Quick Note – This is more of a “quick look” than a full review as I’ve only played through 2 of the 4 faction storylines. They were both very similar and it seems like all of the factions play fairly similarly, but worth noting in case I’ve overlooked something.

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius is one of those games I picked up for $1 years ago, mainly due to the IP and have finally gotten around to giving a proper go this week on the advice of a friend. I’ll admit that I was slightly skeptical, as the last game in this vein I’d tried was the underwhelming if bearable W40K: Sanctus Reach, a flawed and low budget TBS game that is OK/10 but really lacking in polish and variety. As such I fully expected this to be another middling W40K, of which there are many and to my shame of which I also have bought many. Gladius on the other hand is good-ish, it’s no Dawn of War or Space Marine but it’s actually a decent game bearing the W40K name, instead of a boring game being propped by it’s source material. In this case practice has definitely made perfect, as Slitherine have made a couple of games using Games Workshop’s intellectual property at this point and they do seem to be continually improving, not just in game design but also in polish. As for the game itself, it’s a classic 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) albeit in a simplified form as there is no diplomacy, and somewhat limited resource management. For those not in the know, 4X games are basically a type of turn based strategy game with more of a focus on building an empire and which generally utilise hexagonal grid maps.

As for the gameplay, it’s generally fine if nothing majestically special. You’ve got four factions to choose from in the base game, each with a handful of gimmicks but that generally play fairly similar and have broadly similar units. You can choose the Imperial Guard (no not the aStRa MiLiTaRuM), Space Marines, Orks or Necrons (because this game came out during the OMGOMGOMGOMG NECRONS ARE SO COOL phase that Games Workshop went through after the race got rebooted into Tomb Kings in SPACE). The Space Marines are to the surprise of no one, the babby introductory race and can only have one city making management a doddle, because they also only have to worry about one resource in the form of requisition. In exchange for this handicap, they can deploy mini-forts every 10 turns and most of their units have decent amounts of armour and firepower to make them able to withstand the swarms of other factions which have multiple cities. Then you’ve got the Orks who gain influence from attacking and deal more damage when you’ve got a lot of that resource but are weaker when you’re low on it, plus they have some very powerful late game units and are pretty good in melee combat while boasting decent regeneration abilities. The Imperial Guard are about what you’d expect, mainly lots of units and cities that are expendable but will have low morale if they take too many losses. On the plus side they’ve got decently strong fortifications and some of the longest range artillery in the game. Finally you’ve got the Necrons who can only build cities on certain tiles, but who also can spend resources to rush unit production with those units being fairly powerful and having decent regeneration abilities.

And each of these factions have broadly similar strategies, unless you go for their bespoke campaign quest-lines. You see every game of Gladius is the same, in that it’s either a skirmish game against bots or a multiplayer game against other people and/or bots. As a consequence of the total lack of diplomacy and the lack of customised single player maps, there isn’t a huge amount of variety between games. Especially as each faction has broadly similar units, Tactical Marines will be better than Guardsmen as an example, but they function the same and each unit has an equivalent across factions with some factions exceeding in certain areas. This means that no matter which faction you play, a lot of the units are similar and indeed most aspects of the game are just the same. Tech works the same for all factions. Every faction except for the Space Marines have the same resources to manage (ok Necrons don’t need to eat food but still), every faction has the same XP system, every faction has to deal with the same aggressive native fauna and each faction has the same outpost bonus resource system. As such the game is pretty approachable and not exceedingly difficult to understand, especially as each quest-line pushes the player through the most obvious steps of how to proceed. Then there’s a tutorial system on top of this, although I must confess it’s a bit crap. Basically every-time you interact with something for the first, a pop-up tutorial message appears. Which is great, except for the first two turns where you keep clicking on new things like a unit, or a city, or an enemy, or a resource, or the end turn button and so it dumps a bunch of information on you at a rate that is just unnecessary.

Now I’ve mentioned the quest-lines above which are a good idea, however much like the tutorial pop-ups in the implementation is a bit janky. You see, the way it works is that you’re given objectives to complete such as “go to these 3 spots with a hero” or “build these 3 buildings” which is fine. The problem is that W40K: Gladius loves to spawn enemies that interfere with those goals as soon as you receive the complete the previous mission, which means that players who try to go through the quest-line quickly will end up getting their cunts kicked in. Much like the campaign in Supreme Commander, it’s often better to just leave objectives nearly completed until you’ve been able to build up your armies and defences, with the final quest missions always involving a sudden explosion of enemies bum-rushing you which can be annoying to deal with. While it does make for a great show-piece battle, it is often overwhelming and if your troops are out of position due to dealing with enemy AI factions or just unlucky with where Gladius chooses to start spawning things, then it can be very tedious to deal with. As for story elements they’re pretty light on the ground and the game doesn’t have any voice acting or a memorable soundtrack. Visually it’s perfectly fine and the units and buildings do “sprout” quips in text form above them when they’re in view which is a nice touch, but it still feels like this a game with a modest budget which I’m sure it was.

And that’s about it for W40K: Gladius, because that’s really all there is to the game if you don’t pay extra for the DLC packs. Which isn’t necessarily a slight on the game’s honour, as I found it to be an enjoyable if basic 4X strategy experience. You don’t really have to worry about grand AI alliances, extensive resource management, convoluted tech trees or bonus extraneous game features. You just build units, build cities, upgrade the cities, gradually research better units and try not to get overwhelmed by either the AI or the newly spawned quest enemies (should you go for the quest-line). Nothing about the game is particularly high quality, but the combat is fun enough and if you go for the four faction quest-lines it provides a decent value for money. As such W40K: Gladius is a game I don’t regret playing and would kind of recommend, but you know it’s just fine. Nothing to kick yourself for missing, but worth a look for fans of the IP or who are looking for an approachable 4X / TBS game.

The post Warhammer 40,000: Gladius appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note(s) – Unfortunately the game can have some issues running on Windows 11, so be sure to run the “vcredist_x86” installer located in the Steamapps/common/Dawn of War Soulstorm/VCRedist folder. If you aren’t running the Steam version, you’ll need to download and install the Microsoft C++ visual redistributable 2005. As for those of you who are looking for mods, I’d highly recommend the Unification Mod which adds a disgustingly large amount of units, factions and maps to the game. Other mods are also available on moddb.com (just follow the previous link and click on “Dawn of War” underneath the name of the mod).

Back in those simpler, halcyon days of 2004 the developers at Relic took the (Warhammer) world by storm by releasing the original Dawn of War game. Now this wasn’t the first Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) game by any means, and in fact it was the 8th game to be released that took advantage of the setting. What it did do however, was enable players to play as multiple factions within an immersive setting (sorry Rites of War fans, but that game was slowwww and not particularly immersive) that was fully 3D. The combination of three popular factions – and the Eldar too – resulted in a hugely popular RTS game, especially as both the gameplay and audio design were excellent. Unlike the other goliaths of the space, such as Starcraft, C&C Generals and Age of Empires 2, the game was fast paced and highly rewarded an aggressive play-style, as resource nodes were spread across the map and holding them was the key to victory. In many other RTS games, resources were spread around but generally you’d need to build up your forces and faff around with villagers to build up the structures required to properly begin harvesting the tiberium/cash/gold/whatever. In Dawn of War however, you just needed to capture them with infantry and while it was encouraged, you rarely had to fortify them with a listening point structure (which would need to be destroyed before the enemy could capture it). This subtle little twist meant that it was your army not your villagers that were responsible for growing your economy. Compounding this design decision was the fact that you needed to control as much of the map as possible to receive these resources, as tech upgrades played a minimal role in the economy side whilst your builders could barely do anything (although the secondary power resource was entirely generated by the buildings they constructed). Of course this led to the game giving more aggressive players a significant advantage, which meant that the games were often quick and fast paced with the loss of your army often ensuring you’d lose your resource points which then meant that you were at a resource disadvantage which would then result in you getting ground down under waves of enemy forces. There was a mechanic to compensate for this (slightly) wherein resource points and power generating structures would decay over time, enabling turtles to cling on and eventually negate much of the disadvantage they were facing, but this mechanic in most cases took too long to have a significant effect on the battle.

Without going into excessive detail, I’ll briefly explain the mechanics of Dawn of War for those who haven’t played any of the games in the series. Like most RTS games you start with a mere HQ and a builder unit, who can then produce all of the production buildings in your faction alongside power generators and listening points. You’ve got multiple unit classifications (such as heavy infantry, demons, vehicles and so on) but generally there are 3 main types of unit on the battlefield. Infantry (who are the only ones who can capture requisition points), heroes/characters that are powerful but can get bogged down in combat, and then vehicles which are powerful and often heavily armoured but are require lots of power and aren’t available in the early stages of the game. These units are then either focused on melee or ranged attacks. Most weapons are good against certain types of units, with anti-tank weapons often (but not always) being hopeless against infantry and vice-versa. Furthermore each unit can have multiple abilities, and most units can purchase upgrades that are applicable to that one unit. There are also a range of technologies which can be unlocked that provide a bonus to all units of a certain type, both those you currently have and those you might build in the future. All infantry units can be reinforced to add squad members, which costs resources and requires a modest wait as they’re produced. Units in combat suffer a big penalty to reinforcement times but they can still be reinforced. As for the resources, you’ve only got two to worry about. Requisition (the main resource) and power (the secondary resource), which are obtained through captured points on the map & listening posts and power generating structures respectively. Finally there are two types of points on the map(s) worth noting – Relics which let you build your superheavy unit (max 1 at a time) and critical locations which you can’t build anything on or next to. As such the game revolves around building infantry squads to capture points to gain requisition, so you can afford to build power generators which will let you build your more powerful units and begin unlocking research items.

With that hasty summary out of the way let’s return to the review. Back in 2004 Relic decided that they should continue to build up momentum after the launch of the original Dawn of War by engaging in a classic strategy which has largely (but not entirely) been neglected in recent years. They did this by releasing two expansion packs, Winter Assault (WA) in 2005 and Dark Crusade (DC) in 2006. The former added the Imperial Guard race to the game and added some new maps, a handful of new units for the existing races and two short but challenging campaigns. The latter was considerably more ambitious and included two races in the form of the Necrons and the Tau Empire, while also adding new maps, units and more importantly totally overhauling the campaign structure. Both the base game and WA had fairly standard RTS campaigns, taking the form of around a dozen maps (in WA’s case spread between the two campaigns) that weren’t particularly connected with each other and were basically skirmish maps with some extra challenges and timed NPC spawns/attack waves. Oh and of course they had little cutscenes, which elaborated on the plot and served to motivate you. DC on the other hand replaces the standard campaign structure with a new hybrid campaign that features a turn-based map comprised of multiple regions, each of which needs to be taken in skirmish battles. Each faction can move their single army (represented by their command) across one region per turn, and if this region isn’t owned by them then a skirmish battle will break out. Each region has a strength ranking associated with it from 1 to 15, which determines the AI difficulty and number of AIs to be faced on that map. The difficulty of these maps ranges from one easy AI through to three Hard AIs, with the maps themselves being the same that you encounter in the Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. Every faction is present at the start of the campaign within their stronghold region, a bespoke custom map that is particularly challenging and if these strongholds are conquered then that faction is defeated. As these armies fight across the map they’ll gain new regions which enable them to recruit “Honor Guard” units that are stronger versions of regular units and which spawn with the commander in every battle (unless they’re wiped out in which case they need to be bought again). Some of these regions even offer a faction wide bonus instead of a new honor guard unit, such as enabling you to attack any region except strongholds in one turn or to enable you to spend resources on building structures before an attack begins. Finally there are also feats that commanders can achieve such as winning 3 battles or killing a certain amount of enemies, which give them war-gear points that can then be spent on… war-gear which grants them more health, attack and some other benefits or even abilities. Victory is achieved by eliminating every other faction from the map, which means you’ll need to win every stronghold battle.

Dawn of War: Soulstorm (DoW:SS) continues this trend and by and large as the campaign is the same, with one big difference. Namely that you now need to defeat eight other factions instead of a measly six. As a consequence the campaign is lengthier, even if the gameplay itself hasn’t changed very much. There are also a few more bonus regions, so that there’s roughly one per faction alongside more stringent routing between areas (i.e. the map now has more choke-points) which gives the campaign a modicum of extra strategy. These two new factions in the form of the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar are of course one of the major selling points of the game, as at the time of release every faction with models was represented with the exception of the Tyranids. Much like the rest of the factions these two have their own unique units and voice acting although I must confess that I’ve always found the Sisters of Battle to be a bit boring. You see both the Sisters and the Dark Eldar have ways of gathering up a special resource (faith and souls respectively) that enable them to activate abilities, but generally these abilities don’t do that much. For the Dark Eldar these abilities are on your toolbar and can be popped at any time and anywhere that you have vision, and while the ability to enable a squad to detect infiltrated enemies is useful, the rest are kinda meh. As for the Sisters of Battle these abilities are used by certain squads and often require that you research a piece of technology to permit them to be used, with these abilities also being kinda… meh. To gather these resources you either build upgrades on your listening posts (Sisters of Battle) or have to send your builders to gather souls (Dark Eldar), with the former being super boring and the latter being a potentially interesting mechanic that gets squandered. This is because the Dark Eldar buildings can build themselves, the builder only has to start the construction process and is then free to go do something else. So far, so good as this fits with the asynchronous nature of the factions within the game. One of these buildings can be upgraded to produce souls though, so what ends up happening is that you build up your base, build a couple of these buildings (which are required for increasing the amount of squads and vehicles you can field in battle) and then have your builder sit in your base gathering souls. There’s no risk/reward ratio to consider from having your slaves wander around the battlefield, but then again as previously stated the abilities kinda suck anyway so it’s not a big deal really. Either way even with these lame abilities I still think the Dark Eldar are the more interesting faction, especially as their most basic infantry unit can infiltrate (letting them turn invisible and still attack enemies).

As for the other big selling point of this game in the run up to release, it’s also a bit underwhelming. Across Dawn of War and the first two expansions all units had been ground units (well except a handful of hovering ground units), which meant that the inclusion of Flying Units in Dawn of War: Soulstorm was HYPE. Unfortunately the engine just can’t handle flying units and as such these aircraft basically just acted as hovering ground units, which were still cool but were also just vehicles that could ignore some terrain. Ironically enough the developers of Dawn of War: Soulstorm (at this point the original developers at Relic were working on Dawn of War 2 and as such this expansion was outsourced to Iron Lore studios) didn’t want to add “flying” units initially and instead had planned to add some units that were commonly requested by the community. Sadly Relic insisted that Iron Lore get to work adding flying units, which while still useful and having some minor battlefield uses were relatively half-baked and a disappointment for many players. The Imperial Guard for example were bequeathed an aerial bomber, but it couldn’t really conduct bombing runs and as such just hovered around occasionally using a souped-up grenade ability. In spite of these flying units being half baked however Dawn of War: Soulstorm remains the definitive edition of Dawn of War, as it has everything that the other games had alongside a lengthier campaign, even more maps, more factions and of course more units. As a consequence of being the most feature complete Dawn of War game, it’s also the one that still retains an active community both in terms of being able to find multiplayer matches and with regards to the modding community which is still adding new races, maps and units to the game to this day.

Which of course begs the question, why is Dawn of War: Soulstorm still so popular? Well aside from the gameplay as mentioned earlier, and the sheer variety of units and races that you can play as, the game also has a handful of features which have kept players coming back. Part of the game’s enduring popularity is the way in which the game has managed to faithfully and accurately capture the W40K setting, with it’s bombastic units and fantastic voice acting. While strong voice acting is not unique to Dawn of War: Soulstorm, the game is absolutely brimming with memorable quotes delivered well by actors who clearly relish their roles. Every single unit is quotable and while they don’t have a huge pool of quotes, there are enough to avoid repetition whilst not too many that they fail to remain lodged in your mind. The depth and range of the performances are strong, while the writing clearly reflects an understanding of the lore of the W40K universe. There are some weird quirks in the game’s narrative, such as the Imperial Guard stronghold having legions of ostensibly rare Baneblade tanks and that weird screed against Metal Boxes by the Chaos commander, but generally the tone is faithfully conveyed and each unit and character acts as they should. Bolstering this performance is a handful of canny gameplay decisions, such as engaging (almost) every unit to engage in either melee or ranged combat, which ensures that even weaker units can successfully bog down stronger foes in ranged combat or try to force them to run around in circles. The game also has a “sync kill” system wherein units have special, pre-baked animations which play when they defeat enemies in melee combat. While these help to give the game some cinematic flair, they also have a strategic purpose as units are immune to damage while these animations are playing which can be abused to tank certain enemy weapons for the benefit of your less durable units. The combination of asymmetric factions, a high variety of units, fast paced gameplay and a host of little ways to tip the scales of a battle produce an engaging and enjoyable game, while the beginner AI settings are generous enough that newbies don’t need to fear getting completely and utterly stomped.

To summarise then Dawn of War: Soulstorm is an enduringly popular game because it is the successor to a great base game and two expansions which were of an equally high quality. By taking everything that had gone before it with regards to a strong, fast paced gameplay system that offered plenty of tactical depth across all nine factions the game ended up being a complex RTS experience that was still eminently approachable. Unlike many of it’s contemporaries the game was able to bypass a slow starting phase and encourage players to dive straight into the action, which had a strong blend of melee and ranged units to keep matters broadly balanced. This was then reinforced by an AI system that starts off weak enough to not overwhelm noobs, while being difficult enough at the higher levels that the game provides a significant challenge. Add to this a lengthy and replayable campaign mode, alongside fantastic voice acting that helps to immerse the player and you have a vast and engaging RTS game. The fact that the game has a huge quantity of maps, units and mods only cemented it as a long-lasting game that is suitable and indeed recommended for all RTS fans. If you’re a fan of the setting Dawn of War: Soulstorm is still one of the most commonly recommended games nearly 15 years on, whilst RTS players would be remiss to skip it. Even those without much experience with the setting or the genre should give this game a shot, as it’s approachable, memorable and riddled with content – plus it’s exceedingly cheap due to it’s age.

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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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