[h1]WH4K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters[/h1]
I'm not a big Warhammer 40K fan and while I don't love this title, it's a pretty decent game if you can see past the limitations and a few self-inflicted wounds. If you read nothing else, skip to the bottom as this is a very situational recommendation. I almost put this game down and uninstalled because it wasn't clicking with me. It never really did but I got through to the end and it got a bit more enjoyable as I progressed and better understood game mechanics that just aren't explained at all in the tutorials. I've finished it and that's fine but I doubt I'll ever play it again.
At it's core, Chaos Gate is a tactical turn-based small-squad combat game with a series of staged battles that take place over a number of planets in a system. The combat takes place on generous but not outlandishly large maps, each with a lot of colorful detail but fairly little interaction. Maps have no loot or secrets to uncover and a handful of deformable actions you can take like (pushing a pilar on an enemy). Otherwise it's your 4 guys (yes, only 4) taking on Nurgle's minions in a series of missions to save the universe. Generally things boil down to attacking via melee or ranged (and most characters can do both, though they may be better at one over the other) against small pockets of the Chaos God of Disease's finest. Missions will have you uncover and fight around 3-5 of these pockets per mission.
The TB combat isn't bad but it's nothing that really hasn't been done before, and better, by other games. It's on the ole' familiar turn-based, grid map. Click here to move, click here to attack. Abilities seem to be quite limited and, at least for me, fairly underwhelming. I never did figure out how to get certain special abilities to "trigger" reliably. Others I could trigger but they seemed very situational and weak. The game does not do an overly good job of explaining the combat mechanics in a tutorial that is just "click here, click here again". In fact, it tends to concentrate repeatedly on overwatch but you are almost always on the attack in the general game, making overwatch much less important. It's not a good tutorial. That's not to say the combat is bad or entirely simple but I didn't find it particularly deep or engaging. Character differences were too subtle, unlike The Banner Saga where a different weapon felt like a whole new class or XCOM where a specialization made a big difference in the play style for that character.
I had a couple of other dislikes with the combat. While there's no official "timer" on missions, there is a meter which increments every turn. When it gets to 100 your troops are going to get weaker or fight more dangerous foes, which at times seemed a bit punishing. A bigger issue for me was teleporting enemies into the map. This happens on every fight. You'll hit a point in the map and a rift will open, meaning you're going to get more enemies pouring through that rift the very next turn. You can't see when or where these rifts will spawn until they're just about ready to disgorge their minions. This kind of mechanic doesn't reward careful planning or tactical thinking whatsoever. I can have my guys in good tactical positions, engaged with the enemy and pinning them in a crossfire and *poof*, I have to run like hell from those positions because a rift is opening up right behind my defensive line. I hate, hate, hate mechanics like these and this almost made me quit the game. Finally, mission difficulty is all over the place. Some missions were absolute cakewalks while others would have me scowling at the monitor. I wouldn't call this a smooth difficulty curve and this is a common complaint on the forums.
The turn-based combat is the core but that's not all there is. Back onboard the ship you research new techs, outfit your squad, upgrade your ship, occasionally talk to someone to advance the plot and go to whatever hotspot system is nearby for the next mission. It's a collection of smaller tasks that actually seem to carry some weight on how easy or hard it is to progress. But with relatively few choices, you'd likely find yourself choosing the same upgrades every time because there's no incentive to try a different path. Sub-optimal choices aren't rewarded with interesting game play. There is a story but there are no RPG elements - you're an observer, not a participant. The story centers around a plague (what else would Nurgle do?) that threatens the human race. You run around doing combat missions to uncover the story and fight battles. That's really all there is.
There's an extensive character and even item leveling system, with the former having a lot of options. Unfortunately, with a number of concepts unexplained and few evidentiary combat impacts, leveling choices felt unclear and I found myself just selecting abilities almost at random. It's easy to understand - if underwhelming - when an ability says +1 to damage. But when the description is "X" augments ranged attacks with "Y" for additional "Z", it's not particularly clear what that really does. Other abilities say they'll raise the critical chance 5% (underwhelming) but I never did find the base critical chance on my guys. So am I going from 5% to 10%? Or from 50% to 55%? One might make it worth it, the other not. And I'm not sure how much those are really accurate as I'm not sure I EVER saw a critical hit in my entire game. I always got the base line damage (usually 4) or got a point more when using focus. The UI is really not good in this area, with a better character summary screen needed. The levelling screen could do a lot better job of explaining things and providing better templates or builds to guide newer players.
The graphics took me a bit of getting used to. I'm not used to seeing the 40K universe expressed in brighter colors and cartoony figures. It put me off a bit and on some maps I had a harder time distinguishing targets from background noise because of all the clutter. But the longer I played, the more I appreciated the graphical style of the game and the choices made. The bright colors provided some needed energy into the maps. The detail put into the environments ended up making them more engaging. I would have loved a bit more variety - after all, these are different planets and could have a lot of distinct characteristics with lighting, skies, flora, fauna, etc. But in general, the graphical style grew on me and by looking more closely I also appreciated the story, lore and overall universe a bit more.
There were a few other annoyances I encountered:
1. This game pauses when you alt-tab out so you can't go look at something else while the enemy is taking their turn.
2. There are only 5 save slots and a very occasional auto save.
3. I've already mentioned this but there's really a decided lack of information on abilities, attributes, status effects, etc. and what's there is incomplete. For instance, I got a weapon no one could use and even after 20 hours I have no idea what class can use this type of weapon. It just says "class restricted" without ever saying what class can use it. As I've said, the UI really needs fewer elaborate icons and more info.
(PS - I looked it up. Apparently that type of weapon can only be used by the Chaplain class - one that I never figured out how to unlock because, the game never mentions classes or what they do. Yet another example of a poor tutorial compounded by a lack of tooltips and other informational sources.)
[u]Conclusion[/u]
As I said, this is a situational recommendation.
1. I think you really need to like the XCOM style of tactical combat and consider this once you've played most of the bigger titles in the genre already.
2. If you're a big fan of 40K then of course you should buy it. If you're not then this isn't likely to change your mind.
3. Get it on a steep sale - 75% or more. It's not worth the asking price.
