto-resolve your way to Kyoto, or ''Attila''[='s=] titular general appearing to also [[NotPlayingFairWithResources get free armies out of nowhere]] that are very willing to raze your defeated cities and villages to make defeats against them stick for the meantime).

* GoddamnedBats: Though he's not (usually) an enemy to the Catholic nations, the Pope is nothing short of ''incredibly'' annoying. You get right in the middle of destroying your hated (and usually campaign-specific) enemy, and he demands you stop the war for five to seven turns. You don't, enjoy your excommunication. Not to mention he'll essentially ''force'' you to build a Crusade army and sometimes demand your faction leader take command of it. And he'll also send [[DemonicSpiders Inquisitors]] to your lands.

* NightmareFuel: The Geisha in the first ''Shogun''. Even when they are on ''your'' side, it's hard to escape the fact that these are inhuman white-faced super-assassins you're dealing. Their most routine targets, the generals, happen to be their most terrifying kill- they begin by playing music on a lute for the general and his guests, camera cuts away and we here a ruckus coming from the room, the Geisha walks out and we cut back to the room- the general, and his pals, bloody, dead, and ''hanging from the ceiling by the lute's wires''.

* ScrappyMechanic: Surprisingly enough for a series this long, there really aren't that many. There is one that mars what is otherwise a brilliant game, ''Shogun 2''. "Realm Divide" basically has Japan ally up and split into two sides when you reach about 15 provinces or so (Out of about 65). These sides consist of you and whatever allies you have (until they inevitably backstab you), and the other side consists of everyone else in Japan. If you don't think that's unfair enough... each clan arrayed against you is [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard given multiple gigantic stacks of veteran units every turn.]]

* ToughActToFollow: The first time that the series hit a low point was with ''Empire'' where bugs and bad [=AI=] marred what could've been another good installment for the franchise. ''Napoleon'' managed to save some face that was lost with its predecessor and ''Shogun 2'' brought the franchise back in the right direction... up until ''Rome II'' where its launch day met with disaster among the fans who judged it to be an over-hyped, performance-heavy, and unfinished mess that was full of bugs and seemingly dumbed down compared to previous games.

* BrokenBase: There's a bit of a fracture between fans of the Total War Warhammer trilogy (Fantasy fans) and pretty much every other Total War game (Historical fans) since the two groups are in direct competition when it comes to getting their games made...and groups within the historical fans as well! Total War Three Kingdoms can be seen as an attempt to bridge between the two communities, having both historical and fantasy-style modes.

* SequelDifficultyDrop: After Shogun I, where the rebels could wipe you out and there were super assassins that could kill your entire family. Medieval I is a far easier game at least for the majority of factions and Rome got easier still, culminating in Medieval II where a major complaint was that even on Very Hard the game simply wasn't a challenge.

** Played straight in the games following Medival II: Empire, Napoleon and Shogun II are all harder than their predecessors, with Shogun II arguably being the hardest game of the entire series.

** Horse archers throughout the series are likely to be this at a minimum (depending on the game, they may be [[DemonicSpiders even worse]]) unless your own forces have plenty of long-ranged infantry/artillery in return to shoot at them back. While the [[ArtificialStupidity AI tends to be pretty bad at handling their horse archers if that's the case]], if not, they'll pepper your units laboriously until they run out of ammunition while your troops probably will have no hope of ever closing in before that happens. The horse archers might not even really stand a chance of actually killing off your units entirely, they'll just be terribly annoying.
* NightmareFuel: The Geisha in the first ''Shogun''. Even when they are on ''your'' side, it's hard to escape the fact that these are inhuman white-faced super-assassins you're dealing. Their most routine targets, the generals, happen to be their most terrifying kill- they begin by playing music on a lute for the general and his guests, camera cuts away and we here a ruckus coming from the room, the Geisha walks out and we cut back to the room- the general, and his pals, bloody, dead, and ''hanging from the ceiling by the lutes wires''.

* BrokenBase: There's a bit of a fracture between fans of the Total War Warhammer trilogy (Fantasy fans) and pretty much every other Total War game (Historical fans) since the two groups are in direct competition when it comes to getting their games made. Total War Three Kingdoms can be seen as an attempt to bridge between the two communities, having both historical and fantasy-style modes.

** Though, this may be more of a case of these citizens being too busy shitting their pants and hiding from this occupation/mass execution force to make trouble, lest they be the next to come under fire.

* CreepyAwesome: The Geishas.
* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: ''Forever'' (the credits for ''Rome'')