In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war—and in Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters, that war is fought turn by turn, strategy by strategy, against a festering tide of corruption. Complex, brutal, and dripping with Warhammer 40K atmosphere, this tactical RPG is a standout both for veterans of the universe and fans of games like XCOM, even if it sometimes leans too heavily on its own punishing systems.

You are the Grey Knights, a secretive and fanatically devoted chapter of Space Marines, battling against Nurgle’s Bloom, a cosmic plague infecting worlds across a doomed sector. The narrative, penned with just enough grimdark grandeur, is propelled by solid voice acting and a pervasive sense of dread. Every mission feels meaningful, and failure is not only possible—it’s expected.

The game’s combat is its greatest strength. Your strategical thinking is key here as there is a high risk high reward mechanic into the game called Corruption. At first, it might seem quite mundane, but in late game (so by day 500), it will catch up to you and make your Hard-difficulty campaign run almost impossible to accomplish. So, build orders are in order (see what I did there? lol), start your campaign by sacrificing some precious in-game time to build things on top of your ship that give you more resources (servitors and such), and that will eventually amount to a successful run. Not all battles must be fought, however, as sometimes cunning may be more rewarding than direct battle, just like in Xcom games, not everything is solvable through violence and certainly not a lost battle that will set you back exponentially.

In combat, however, Daemonhunters has a lot of flaws. Difficulty spikes can feel unforgiving, especially when missions start stacking modifiers and enemy reinforcements in rapid succession. The "Blooming" mechanic rushes you (as the player), making you battle a timer that keeps recycling itself and applying more and more debuffs on your team or just sending hordes upon hordes of plaguelords against you, which will seem very overwhelming even in the lowest difficulty possible. For what it's worth, it's like Daemonhunters wanted to improve on Xcom 2's mechanics and gameplay systems but ended up adding up too many at once, which makes it difficult to naviguate through the campaign at times! Other times, you're given "feats of strength" to accomplish during a mission; problem is, even the rewards associated with such challenges are not worth the trouble... "You can't perform critical hits" for ONE REQUISITION POINT? You gotta be friggin' kidding!

Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is a solid 7/10 warhammer tactical game... Its best aspect is how you can customize your space marines before sending them to battle, and the foes you're up against are rotting, plaguemasters from an outer space and I've never encountered them in any warhammer game I've played before, so that's a plus (I'm tired of Necrons to be honest).

A great, deadly, exhilarating, stressful, and epic turn-based strategy game set in the much-beloved Warhammer 40,000 universe where you control the infinitely awesome Grey Knights. Like others, I can't help but compare it to XCOM 2, but I quickly admitted that Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is an amazing game in its own right and deserves your time to explore and beat. Building your roster of Knights really feels like you're gathering superheroes, and training and equipping them feels very satisfying.

It gets very repetitive near the middle, though. The UI and controls also felt clunky and cluttered, only improving a bit after I got used to it. Definitely could use a cleanup.

I loved this game when is first came out, I just installed in to run a second play and is runs very poorly. Game seems to run at have speed.