Best Total War Game: Which One to Start With
For a first Total War, take SHOGUN 2: one island, one era, a campaign that ends in a clear way, and a trainer whose cheats are all free. For fantasy armies and magic, WARHAMMER 3 is the one everyone is still playing. ROME 2 is the biggest map of the four, and EMPIRE the one with ships worth fighting. Here is how they differ and where each one asks for patience.
Takeaways Four Total War games, one sentence each
- SHOGUN 2 (2011): start here Sengoku Japan, clans on one map, tight rosters. The trainer's 12 cheats are all free.
- WARHAMMER 3 (2022): fantasy and magic Monsters, flyers, Winds of Magic. The richest battles, the busiest campaign map.
- ROME 2 (2013): the big map From Iberia to the east, provinces and politics at home. The longest wait between turns.
- EMPIRE (2009): gunpowder and sails Three continents, line infantry, naval battles. The oldest of the four, and it shows.
Four games, four kinds of campaign
Total War has been running since 2000, and the series overview lists sixteen main releases up to Pharaoh in 2023, with Medieval III and Warhammer 40,000 announced in December 2025. Four of them have a trainer page here, and between them they cover most of what makes the series worth playing. The question “which one is best” mostly comes down to which era you want to spend forty hours in and how much waiting you can stand.
| Game | Year | A campaign feels like | Cheats (free) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SHOGUN 2 | 2011 | Sengoku Japan: a tight climb to Kyoto with the whole country turning on you near the end | 12 (12) |
| WARHAMMER 3 | 2022 | Warhammer Fantasy: many factions playing very different games on one map | 30 (2) |
| ROME 2 | 2013 | The ancient Mediterranean: a long build-up of provinces, with politics at home | 20 (7) |
| EMPIRE | 2009 | The 18th century: trade, colonies and line battles, at an older engine’s pace | 11 (2) |
SHOGUN 2 is the one to start with
SHOGUN 2 does fewer things than the others and does them cleanly. Every clan fields more or less the same units, so a battle is decided by position and timing rather than by knowing a hundred rosters. The campaign has a shape: you expand, you get strong, and the realm divide turns every remaining clan against you at once. That gives the endgame a real fight, and later games keep trying to recreate it.
It is also the trainer page where every one of the 12 cheats is free, including unlimited movement and one turn recruit. For a newcomer that is a safety net that costs nothing. Use it to skip the waiting, not the battles, and you will learn the series in a weekend.
WARHAMMER 3 if you want monsters and magic
WARHAMMER 3 is the busiest of the four. Factions play by different rules: some move as hordes, some run on special resources, some lean on monsters rather than infantry. Battles add flyers, giant monsters and spellcasters, and casters draw on a pool of Winds of Magic that is set at deployment and refills slowly. It is the game with the deepest battles in the series and the most to learn.
The cost is time on the campaign map, where buildings take six turns and research nine. The game has no console of its own; what players call the console is a Workshop modding tool, which the WARHAMMER 3 cheats guide walks through, and it does not reach into battles at all. Eight of the 30 trainer cheats work on settlements and construction, which is where most campaigns stall.
ROME 2 for the biggest map
ROME 2 is the Total War with the widest horizon. The map runs across the Mediterranean and beyond, provinces group several settlements, and a political system at home decides whether your own generals stay loyal. The game had a rough launch in 2013 and was rebuilt through years of patches into the Emperor Edition, which is the version on Steam today and the one the trainer targets.
Its patience problem is the most extreme of the four. Armies move short distances, construction takes several turns and the map is large, so a lot of a campaign is pressing end turn. Seven of the trainer’s 20 cheats are free, among them both movement switches, and those two alone change how the game feels. The ROME 2 cheats guide explains why the console in this game is real and does nothing.
EMPIRE for ships and muskets
EMPIRE is the oldest here and the most ambitious for its time: a campaign across Europe, the Americas and India, trade theaters, and naval battles fought ship by ship in real time. Line infantry and cannon make land battles a game of formations and volleys. It has aged unevenly. The AI struggles, some systems feel unfinished, and the interface belongs to 2009. If you love the age of sail, none of that matters much.
A campaign spans roughly a hundred turns, and most of them are spent waiting on recruitment, construction and research. The trainer compresses all three to one turn. The two free cheats move city population up or down by 5,000.
How we would choose
Never played the series: SHOGUN 2. Want fantasy and are ready to learn rosters: WARHAMMER 3. Want a long, slow empire with politics: ROME 2. Love ships: EMPIRE. If none of these is quite the pace you want, the grand strategy games are the same idea without the real-time battles, and the single-player list has the rest. All four are single-player campaigns first. Keep the trainers there; multiplayer battles are other people’s evenings.
Infographic Four Total War games, one sentence each Click to enlarge Which Total War game is best for beginners?
SHOGUN 2. One map, a handful of unit types that are easy to read, and a campaign goal you can see from turn one. Its campaign map is small enough to learn in an evening.
Is Total War: WARHAMMER 3 worth it on its own?
Yes. Its own campaign is complete without the first two games. The Warhammer trilogy grows if you own more of it, but the third game is playable and long as a single purchase.
Do Total War games have cheats?
Not anymore. Creative Assembly removed working cheats from the console with EMPIRE in 2009, and later games kept it that way. WARHAMMER 3 has a console only as a Workshop mod. Trainers fill the gap for the campaign map and, in some games, the battles.
Which Total War has the best naval battles?
Among these four, EMPIRE and SHOGUN 2. Both fight sea battles in real time with ships that matter to the campaign. ROME 2 has naval battles too, but its fleets work more as part of combined armies along the coast.