My review for the 'early access'

[Goeroe]

I really wanted to like this game, I really did, but the game won't let me.

This game looks great on paper, but in reality it falls apart as painfully as Warhammer Fantasy.

I looks great, the voice acting is excellent, the SFX sound punchy and it remains loyal to its source material, but that is where the positive aspects end.

Here are some of the most glaring issues.

The moment to moment gameplay can only be described as an erratic back and forth battle over useless victory points in the middle of nowhere. You are just trying to constantly funnel new units into this boring, unresponsive meat grinder of combat.

Once units start fighting, they are unable to be controlled, outside of activating certain abilities or retreating halfway accross the map.

The economy system is mobile game like in depth. There are a few upgrades of which only a few meaningfully change your units. The resource point system of capturing zones on the map is horrible. The price of upgrading zones compared to just buying more fodder to throw into the melee makes it so that you never bother upgrading your zones. capture points take about 10 seconds to be taken and can't be meaningfully fortified. This leads to there being no front-line to the fighting behind which you can maneuver your units or you know.......EXPAND YOUR BASE.

The dichotomy between units being slow as slugs and dying as fast as them too, makes it so that moving your units is the only meaningful thing you'll ever do in this game.

I don't feel like comparing games is fair, but in this case the similarities are staggering. It feels like the developer looked at Dawn of War 2, copied all the gameplay elements, streamlined them, put a Age of Sigmar coating on it and called it a day.

Only they forgot to add all the things that made that game so great, the interactive combat, the cover mechanics, the upgrades to individual squads and heroes, the pacing. All of it is missing.

This review might come of harsh, but that's just because i'm dissapointed. Underneath all of the terrible gameplay, is a promising Warhammer RTS. Something we haven't had since 2012.

There are a hundred more things i could criticize, such as the lack of depth, the bare bones roster, the frankly ridiculous price tag, the lack of information shown to the player(Unit health, Damage, Armour, movement speed), the empty non informative UI, but I'm tired.

I want this game to succeed, But In this state I can't in good faith recommend it to anyone.

A real shame.

[rolfvonsmirker]

Originally posted by Goeroe:

This review might come of harsh, but that's just because i'm dissapointed.

Well said. Disappointment is exactly the word to describe it.

[richyrich0501]

Been very indecisive about buying this game. Just wanted to say thank you for the in-depth review. I agree with you, it’s a shame this didn’t work out well, I’ve been really wanting to play a rts game and I thought this could’ve been it :(

[Kuh]

100% true, i had to refund this game its a shame .. after some matches i was already bored as hell ..

[MoreTTo]

Originally posted by Kermitdaftfrog:

You can tell the studio making this game is purely profit driven, no passion behind the game itself

I disagree. There seems to be a lot of passion in the game. I mean, the cutscenes, top notch voice acting, respect for the source material, the army painter. It seems the devs really wanted to make a good foundation to the game. I believe they will try to make a lot of DLCs, to get the most profit. Thats what Frontier have done with their other games.

On the other hand, i agree with some points of our friends review. I am not as disappointed as you guys, but i feel it could be better. I hope they put a lot of effort on the post release support so the game can get some fixes.

Is it perfect? Far from it, but it has some great foundation for future support and DLC.

[monstachruck]

Originally posted by MoreTTo:

Originally posted by Kermitdaftfrog:

You can tell the studio making this game is purely profit driven, no passion behind the game itself

I disagree. There seems to be a lot of passion in the game. I mean, the cutscenes, top notch voice acting, respect for the source material, the army painter. It seems the devs really wanted to make a good foundation to the game. I believe they will try to make a lot of DLCs, to get the most profit. Thats what Frontier have done with their other games.

On the other hand, i agree with some points of our friends review. I am not as disappointed as you guys, but i feel it could be better. I hope they put a lot of effort on the post release support so the game can get some fixes.

Is it perfect? Far from it, but it has some great foundation for future support and DLC.

Agreed. I guess I get that it wasn't what some people were expecting, but I actually like the slower pace, high attrition, and the lock on units in melee (although I wish "retreat" only sent them like a little screen's length back, not all the way back to the home base). I also wish the capture times on the points was waaay quicker.

The visual quality and music/audio quality is surprisingly top-notch. The dialogue and voice acting is actually pretty good too, and I'm super picky about this usually. Ghur is such a cool setting too, the maps are awesome.

I think it needs some tinkering with the mechanics, and definitely could use more content (units, upgrades, factions, maps, etc.), but it's a good game with good bones for growth, a 7/10 for me. That said, I'm a little older and slower; what a lot of folks see as simplification, I see as stream-lining. Tastes may very.

[RTK | I3]

Man multiplayer gameplay is superb.
Idk where all these people are saying slow and boring and meaningless lol.

Play an actual tough multiplayer match that makes u think and be creative and the game starts to shine

[His name is Robert Paulson]

It's weird seeing reviews like this as if Dawn of War 2 wasn't exactly like this and wasn't an excellent game.

[SpaceBuddy]

Game will just get better in time. So far enjoying it.

[MoreTTo]

I feel the game is not slow at all. The population cap is pretty high if you compare it with DoW 2, for example. That way, there are a lot more units in a battle. Those units all have one or two skills. This demands a lot of micro. I mean, battles are really tense, and the melee engagement mechanic really adds to the tension. The game needs to be a little slower for the player to react. If we had even faster units and faster engagements, this would be a SC2 Pro microintensive type of game. And by watching the developers interviews, I feel that is not what they wanted. This is a tactical RTS with a good emphasis on positioning and microing individual units.

I am happy with it. I am older too and I like the pace of the game.

[RTK | I3]

Originally posted by Curtis:

Originally posted by RTK | I3:

Man multiplayer gameplay is superb.
Idk where all these people are saying slow and boring and meaningless lol.

Play an actual tough multiplayer match that makes u think and be creative and the game starts to shine

Dunno what game your playing but it's push / pull deathball combat till one of you wins by points

Playing as the storm cast and upgrading missiles to long range you can easily lock down points and have a defensive play style. I’ve been winning tonnes of matches fighting defensively and locking down whole areas of the map forcing enemies to try flanking maneuvers.

It’s really quite good when you understand how to play your faction

[Athemus]

It seems to me that you just described an RTS game whishing it was something else to meet your expectation.

[MeGa]

Fixes needed that can improve gameplay:

Unit stances, hold position, retaliate from attacks, a better attack move, polished group responsiveness.

A more fortified version of what we can build in the cap points, so we can turtle and hold positions better, instead of going mad vs a 3000 apm AI that caps non stop.

Among other stuff, like maybe a soft retreat option in addition to current, so troops go just a little back instead of straight to base?

The game is very close to being great, lets tell devs what to improve!

Originally posted by MoreTTo:

Originally posted by Kermitdaftfrog:

You can tell the studio making this game is purely profit driven, no passion behind the game itself

I disagree. There seems to be a lot of passion in the game. I mean, the cutscenes, top notch voice acting, respect for the source material, the army painter. It seems the devs really wanted to make a good foundation to the game. I believe they will try to make a lot of DLCs, to get the most profit. Thats what Frontier have done with their other games.

On the other hand, i agree with some points of our friends review. I am not as disappointed as you guys, but i feel it could be better. I hope they put a lot of effort on the post release support so the game can get some fixes.

Is it perfect? Far from it, but it has some great foundation for future support and DLC.

Yes, theres a lot of passion in the game. Except a too streamlined, non innovative gameplay, the game pours quality in most of areas.

Originally posted by monstachruck:

Originally posted by MoreTTo:

I disagree. There seems to be a lot of passion in the game. I mean, the cutscenes, top notch voice acting, respect for the source material, the army painter. It seems the devs really wanted to make a good foundation to the game. I believe they will try to make a lot of DLCs, to get the most profit. Thats what Frontier have done with their other games.

On the other hand, i agree with some points of our friends review. I am not as disappointed as you guys, but i feel it could be better. I hope they put a lot of effort on the post release support so the game can get some fixes.

Is it perfect? Far from it, but it has some great foundation for future support and DLC.

Agreed. I guess I get that it wasn't what some people were expecting, but I actually like the slower pace, high attrition, and the lock on units in melee (although I wish "retreat" only sent them like a little screen's length back, not all the way back to the home base). I also wish the capture times on the points was waaay quicker.

The visual quality and music/audio quality is surprisingly top-notch. The dialogue and voice acting is actually pretty good too, and I'm super picky about this usually. Ghur is such a cool setting too, the maps are awesome.

I think it needs some tinkering with the mechanics, and definitely could use more content (units, upgrades, factions, maps, etc.), but it's a good game with good bones for growth, a 7/10 for me. That said, I'm a little older and slower; what a lot of folks see as simplification, I see as stream-lining. Tastes may very.

Agreed! Overall quality is top notch, I think they could make some improvement with the mechanics, thats all.

[ArchAnge1LT]

Retreating and making sure you do not retreat is part of the strategy. Not engaging fights you will lose is also a strategy. Making sure you are in support distance is also a strategy. It may seem erratic at first, but with it gets more fun when you engage more with the game.

So it is not erratic at all. Maybe lacking in more serious depth, but the strategic and tactical part is absolutely there.

[Elliott]

I'm enjoying it so far. I like that you can fortify points. Dawn of war 2 never let you do that so anyone could just capture them with no effort.

Most of the unit abilities are satisfying to use. The production values are solid although I am missing sync kills from DOW2.

I'm sure ill have more criticism after playing for longer and I do think the price is too high but thats not feedback unique to this game I think most games struggle to justify a £50-£60 price and this game isn't trying to push in game purchases like say Company of Heroes 3 has.

[DiZY]

Game is close to perfect, but well...everything in comments 100% true. Its lack of control options, movement smoothnes and tactical options.