Honestly I didn’t pay much for Warhammer: Chaosbane as it cost me 153 pennies thanks to a good deal. I’d bought it as a co-op game so that I’d be able to play it with my big buddy. Tragically his MIGHTY integrated graphics couldn’t handle the sheer indescribably adequate graphics of this beast of a game. As a consequence I played through it (all by myself ;-;) in 2 days. Altogether it took me 10ish hours before finishing up the campaign as the engineer class and reaching level 57. After blitzing through it, I can safely say that Warhammer: Chaosbane is definitely a video-game and is perfectly fine. It’s not great, it’s a bit monotonous, but seasoned Warhammer fans can rest assured that they’ll fight against all 4 of the Chaos Gods (well via their lackeys). You’ll even get to play a game with some mildly fun plot twists and decent enough characterisation of the setting. Unfortunately you don’t get to fight all 4 Gods and their servants simulatenously. To add insult to injury, the cannon-fodder you’re facing are both easy to deal with and pretty similar. You fight Nurgle beast-men, Khorne beast-men, Slannesh beast-men and Tzeentch beast-men and they’re all the same. Each God gets one or two gimmicks, one or two unique enemies (that die very quickly), some very slight roster tweaking and that’s it. You’ll kill the Nurgle baddies who have a damage over time de-buff, then fight the Khorne baddies who… uh… don’t. Then move onto the Slannesh baddies who don’t but uhm… sometimes give you a de-buff that means you take slightly more damage. Finally you’ll fight the Tzeentch bad guys, who do deal damage over time but THIS TIME in an area! Honestly it doesn’t change much. Then because your character gets more powerful faster than the baddies, each God gets easier to deal with. I only died once and that’s because my character got stuck. Like physically stuck in an area getting hammered by a semi-boss monster that is helpful repeated across all 4 Gods. It’s actually easy to defeat once you get access to your good abilities.

You see like any “good” ARPG, Warhammer: Chaosbane initially gives you a character that does feck-all for the few hours. Only as you level up you do you gain all of the stuff you need to play the game. The myriad abilities, upgrade points, more armour stats to compare in the inventory screen and so on. To the game’s credit, by the time you’re nearing the mid-game it’s all falling into place. You’ve got a pretty clear idea of what your build does, what abilities aren’t trash and what to focus on. To the game’s disservice, once you’ve reached that point it’s kinda over. Why? Well because you’re only going to become more and more overpowered to the point that the final boss fight took me 2 minutes. In fact I’d say that the main challenge of the campaign is the level pacing. As there is a lot of waddling through similar dungeons that aren’t particularly open, sometimes with backtracking thrown in (yay). In the first Act there are some timed missions to increase the stakes, but those steaks are then dropped on the restaurant floor and stomped on by the kitchen staff because the rest of the game is monotonous. Go here, clickclickclick on the baddies, move slightly forward, more clickclickclicking on the baddies, rinse and repeat for 10 hours. After you’ve semi-decently assembled your build , the only enemies that are occasionally concerning are the really big ones. They’re not even particularly strong, but they’re surrounded by really small enemies that act as bullet sponges. As stated the game has plenty of different builds across 6 characters. These 6 characters are only allowed 6 abilities at a time, with each ability having 3 tiers. These upgraded tiers are generally but not always better. As they sometimes deal different types of damage or trade a buff for more damage. That kind of thing. Ultimately by the twilight of Act 2 I was in the zone and nothing could hurt me because I had life-steal (well “life-gain on hit”) and could just clickclickclick my way through everything. Except the actual bosses which all have an invulnerability phase like the cowards they are. Fortunately you can easily defeat them by giving them a few seconds to take 5.

And at this point I don’t really have much to add. The game is now just about clicking on the bad guys and wandering through levels that only have 1 route. To be fair, sometimes there’s a side route! Which might lead to a chest, which could contain items, that are probably worse than the ones you have anyway. On that subject, unless I was blinded by the stupor that this game put me in you can’t sell items which is a novel change. Instead you can trade all the things you don’t want to the collectors guild. This levels up your collectors guild rank, which results in you occasionally receiving a passive perk. Much like the active perks you can only equip 6 (I think) passive perks at a time. These range from +10% health to +stackable buff when you make a boomboom and all that kind of stuff. They all sound lame but then they turn out to make your character freaking busted. It turns out +2.5% damage on every shot, stacking 10 times = +25% more damage basically all of the time. Then this boost means that you are essentially one hitting 98% of the bad guys. One other thing to mention about the perk system is that you have a set number of points. You do gain one or two per level up and these are then divvied out depending on your choices. For example you might always want the Tier 2 gun turret because it shoots rockets that make bosses a total joke. This tier 2 skill costs 10 skill points, and early on you might only have 20 skill points. Remember that these points are spent across all skill/perk slots. By the end of the game if you want everything maxed you need (potentially) 15*12 = 180 points. You probably won’t have 180 points by the late game, but fortunately the game has a SICK levelling system. You’ll hit Level 50 then hit level 0, panic, and then the game goes ahahahaahah no you’re on LEGENDARY level 0. You can therefore just keep grinding, if you are so inclined.

And uh other than that there are some side missions for you endure enjoy if you are the type of freak for whom mindlessly grinding is a fulfilling activity. These include a Boss Rush mode, where you fight bosses with some additional penalities applies to you or buffs applied to them, Relic Hunts which are the same thing but with whole levels (wow) and uh a Tower of Chaos mode where you fight your way through a tower where you can open a chest or keep going after every segment. If you open the chest, you get the loot. If you keep going the baddies get buffs but the chest gets better stuff in it. There’s also an “invasions” mode, but I honestly can’t remember what it’s meant to do as I lost interest. I’m assuming you just churn through the same content but with some arbitrary numbers changed so the ARPG addicts can brag about their items that no one else will ever care about. I think that’s about it, as mentioned the game does allow for online co-op with up to 3 of your big buddies so theoretically if you know 3 big fat greasy Warhammer nerds like me or 3 ARPG addicted losers (like you?) then you can have a great party game via either online or local co-op. The game also boasts that it has a great soundtrack but I couldn’t hear it over my character making things explode near endlessly, although the snippets I heard over “I CANT DO THAT YET” and BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG sounded fine enough. Similarly the graphics are good too (and there’s even a free 4K texture pack DLC). As for slowdown, I didn’t have any and only suffered 1 crash throughout my excursions (including one demon realm). In spite of there frequently being 50ish enemies on the screen getting exploded at once. Credit where credit is due, Warhammer: Chaosbane is an inoffensive game made by people who cared in a genre that’s for weirdos. Then again I can’t be too abrasive, as I paid for this game and finished it – obviously only because I care about my 0 readers so very very much.

In conclusion then Warhammer: Chaosbane is a game. More specifically it’s an ARPG that’s faithful enough to the Warhammer setting that provides up to 4 player co-op and can be classified as a OK experience. The graphics are decent, the plot has one or two mildly interesting twists and the slight spin on the “get a bunch of shit then sell it so you can not buy any of the vendor items because you’ll just find something better anyway” is a welcome change. The character builds? Yeah they’re fine too, as is the visual variety in the areas you fight across the game. The skills system? Yeah it’s a decent idea. There’s some stuff I didn’t bother mentioning like the fact that you can “bless items” with gems that drop or that there are legendary skill upgrade points but honestly this game is just clicking things and none of the extraneous faffing around the edges will ever change anyone’s mind about it. Altogether then Warhammer: Chaosbane is the boiled potato of the gaming world, nothing exciting but you would really have to go out of your way to be mad about it. Just a big, slightly under-seasoned but filling piece of content to distract you for a dozen hours. Alternatively you could watch like 6 good movies, but then again maybe you don’t care about Hollywood because they’re almost all tax cheats or child abusers. In which case Chaosbane will keep you mildly stimulated and perhaps even entertained!

The post Warhammer: Chaosbane appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Diablo 2 is one of the most popular and influential PC games of all time, and over the years has garnered a massive fanbase across the globe. As not only one of Blizzard’s most popular games during it’s golden age, but also as a frequent addition to the myriad “greatest PC games of all time” lists I’d also felt like I was really missing out by not playing it. Now for a quick bit of context, I only really started caring about the PC during the 6th console generation and while I did plenty of older games I tended to stick with RTS games and some shooters. As such while I did buy Diablo 2 around 2005ish, I never really got into it and dropped it at the end of Act 1 in favour of playing more Red Alert 2 / World of Warcraft / Simcity 3000. Now that close to two decades have passed, I’ve finally gone back and played through the entirety of Diablo 2 after having played a couple of other ARPGs such as Torchlight 1 & 2, Titan Quest, W40K Inquisitor and even Diablo 3.

And boy oh boy do I not get it at all! That’s not to say it’s a bad game, but honestly the whole experience could be described as a graphically impressive treadmill. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I picked the Necromancer class and focused on my summon abilities, due to the fact that I thought it was pretty cool having a bunch of disposable goons in front of me. Maybe it’s the fact that I played a bunch of other successor games first, and so the novelty of Diablo 2 wasn’t there. Or maybe it’s just a case that I don’t see who this genre is for or why people bother with them. To give some context, once I hit around level 10 or so every fight played out exactly the same. My skeletons and golem would rush in, my mercenary rogue and skeleton mages would hang back, and I wander around occasionally resurrecting my minions or engaging in combat myself to expedite everything. This was every encounter for around 15 hours once I’d got my cool spells (prior to this I didn’t have a golem sadly). Now I can only assume people will point out “Hey LOSER, you can just play another class or build!!!” but that seems to be a solution that sounds great on paper but doesn’t actually achieve anything. I can say this with confidence because I initially played this game all those years ago as a… Paladin and it was really boring. Then while playing my Necromancer I switched between melee and ranged builds, then dabbled with the other spells and really the whole felt identical. I was wandering around like a big spooky simpleton, getting rushed by the same mobs and clicking on them ASAP before they made my health bar go down. Sure I could emulate President Trump and build a BIG BEAUTIFUL (bone) WALL to keep them at bay, or I could use an Iron Golem instead of a Flesh Golem but it really didn’t change the overall dynamics of the game at all. You’re just some feckless murder-hobo being pushed from big open plain to small dungeon to big open plain for about 20ish hours.

Fortunately the developers at Blizzard came up with an ingenious system by which losers gamers would be kept endlessly amused by this entertainment juggernaut. That solution? You can pick up items, that give you some bonuses to some stats that make you better at clicking on things! I guess the name for their MMO originated from players yelling “WOW!!!” at the prospect of fighting the same enemies in the same places over and over and over and over so they could have another Crossbow but this time with BIGGER NUMBERS. You probably think I’m probably being facetious (and I am) but honestly the max level is 100 and you can beat the game before you’re level 30. So why the hell would you spend the incredibly large amount of time grinding up that main number so that you can then grind for the other items that contribute to the little numbers? This is what I mean when I start my review with “I don’t get it”. It’s not that the combat is bad, as it’s fine and honestly the enemy variety is pretty decent for an RPG. There are cases where enemies are reskins, but it’s not a big issue and most enemies fit into a clear archetype that when combined results in some fun target prioritisation. But unlike say… Serious Sam which does the same thing in a frantic FPS environment where you are dealing with dozens and sometimes hundreds at a time, Diablo 2 is only giving you at most a room full of guys to deal with (around 20). Otherwise you’d just get melted by everyone punching you at the same time. Instead of having progressively higher stakes and needing to learn movement mechanics like in a good FPS game, you instead get a big ass unnecessary grind for you to brag about on the online servers (and/or forums). It’s baffling to me that this is not only one of the exemplars of Blizzard’s existence, but that this grinding simulator is held up as the pinnacle that inspired an entire genre of successors. Who the hell wants to do the Act 2 boss fight 50 times in a row so that they can maybe get the Ultimate Halberd of King Knut (+30 life +30 energy +1cm penis size +2 Dexterity +15% chance to cast bear mace (Level 3) on hit) so that they can then have a powerful build for when they replay the same game but at a higher difficulty level? Why do these people exist???

Of course I’m not being entirely fair, as there are a few points in the game where the gameplay changes. Don’t worry, there’s not a mandatory stealth section or anything. Instead when you have to face Bosses, you’ll quickly realise that they have a shitload generously large amount of health and deal a fucking retarded significant amount of damage. This changes the game a lot, because you lose a lot of gold (It’s your current level as a percentage of the gold you had) when you die and indeed when you die you need to find your corpse (to loot so that you can regain your EPIC gear), which in this case will be right next to the boss that just kicked your ass. Act 1 doesn’t really have a boss, but the final quests in Acts 2, 3 and 4 involve dealing with a very large demon that makes every other enemy in the game look like a pussy. In fact most of these bosses could shred through my big health golem very, very quickly and my other summons (and mercenary) even quicker! This obviously presented an issue, as even with my more powerful spells and abilities I was in trouble. Fortunately I devised an expert strategy that almost never failed, which was to bring a lot of potions… and use the shared section of my stash so I didn’t lose any gold when I died… and just teleport away when near death to regain health for free. So in a sense, they were kinda broken in terms of balancing and I was super broken. I did feel kinda bad, because it seemed like the heroic thing to do would be to rush in like a crusader of yore and batter them into submission, but even my fancy golden crossbow did bugger all damage to them and missed like a third of it’s shots. So each boss fight became a battle of attrition between my character and how many mana potions I could fit on my belt to keep spawning golems so that I could shoot more crossbow bolts that basically just tickled the bosses. I also tried melee and died really quickly. Plus I did try using spells, which did more damage (yay!) but meant that I burned through way more mana and so it was much harder to keep golem meat-shields around. I’m sure there’s some build that makes the bosses a cakewalk, but after double checking how to deal with the Act 2 boss without being a little cheating bitch I found out that my build was actually considered one of the best ones. Go figure.

On the subject of mercenaries, these are NPCs you can recruit that function as companions and followers. Unlike in many fully fledged RPG’s they have no dialogue (well, they say thanks you give them items) and don’t impact the plot at all, but they’re still useful to have. In my case I kept my starting rogue, as these mercenaries level up and have a variety of abilities they use automatically. They can also equip a weapon, a helmet and armour that you give them but not the other item slots such as rings, boots, gloves. On the flip side they don’t need ammo which is great, but when they die you need to pay to resurrect them. Which would be fine, if they weren’t suicidal when dealing with bosses. You see the companion AI is about the same as the minion AI which is the same as the enemy’s AI which is on the level of charging the nearest hostile and being dumbfounded by chasms. Due to this, I’d say keeping my emo rogue alive constituted almost the entirety of my gold expenditure throughout the game as death was free, shop items sucked and so many potions and teleport scrolls were dropped by the baddies that I never had to buy them. Even this source of expenditure was fairly low, except for the final boss when my occasional death to Diablo’s basically one-hit kill death-beam would cause them to kill themselves in solidarity. So even after abusing the stash gold loophole, I still had to pay some money to bring them back. Which would’ve been fine, if they had been able to avoid Diablo’s attacks, which they couldn’t, so they often died really, really quickly.

But all my negativity aside there are some aspects of Diablo 2 which are actually pretty impressive. First of all having the entire game be playable with friends (or randoms) is cool. No doubt about it, if you couldn’t afford an MMO then this was an interesting way to interact with people and I can say that even when I last played the game close to a decade after release it was still popular. Plus as mentioned there is plenty of enemy variety, you’ve got multiple classes with different builds and the challenge of grinding out the harder difficulties. Why you’d bother is a question I can’t answer, but if you enjoyed the game for whatever reason then hey you can play it with other weirdos online and there’s a ton of (repetitive) content to explore! Perhaps more noteworthy for me as someone who wasted around 20 hours of their fleeting, worthless existence on this game due to the peer pressure of strangers, I will admit that the art style is pretty good. There’s plenty of variety between the zones of each Act, with the general look and feel of each area being handled well. It’s a good looking game and the remaster does a solid job of bringing it up to modern standards, without losing any of the appeal. Even the font and UI have been chosen with care and the whole game successfully captures the feel of a Gothic low-fantasy world. The music is also a good accompaniment to the game, although I have to confess that it loops like a motherfucker because there aren’t really many tracks here. The ones that are there are good, but I’d personally say they kinda peak in Act 1. Last but certainly not least, the cinematics show that Blizzard really know what they’re doing in this department and as ever they’re great. Not only they are visually impressive, but they’re a good way of providing context to the events in the game’s world and are a good way of breaking up each Act. In fact I’d say they provide a better reward than the loot on offer, but I’m probably just biased because my class couldn’t use half the late(r) game equipment due to not having enough Strength.

In conclusion then Diablo 2 is a game I really don’t understand. It’s a perfectly serviceable ARPG for those who are desperately seeking more carpal tunnel syndrome in their lives, but for the typical player I don’t see the appeal. It’s a game that looks great and has a striking art-style, with well made accompanying music and plenty of content for you to grind through if that’s your bag. For those seeking a good story, that’s not here. For those seeking a varied and engaging combat experience, I don’t think that’s here either. Instead it’s an RPG for that subjection of RPG gamers who only wants to make the numbers go up. The plot is minimal, there are no choices, there isn’t even much of an ending, but there are numbers. By the light, are there numbers. So for those who love grinding, or are seeking a co-op game at short notice then by all means give Diablo 2 a go. But for me, it’s just the cause of one big inescapable question – Who are these games for???

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Quick Note: This game is online only and as such requires a constant internet connection. To it’s credit the game still receives modest updates, but those who travel frequently or are otherwise unable to guarantee a consistent online connection should avoid it.

Prophecy is the stand-alone expansion to W40K: Inquisitor – Martyr and offers a new playable character class, the Tech Adept (which is the 4th and first to be added to the game post-launch) alongside a new chain of story missions. It should be noted that while all characters can be played across both games due to the fact that they’re stored on synchronised servers, there are some restrictions related to the main story missions. Only the Tech Adept can play the new campaign, while only the 3 previous classes can play through the base game campaign content. Due to these synchronised servers, Prophecy essentially acts like a DLC and if you own the base game then prophecy is a mere 500kb download with everything it adds automatically unlocking the next time you launch the base game. Those who only own Prophecy however will need to download the entirety of W40K: Martyr which is around 80GB after years of updates and DLCs being released. This is a lot of space for a relatively short game, as Prophecy’s new story mode only lasts for around 10 hours.

To be fair, these 10 hours are fun and the expansion integrates itself nicely with the base game. During a certain point in the base game your character who is a member of the Inquisition is stranded on the gigantic abandoned vessel (referred to in-universe as a “Space Hulk”) with the ship name of Martyr (hence the name of the game). The Tech Adept campaign takes place during this interval, with your new character utilising their inquisitorial authority to take over the vessel the original characters use. Both campaigns follow Inquisitors chasing after the legacy of one of their forefathers who was engaged in a project to create a new race of psychic superhumans who would have the power to defeat the foul gods of Chaos that exist in the mirror universe that is opposite reality. By tying the narratives of the two separate campaigns together, the developers are able to retain the same characters and hub setting across both games which cuts down on their workload and the player’s potential dissonance when switching between characters. One potential source of dissonance for you however, fair reader (if you exist, which WordPress thinks you do not) might been all this sci-fi jargon that’s floating around. As such I’m going to quickly try and bring you up to speed with the setting, as it concerns the game and those who already have a solid grasp of these things are encouraged to skip the next paragraph.

In Prophecy you play as a Tech Adept, a former Tech Priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who has moved beyond their initial training to end up as an agent of the Imperial Inquisition. The Adeptus Mechanicus is the universe wide body responsible for the use and development of technology across the Imperium of Man, but after 10 millennia of constant warfare it has essentially degraded to the point that it is a quasi cargo cult. Many processes and technologies have been lost, never to be rediscovered and as a consequence most technical tasks are conducted with a mixture of faith, barely understood routine and actual scientific reasoning. Tech Priests are therefore both researchers and priests of the Machine God, thus they have many benedictions, supplications and rightful fears of blaspheme and heresy which could corrupt the technology they use and cause it to cease functioning – or worse. While your character was a Tech Priest in the past, they have strayed from this path and are now an inquisitor. As an Inquisitor, your character is judge, jury and executioner of all subjects within the Imperium and is able to requisition almost anything and cast judgement on almost anyone. The reason for your extraordinary extra-legal powers is simple, you will need them. As to be an Inquisitor is to be tasked with investigating and eliminating the myriad threats which face the Imperium of Man, it’s fleets, it’s armies of Imperial Guardsmen and even the Superhuman Warriors of the Adeptus Astartes referred to as Space Marines. Whether these threats be related to mundane issues of corruption and rebellion all the way through to demonic incursions and the threat posed by hostile alien species (such as the haughty space elves Aeldari or ravenous Tyranid swarms), the Inquisition is often called in when the situation is truly dire or desperate. These aforementioned demonic incursions are caused by the Pantheon of Dark Gods who are collectively referred to as the Chaos Gods, with both Nurgle (the god of pestilence and decay) and Khorne (the god of war, bloodshed and violence) being represented within the game. Due to the strain, responsibility and necessity of the inquisition you are relatively independent and privy to a great deal of classified information, but are frequently faced with the worst that the grim future of humanity in the 41st millennium has to offer.

To combat these myriad threats the new Tech Adept class has a variety of unique skills and abilities with which to smite the enemies of the Emperor. Many of these focus on the ability to summon in multiple robotic NPCs and turrets, with the former even following your character around while both types either engage enemies on your behalf or provide buffs. These summonable allies are customisable via a new Construct Setup interface that is accessible on “your” spaceship, with you as the player having the ability to decide which allies will be accompanying you on your missions. Initially you only have access to basic robots which come in either a melee focused or gun-totting ranged variety. As you gain levels however, you will gradually unlock all 7 types of these Constructs, which I’ll quickly list below;

• The basic Psiloi Combustors which are fast, gun-totting, low health and cheap spider-esque robots. These guys start off with Autoguns (machine guns) but can be equipped with flamethrowers or armour melting Melta Guns later on.
• The equally basic Psioli Vivisector which is the melee equivalent of the former robot, while they’re still cheap these guys are surprisingly lethal and durable once they’ve been upgraded with life-steal and passive skills (more on those later).
• The Voltagheist support type turret which doesn’t deal damage but buffs or heals you and all other allies in range depending on it’s configuration
• The Tarantula gun turrets, which not only deploy from the sky with a satisfying thud (and the chance to damage any enemies unlucky enough to be where they land) but can be equipped with Lasguns (laser rifles), Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers. These guys are great, but can’t move and self destruct after a set amount of time has passed
• The Kataphron Vanguard which is a big beefy cyborg torso implanted onto tank treads. These menacing fellows carry big axes and are lethal in melee, plus they have a handy taunt ability to draw aggressive enemies away from you. They’ve even got a charge ability and deal cleave damage so they can hit multiple enemies at once
• The Kataphron Destroyer, who are the ranged equivalent of the previous guys. They’ve got the choice of big plasma guns or big flamethrowers.
• Finally you’ve got the Kastellan robots, who are massive mech suits that deal melee cleave damage and are equipped with either flamethrowers or a laser beam weapon. Once upgraded they’ve got a decent AoE attack and will explode when they’re incapacitated (they don’t die, but are instead knocked offline for 20 seconds)
  

These allies can then be upgraded with up to 3 “Modules” each that add various bonuses like life-steal, health regenerator, more power to certain attacks, faster movement speed etc. Ultimately the Tech Adept class fits into the classic ARPG summoner architype and while you are moderately powerful by yourself, it’s these allies that will deal the majority of your damage output. With that being said you do have the option of using Power Axes, Plasma Guns and two types of Autogun alongside a variety of class specific tools which include grenades, energy shields, mines and a knockback inducing refractor field. With all that being said, the class itself is a nice addition to the overall game and is enjoyable to play for those who like swarming the enemy with murderous killbots while you sit back and pop-off some shots.

But this far into the review, I’ve still barely touched on the game itself. As already mentioned, it’s an ARPG or Action Roleplaying Game which will be familiar to anyone who’s played Diablo or it’s myriad clones. This means that you are running through a variety of combat arenas that are riddled with enemies of various types and who may all be holding onto that sweet, sweet loot. You then exterminate them in vast numbers to complete various objectives, most of which involve reaching a certain point and holding the F key or gunning down particularly large enemies. There are 7 races of enemy in the game, including Rebel Imperial Guardsmen, the Worshippers of Nurgle, the Black Legion (corrupted Space Marines), the Worshippers of Khorne, the Eldar Aeldari, the Dark Eldar Druchi and Tyranids. Each race then has multiple enemy types, split between Horde, Regular, Champion, Elite and Commanders with every race having a few different enemies for each of those overall types. This gives the game a ton of enemy variety and as each race has it’s own unique units, you’ll need to quickly learn which enemies pose a threat and which are a pushover. Personally speaking, I found that the larger enemy vehicles and enemy psykers could do a worryingly large amount of burst damage that could quickly shred through my health if they weren’t prioritised quickly. To the game’s credit, each race had it’s fair share of chaff and genuinely scary enemies and as a consequence the game managed to maintain a decent level of challenge throughout it’s moderately short campaign.

Alongside this challenge the game also does a good job at conveying the overall tone of the setting and is consistently accurate in how it treats both the lore and the reactions of characters within it. Your crew consists of a Rogue Trader captain, a sci-fi privateer with many useful contacts but who often lacks the knowledge and awareness that an Inquisitorial agent would have. A Space Marine, who is a stalwart and zealous servant of the imperium but who’s bloodthirstiness and obstinate sense of duty gets him in trouble. Two tech priests who are both ruthlessly detached from themselves and their humanity but are invaluable in getting the job done and finally the captain of your former ship who is essentially a torso in a tube and who has just the right amount of sass and death-wish for an inquisitorial subordinate. Alongside these characters you also have a gallant mecha-knight, numerous other inquisitors who are generally (but not always) even more zealotous than you and multiple blubbering planetary governors, stoic guardsmen and jaded but heroic space marines. I don’t want to list every character, but it’s clear that the developers have a rock solid idea of how characters within the setting should act and how they would react to both the events transpiring within the campaign and to each other. These characters give the main campaign’s narrative a boost and ensure that the missions never feel too repetitive, especially as you are often putting down the scheming enemy – both with your firepower and with your words.

This campaign really is only the beginning however, as the game also comes with multiple free side-campaigns (referred to as investigations) that are part of the base game. These are very similar to the main campaign, albeit they have slightly fewer cutscenes. All together there are 4 of these bonus campaigns and playing through them added another 10 hours of playtime to the game. Throughout these campaigns you are occasionally offered the choice of whether to act as a Puritan or Radical, which generally translates to ruthlessly judging everyone as guilty or being slightly more lenient. To give an example, you might gun down a platoon for cowardice or you might make them follow you through what would generally be considered as a suicide mission. These choices are a good opportunity to give a bit of roleplaying to the game, although they sadly fall for the classic pitfall of being tied to a morality system that reserves the best rewards for those who fully pick one or the other. As such you’re heavily encouraged to stick with one, so that you can gain access to the exclusive perks and weapon/armour bonuses that they offer.

Speaking of perks, the game has two main ways of increasing your power outside of granting you better and better loot. These come in the form of Passive Skills which make up the slightly overwhelming amount of skill trees and Perks which are powerful passive buffs that you can equip (up to 3 at a time). Most of the Passive Skills are fairly modest, such as +5% construct HP or +3% ranged damage, but as you gain 1 per level and a bonus 1 for every 10th level, they can quickly add up. In addition most skill trees have one or two powerful bonuses such as the ability to reduce the damage of incoming fatal blows by 80%, or granting your robotic allies new abilities (like the explode-on-death for the Kastellan mentioned earlier). As for the perks, there are a lot of them but they’re all generally pretty good and are extremely varied. Some let you summon more robots (so you can have 4 Vivisectors per pack instead of 3, for a combined total of up to 20 at a time instead of 15), others give you vastly more critical damage or movement speed at a slight cost to some other state like damage resistance. By combining these perks and passive skills together however you can create a wide variety of playstyles, some of which are very powerful indeed.

And you will need to figure out these powerful playstyles if you want to truly beat the end-game content, as once you’ve played through the campaigns you will be strong enough to start stacking up the difficulty. You see the game offers missions that broadly correspond to your level, but you can increase them through a variety of methods up to +21 levels above your current one. Each level increase grants you more XP/Cash/Rewards but also makes you take more damage and dish less of it out. As such you are encouraged to push yourself harder so as to maximise the rewards you can receive, but as these side missions only allow you to die three times per mission, it’s a delicate risk reward system. Fortunately you are always in control of the level of the missions you face and indeed by default the campaign missions are matched to your level (although you can increase them if you wish). But if you want those juicy, juicy extra rewards you can apply Uther’s Tarot cards which are modifiers that increase the difficulty of missions but add additional rewards. Without going into excessive detail, you can apply up to 3 per mission and they generally give you +X% rewards and an increased chance of Y item type spawning but will cause the enemies you face to be stronger. An example would be the The Possessed card, which gives you 70% more general rewards and an increase chance of “Psalm-code” items dropping, but will cause enemies to potentially reflect some types of damage or spawn new enemies on death. Some of these Tarot cards also increase the overall mission difficulty level up to a maximum of +11 and you can run missions that are up to 10 levels above yours.

These extra difficult missions can be accessed via a selection of random missions which are accessible from your ship, by using “Intel” items which automatically generate a mission that’s one or two levels above yours, or by engaging in two types of structured random campaigns. The first of these structured random campaigns are the Priority Missions, which take the form of 4 or 5 linked random missions. When starting these Priority Missions you can set the difficulty from your current level all the way to +10 levels higher than yours. During these Priority Missions you have a few opportunities to make decisions, such as prioritising a certain mission over others, purchasing benefits such as the ability to call in a squad of friendly NPC guardsmen or choosing a strategy for the forces under your command (which can benefit or harm your overall mini-campaign).

The second type of structured random campaign are the Void Crusades, which are an interconnected series of random missions that gradually increase in difficulty. There are generally around 20 of them in a crusade, but you only need to fight your way through to the Supreme Mission which will end the crusade. Fighting through additional side-missions will give you more opportunities to gather loot, but beware as you only have 5 lives per crusade. There are also random keys which drop from certain missions, that can be used to open Void Chests after you beat the Supreme Mission and these chests contain some of the best loot in the game.

Of course like any good ARPG most of this is entirely optional and the more casual player will probably play through the main campaign, maybe the side campaigns and call it a day long before reaching the maximum level of 100. For those who find themselves addicted to the game however, these random missions, Priority Missions and Void Crusades offer the perpetually alluring prospect of grabbing better and better loot with which to constantly grow in power. Oh and did I mention that you can upgrade the Tarot cards up to 5 times each, combine the various enchant gems together to gradually level them up or improve items within the game’s built in crafting system?

Ultimately Prophecy is a game that can be as short or as long as the player wants it to be, allowing it to serve as a modestly entertaining single player narrative or a time-sink of dangerously addictive power. Between the myriad of skills, perks, weapon types, buffs, bonuses, mission types and enemy types there is a lot of content on offer here and it’s almost all done with a good level of polish. There are a few minor niggles, such as the fact that the non-campaign dialogue can be repetitive (although this can be disabled in the options), the fact that some mechanics are poorly explained by the ingame guide and the fact that the game has performance issues on older systems. Of course the biggest concern is probably the fact that the game requires a constant online connection, but the developers have steadfastly refused to change this since it launched years ago so I wouldn’t expect this to change anytime soon. Yet if you can overlook these small flaws, you’ll find a faithful depiction of the W40K setting with plenty of enemies to shoot and things to loot. Overall I have no issues recommending this game – but to those who are unfamiliar with ARPGs I would recommend patience alongside the diligent usage of DuckDuckGo (or Google if you must) and to those unfamiliar with the W40K setting I would recommend reading through lexicanum to gain a bit more understanding of what everyone is yelling about.

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