"Bloated, Laggy, occasionally problematic, and the last of an era, Empire: Total War is all these things. Yet despite all of this, it still is one of the unique titles in the history of the Total War Franchise. "
Singleplayer.
In 2018, The Creative Assembly rebranded all of its older titles to use the naming convention it first adopted in 2016 with the release of Total War: Warhammer. This saw Empire: Total War rebranded as Total War: Empire.
However, for this review, we will call Empire: Total War by its original name, despite it no longer being sold under that title except for second-hand physical copies from over 15 years ago.
The history of the Total War Saga is divided into three distinct eras, and the development highs and lows of each title from each respective era is apparent to anyone who has followed the series since its earliest days.
The Early Days.
The Ambition Era.
The Modern Era.
A unified world map is a great idea, and The Creative Assembly eventually released a working model of this concept as part of the Total War: Warhammer trilogy; however, despite their best efforts, the version used in Empire: Total War does little to improve gameplay and grinds gameplay to a halt for those with region-spanning empires.
Empire Total War suffers from terrible performance issues on modern hardware, with occasional FP drops to a single FPS. Its direct successor (Naopelon Total War) does not share this issue, and it can maintain a steady 100+ FPS on the same PC on the campaign map, with highs that reach into the lower 200s.
The single main reason for these game-breaking performance issues is the CPU being overworked to move hundreds of units around the map simultaneously between turns. This results in very slow turns, unstable FPS, and nausea-dancing screen tearing when dealing with ships at sea.
Despite every release before and after Empire: Total War improving upon real-time combat controls, somehow a game based around firing lines had one of the least user-friendly systems when it came to.. making straight lines or organized formations, while it was serviceable, compared to Napoleon: Total War which released a year later and has combat controls that are every bit as enjoyable as those found in more modern total war games (2016+)
The main issue with the AI in Empire: Total War is it seems unsure how to handle the vast open world promptly; while it eventually finds its way to where it is going, this can include splitting armies into 20 single units and other sub-optimal movement choices which can result in excessively long AI turn times of over 5 minutes on moderately powerful computers, especially when show CPU moves is active.
This was a deal breaker for me, and the main reason I was forced to award one of my formerly favourite Total War games was such a low score.
While Empire: Total War may yet see a remaster, its focus on colonization is problematic, to say the least.
While no real-life war is a good or happy thing, wars of colonization are far worse as they involve a culture with often vastly superior firepower and resources, subjecting the dominated nations and people to often exploitive iof not downright inhumane treatment, in the Americas alone over 55 million Native Americans and Indigenous peoples died within 100 years of Europe reaching the “New World”.
And the greatest and perhaps most devastating aspect of this is these people were killed by groups of people that often called themselves “Christians.”
Instead of the good news of the Gospel reaching the new world, and instead of the Words of grace and Truth spoken by Jesus Christ, they slaughtered and forcibly converted people to their twisted and blasphemy false Gospel.
Jesus told his followers to treat others like they would like to be treated.
Jesus told his followers that Satan was the thief who came to kill, steal and destroy (very much like colonial armies)
Jesus said that God (his father) sent him to save the world (and its people), not destroy them.
Jesus said that he spoke the words his father told him to say, proving that no matter what other things people claim God said, if they do not agree with Jesus, they are not from God.
Unfortunately, many Christians today do an equally bad job of showing Jesus; it seems daily in 2025, we hear of Christians siding with tyranny and oppression because of an unfortunate truth that has persisted for nearly two thousand years: many people built their lives on the mainland traditions of Christianity and not on the words of Jesus Christ.
Jesus warned this day would come when he said that his words would Judge those who heard and ignored them, the very words he had spoken on behalf of God.
I implore you not to judge the Gospel or Jesus by those who claim to follow him but ignore his message (which sadly includes millions of far-right Christians). Instead, I challenge you to read the gospels for yourself; how can you fairly judge Jesus or his message without reading it for yourself?
I think you may be shocked to see how far Christianity has strayed from Christ, and perhaps you, too, will one day follow him as I do.
Empire: Total War is a 4x strategy video game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Feral Interactive, it was released on 3 March 2009 and retails for $24.99.
Empire: Total War is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Empire: Total War is rated PEGI 16+ and contains:
I loved Empire: Total War when I originally played it. Still, I must admit that after returning to it many years later, the prospect of spending dozens of hours struggling with sluggish AI turns and performance issues just doesn’t interest me.
While I would love to see a remaster or sequel, in the current climate, I am not sure any game focused on “colonial expansion at the expensive of the natives” is appropriate, and perhaps, in many ways, it never was.
We found Empire: Total War to be a good game, meaning it is likely to be enjoyable for most players, despite having a few areas that could be improved upon.
