Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters

After beating the campaign, and before I jump into the next one to try and collect more achievements, I figured I'd leave a review. First off: This game is hard as balls, even for somebody familiar with the XCOM genre like me. I will attach four helpful tips at the end of this review which may make your life easier if you give the game a shot after reading this. The game is also a bit janky in some regards, but in my opinion, it is the charming kind of jank. Don't expect too grimdark serious business - this is not Space Marine, Mechanicus, or the like. Characters have a clear stereotype reference to the common tropes of the XCOM genre: The grumbly advisor, the smartass researcher gal, and the voice of reason techie. It's charming in a way though, and having a Grey Knight with a severe lisp and an Admech lady with an articulated monobrow is kinda fun. (Shoutout to Lunette, she was consistently my favourite of the trio.) The VA is mostly solid, with some pretty good lines especially in cutscenes, and some of the enemy callouts are pretty good. This being said, the VA for the cultist enemies is /really/ bad, it completely misses the mark and doesn't sell the "mentally unhinged" stereotype well at all. It ends up extremely grating, and really harms the mood in any mission including them. The enemy variety is actually surprisingly decent, despite being Nugle-only themed (like unfortunately many 40k games have). New enemies are often introduced without much fanfare mid-mission, but the "enemy attention triggered" cinematics that zoom in on them and give them a full animation make for some really good "oh crap" moments. Often, what was up until then a fairly casual mission, suddenly turns into a lot of sweating and adrenaline as you try and deal with the new and completely unknown opponent, having to figure out its abilities on the fly. Pretty neat! Overall, the game offers both plenty of well-known, tried and tested things of the genre: Turn-based fights (duh), cover mechanics, range mechanics, explodable environments, enemy behaviour variety, different firearms and (lots!) of melee weapons. But it also gives its own spin on some other things, like the many psychic powers, and the choice of equipment with Power armour or Terminator armour (which influence not only toughness, but also your pathing and movement options!), or some cover pieces you can strategically use to harm enemies (super fun!). Also, the cinematics when you kick down a door are just too cool, made me grin every time. So yeah! Overall, while definitely not up to par with some of the really grand 40k games, I would still recommend this game to anyone who is a 40k fan, and loves the XCOM genre, especially if you can pick it up on a sale. NOW! The promised "four tips to make your life easier", delivered at the end as promised: 1 - This is /not/ XCOM. You can switch between your characters at will during your turn, even after already doing some actions! Use this, and keep going back and forth as needed! 2 - Decide on a "balls to the wall" approach with just straight running in and dealing as much damage as you can asap, or a cautious one (with using the Aegis ability, and moving cover-to-cover). Once you picked, make sure to gear and skill your characters accordingly. Stay consistent. Do not try a middle ground between the two, it will not work well. 3 - A Librarian with teleport, or the Gate of Infinity stratagem are near mandatory. On things like the Bloom missions, you can use them to teleport your entire squad right next to the Bloom or a boss and immediately clap it, bypassing the entire boss room plus any reinforcement waves. It will be less XP than slogging it out, but saves you a looot of time and injury risks. 4 - Get a Purifier with grenades. No, seriously. Depending on tech level of your grenades and enemy level, these dudes can wipe an entire enemy patrol by tossing a krak and then one frag (make sure you do it in that order, as the frag has knockback). Using a Power Armour that gives bonuses to grenades as well as grenade talents will give you 3 of each. This means this mean guy can instantly nuke three enemy patrols all by himself, clearing the way to the main objective of any mission without breaking a sweat. I cannot stress enough the amount of damage these dudes do. I am pretty sure my two Purifiers got easily 75% of the kills of my entire campaign. Bring one of these battle bros anytime you can.

I should love Chaos Gate and I'm ploughing on with it until something else grabs my attention, but I can't honestly recommend it. Imagine if XCOM and Rogue Trader had a baby that got the worst bits of both - that's Chaos Gate. Never have I missed XCOM's random number generator more, and that difference is supposedly one of the good things about the game. And it's actually more annoying than that because there are plenty of random events that can be much more crippling and annoying than failing a 95% chance roll - including at least one that can take a whole squad out of action for a good amount of time. Playing on Normal is hard enough, so how anyone manages on higher levels is beyond me and, if like me, you're time-poor and prone to save scumming there are a very limited number of save slots. And there are games that manage to be different from XCOM whilst doing things a lot better than Chaos Gate - Jagged Alliance 3 and Phoenix Point for two. And neither is it particularly good as a Warhammer game. There is a plot as such but, unlike Rogue Trader (etc), it basically serves just to ferry you from one battle to another, although the cut scenes are very pretty. There are 4X's that have better plots. And the battles are very samey, with a limited variety of enemies and not much more variety of objectives. There are also various timing mechanisms in battles and the strategic layers that funnel you towards certain points and ways of playing. And although there should be plenty of room for experimentation, the high costs of getting things wrong discourage it. I'll admit that the Grey Knights and Nurgle aren't my favourite bits of 40K lore (which, until Rogue Trader, is very poorly explained for those new to 40K) but my first impression was that I was in for some sort of space marine power fantasy, which I'd happily buy into. However, the difficulty spikes are all over the place, and although there's a difficulty indicator for each mission I found one 'extreme' boss battle relatively easy but another 'extreme' spore collecting mission absolutely impossible. I accept that a hard tactics game shouldn't hold your hand too much, but Chaos Gate actively hides useful information. At least I'm running a fairly powerful PC so I haven't had any of the bugs others have reported, but there are things that don't make sense - including one particularly annoying issue with line of sight. I'll update this review if my impressions change but I can't think of a tactics game that has made me more desperate for an XCOM3.

The game is just too hard, even on normal difficulty. It's grueling, unforgiving, and made in a way that if you don't optimize everything to the T, you're going to fail missions, and soon the whole campaign. At that point, you have to restart the entire campaign... 20-30h of gameplay down the drain. The game is so hard, that you'll have to save constantly, cause one small mistake could be fatal. There's absolutely no space for any sort of mistakes starting from about 1/3 of the game. If you're a masochist, you'll love this. Otherwise, maybe play it on Easy. I played on normal, and after restarting the same non-optional story mission 20 times, at about 1/3 of the way in the campaign, after 30h of play, I just gave up. I was not having any fun whatsoever, even thought I'm a pretty hardcore video game player.

The spike in difficulty is too quick and too sharp, but this would be ok if it wasn't for the fact that there is only one autosave, and it's after the end of every action, not at the start or end of a turn. The game clearly wants you to save-scum it, because every action is punishable and of the 10 possible outcomes, only 1 is the right one. Worst of all, the option to restart a mission takes you to the start of the mission, regardless of whether or not you are at the second stage of said mission, and have to go through the whole slog leading up to a boss fight. The mechanics are good, cover especially it a really interesting one as it reduces oncoming damage rather than makes shots miss, which is great for someone who hates missing a 95% shot. However the main mechanic of the game is the Bloom, which is basically a timer, and it sucks. It rises too quickly, the effects are too random and vary between removing the ability for you to be able to use abilities, to buffing the enemy significantly. My other biggest gripe is the inability to return to the campaign map (Ship) before the mission starts after you started a mission. Went into a mission thinking that it was going to require a more melee focused squad, only for the mission to almost beg for ranged units, but there is no option to restart from before the mission starts because the autosave doesn't give you one from before the mission start! Overall the game looks great, interesting cover mechanics, but honestly not worth it unless you love the old-skool dark souls vibe of "I hate myself so I game to remind myself that I live to suffer" rather than "I game to enjoy my time"

XCOM but Grey Knights... Should tell you all that you need to know in order to make a decision for yourself. It says no steam deck support but i've enjoyed 80 total hours of play time on my steam deck exclusively. Some things are a little difficult to read at times but nothing a little manual zoom in (bring the screen to your face) won't fix. lol. The DLC are mixed bag, the assasins one is cool but the mechanicus one with the dreadnought and tech marine are optional and all they do ius make the base game harder on you. I'd skip it entirely. Overall fun game. watch a couple reviews and the choice will be pretty clear to you pretty quickly if you want it or not.

Warhammer 40.000: Chaos Gate - Deamonhunters https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3670195689 [b]POSITIVES[/b] + Warhammer 40K Setting mit Space Marines der Grey Knights gegen Death Guard und Nurgle Dämonen + tolle Waffeneffekte und auch die Einheiten wurden den Originalen Tabletop-Modellen detailgetreu nachempfunden + Einheiten-Kommentare und coole Warhammer-Zitate passen stets zum Kampfgeschehen und tragen so viel zur Atmosphäre bei + sehr coole treibende Soundtracks + zunächst 4 unterschiedliche Klassen: Purgator (Fernkampfwaffen-Spezialist), Interceptor (teleportierender Plänkler), Justicar (schwergepanzerter Frontkämpfer), Apothecarius (Kampfsanitäter) + später noch Paladin (Schwerer Nahkämpfer mit Sturmschild), Ordenspriester (Buffer viel Rüstung), Scriptor (Flächenwirksamer Psioniker und Gruppen-Teleportierer mit viel WP) und Purificator (Flammenwerfer und Granaten) + Techmarine und Dreadnaught (nur mit DLC Duty Eternal) + Bewaffnung und Ausrüstung je nach Klasse frei wählbar + Charaktere auch optisch anpassbar + Rundenkämpfe mit je 3 Aktionspunkten pro Space Marine, die beliebig für Bewegung, Angriffe und Fähigkeiten eingesetzt werden können + Teilweise und Vollständige Deckung + gezielte Psi-Angriffe um Gegner zu betäuben, Rüstung zu durchdringen, Fähigkeiten zu unterdrücken, Waffen auszuschalten, usw. + verdammt coole und abwechslungsreiche Schlachtfelder + zerstörbare und interaktive Umgebung: Explosionen können Brücken zum Einsturz bringen, Pfeiler und Kräne können umgestürzt werden und dabei sogar Mauern durchschlagen, Öllachen entzündet, Feuerschalen umgeworfen und Dinge zur Detonation gebracht werden + Kill-Cam + Warpwoge sorgt für zufällige Mutationen der Gegner, die diese buffen und besondere Fähigkeiten verleihen können oder einen debufft + durch erlangte Erfahrung können die Grey Knights bis zu 9x befördert und dadurch in einem Fähigkeitenbaum verbessert werden + eigenes Raumschiff, das an eine fliegende Kathedrale erinnert, kann immer weiter aufgerüstet werden; Beschädigungen sind am Schiff auch optisch sichtbar (später bekommt man noch eine kleinere Zusatz-Fregatte die eigenständig auf Missionen geschickt werden kann) + Forschung + Zufallsereignisse und Entscheidungen mit spürbaren Auswirkungen + „Ruhmreiche Taten“ erschweren die Mission, erhöhen aber die Belohnung + Archäotech um Gefälligkeiten beim Adeptus Mechanicus einzutauchen + später können eingesammelte Saaten zu Reinheitssiegeln veredelt werden um Ausrüstung zu verbessern + KI handelt stets klug, nutzt Deckungen aus und beherrscht ihre speziellen Fähigkeiten + sehr coole Bosskämpfe (es gibt insgesamt 7) + Kastellan Crowe (legendärer Grey Knight) + lange Spielzeit von locker 120 Stunden https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3681116552 [b]NEGATIVES[/b] - etwas seltsamer, comichafter Grafikstil - keine deutsche Vertonung (aber deutsche Untertitel und Menüs) - Kamera ist nicht mit der Maus schwenkbar, sondern nur(!) mittels Tasten am oberen Bildschirmrand und auch nur in 4(!) Positionen - Kamerasteuerung ist ansonsten komplett irre; man kann nicht weit genug rauszoomen und „Kantenschwenken“ springt ständig an Orte wo man die Kamera gerade nicht haben will (ohne diese Funktion kann man aber auch nicht spielen, da man ansonsten noch weniger sieht) - Animationen können nicht beschleunigt werden - Dreadnaught ist nur in bestimmten Missionem einsetzbar und auch nur mit DLC (für mich gehört der ins Grundspiel) - Grindlastiger als man es aus der X-COM Reihe kennt - zu wenig Speicherplätze (nur 5 + 1 Auto) - man darf leider nicht als Death Guard spielen - Mission mit unfassbarem Performance Einbruch; und zwar jene bei der große Feuerschalen dargestellt werden (nur 1x passiert) - viele Abstürze (mehrmals und teils sogar täglich passiert) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3683051051 [b]FAZIT[/b] Chaos Gate: Deamonhunters von Mitte 2022 ist eine Mischung aus taktischem RundenKampf und Strategiemanagement und ähnelt daher sehr stark den X-COM-Spielen. Das Spiel transportiert dabei pure Warhammer 40K Atmosphäre. Hauptgegner sind die Anhänger des Nurgle, von denen es zwar recht viele und auch mit unterschiedlicher Bewaffnung gibt, aber ich hätte mir noch andere gegnerische Fraktionen gewünscht. Wäre da nicht die furchtbare Kamerasteuerung , eine etwas erwachsenere Grafik und etwas weniger Grinding, wäre es nahezu perfekt. Es gab auch erstaunlich viel Story, die auch mit gut umgesetzten Videosequenzen dargestellt wurde. Fans von Warhammer 40K aber auch jenen, die die X-COM-Spiele mochten, ist das Spiel klar zu empfehlen. Wenn ihr an weiteren Reviews von mir interessiert seid, dann folgt meiner [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/10868887-Dark-Chummer%27s-Reviews/?appid=63110]Gruppe[/url].

I'm an XCOM veteran and a WH40k enjoyer, and I loved this game. If that describes you, you'll likely enjoy it too.

I really tried getting into this game, but it is so frustrating that I cannot recommend it. Chaos Gate - Daemon hunters is an X-Com style game in a Warhammer 40K setting. This is a combination that should sell like hot cookies but the game drops the ball on the technical level. The game is riddled with so many annoying bugs. Sometimes the game will refuse to launch and just hang there, you'll have to kill the game in task manager and try again. FPS drops randomly during combat, my rig should chew this game like nothing so I suspect this is related to either Denuvo DRM, bad optimization or a combination of both. Enemies have a tendency to clip through the environment and either skip their turn or get stuck, forcing you to load. Some teleporting enemies simply cause the game to crash/freeze. The worst offender are corrupt save files. I encountered one relatively early in the campaign but the 2nd one happened after the first boss fight and I had to delete and restart after some 20 hours of gameplay... I tried everything to try and save the file but eventually I decided to stop and drop the game. This is very frustrating as the story is interesting and engaging, I ended up watching it on youtube and was surprised at how many famous 40K characters appeared in it. Same can be said for combat, when it works it is fun and tactical, with cool destructive environment, challenging enemies and interesting abilities and party compositions to mess around with. Before buying this game I checked the reviews and decided to take a chance, thinking i'll manage with the technical issues. Don't be like me, don't take that chance, stay away from it and go play Mechanicus II instead.

The core gameplay is solid, but some of the design decisions are baffling. I have no idea why the game forces you to completely enable or disable things like ship warp-travel cutscenes in the options menu instead of simply letting players skip them with a mouse click when they don't want to watch them. Another issue is movement. There is no reason the game couldn't let you press Tab to switch control to another soldier while one is moving. Instead, you're forced to sit there and watch a single unit slowly walk all the way to its destination before you can continue issuing orders. The result is a painfully slow pace. Unfortunately, the lack of mission variety only makes this worse. You'll be replaying the same mission types over and over again, and before long the game becomes extremely repetitive and tedious. Because of that, I strongly recommend that first-time players start on Easy or Normal difficulty. On higher difficulties, the game is not only harder but also far more time-consuming. Since story progression is tied to research, and research takes longer when you're struggling through tougher missions, the overall campaign can start to feel like a slog. I can easily see players burning out and dropping the game halfway through. That's exactly what happened to me.

Really wanted to enjoy this game. I am not a huge Warhammer fan, but I appreciate the lore. The first few missions felt fine, then I took a break and came back later. That is when things started to fall apart. The interface is hard to read, and it’s difficult to tell your knights apart beyond their names. Getting back into the campaign was confusing, and the game quickly forced me into missions that felt overwhelmingly difficult. I don’t mind a challenge, but this feels unbalanced. I constantly feel under equipped, with no real way to catch up. Progress often feels reversed. Take one step forward, then two or three back due to enemy spawns, healing, and stacking debuffs. The Bloom mechanic just makes it worse, almost every second round there is something spawning or debuffing you. The game looks great and offers solid tactical options, but it often feels like you will get punished no matter how you play. Even if you play on the easiest difficulty.