WH40K: Chaos Gate Daemonhunters

[Hozz 1017]

On to my next WH40K set video game!  This one just came out and it's pretty good.  Think Xcom2 and Gears Tactics have a baby.  You are in charge of a ship that serves as your base and visit various systems putting out fires with a squad of four grey knight space marines.  There are 4 classes initially (4 more late in the game but the way it works is you could go a whole game and not see all 4 of the other classes much less recruit one of each) and they all play pretty different.  You research tech using 1 resource, upgrade/repair your ship using another and requisition new gear and marines with yet another.

It is really hard early on if you go in blind.  4 difficulty levels where the easy one gives you bonuses, standard gives nothing and the two above standard buff enemies and nerf the player.  I started on standard and got my ass handed to me early and restarted on easy.  Probably should have just started a new game on standard again as once you start getting levels and gear the game gets a lot easier.

Very much like Xcom you are expected to have casualties and there are a few game mechanics around this.  The biggest reason the game is hard early is because of the wound mechanic.  Basically if you take any damage at all, whether you heal it or not, your guy will get a debuff post mission that gives him -X HP and a recovery time before that debuff goes away.  You can still use them on missions they will just have less HP.  And the more wounded you get the greater the HP penalty and the longer the recovery time.  Compounding this mechanic's significance is that marines are in very short supply early on.  You start with just 6 guys and you can't pick the classes, they are preset.  On easy this mechanic is nerfed a lot and you also start with 8 guys instead of 6.

In actual combat if you go to zero HP, once per mission you will come back after 3 turns at half health.  If you get to 0 HP twice in one mission you are permadead.  Also most marines have a counter on them that decreases by one every time you get to 0 HP and if that counter gets to zero you are permadead.  This counter starts at 3 and goes up as you level.  Anytime you go to 0 HP on a mission that marine is unavailable until fully recovered at which point they also get a random implant that gives them a small stat boost of some kind.  Finally you can respec your guys but it requires some research AND having 1 permadead marine for every respec you want to do.

Anyway, this is a must buy IMO if you liked either Xcom2 or Gears Tactics.

[kilroydos 267]

I'm getting this for when I wrap up my Farcry backlog.  Thanks for the heads-up.  I just hope I can adjust to losing soldiers, as XCOM made me overly cautious.

[Hozz 1017]

I've got about 60 hours into the game.  I was mistaken in my initial post, looking at my saves in retrospect I started on Ruthless, got destroyed on one early story mission, restarted on Merciful, found that to be too easy and restarted on Standard which I eventually won easily (last mission is crazy and I came close to losing dudes).  I started a new campaign on Ruthless and I am on the mission that destroyed me my first run through and I expect much better results.

You are definitely going to get wounded knights on any difficulty but it is very possible to never lose any permanently, especially on non-Legendary difficulties.  The main difference between this and Xcom is you must play aggressively on the tactical map.  It is very similar to Gears Tactics in that regard, if you played that.  Every mission has a meter that fills up by X% depending on the mission at the end of the turn and when it gets to 100% a random bad thing happens and the meter resets.  Sometimes the random bad thing is no big deal, sometimes it can be a PITA.  Also overwatch is terrible relative to Xcom.  It takes you out of cover and early on the enemies have better range than you do and is only ever worth it if you are facing one of the maybe 3 enemy types in the game.

[MillerEP 30446]

Picked and up and enjoying it. It definitely scratches the XCom itch for me.

[Hozz 1017]

There have been two DLCs since the game released almost two years ago.  The first one was not well received.  It makes the game notably more difficult and restricts the better of the two new units to only certain missions.  The second DLC was a lot better.  It features 4 new Assassin units from WH40K lore and they are all very different, and fun to play.  I think these might be on sale now, on Steam.

The game was also recently ported to consoles finally, curiously absent the two DLCs.