Having finally dragged myself through this slog of a completion challenge, I have to say, i'm very dissapointed with what I ended up experiencing as I went through this game. I decided to pick this, at random, to be my first Warhammer strategy game to take to completion - and i was expecting a sort of RTS with a squad focus, like say, Halo Wars. I was not prepared for this to be a squad only game, with no base building, upgrades, resources ect. Well, that's not a bad thing in and of itself, the game can still be fun right? Theoretically, yes. In practice? No.
Now, i was playing on Primarch this entire time, because I had to for the achievements. I do not advise anyone ever plays on Primarch, because it's just not fun. In the base game, you'll be gibbed six ways to sunday before you even move six steps into a level because they enemy does over 3x normal damage, so the best strategy is to kill them as quickly as humanly possible because if you don't you'll just die, but it's also a long, shallow, drawn out campaign of incredibly simple and repetetive actions. Now, in theory, the strategy should be in the micro, right? Use your squads abilities, be tactical, sneak around and look for weakpoints? Sorry, about half your missions are defence missions, and the rest involve you having to generally blast your way through strongholds because you are also being timed! If you don't clean the entire map in a short time while not dying, it will take you dozens upon dozens of hours to get the score up high enough for the achievement. Don't like having to watch your units ignore your orders, run into melee when set on ranged mode, refuse to pathfind properly, get stuck on rocks, get literally one-shot from across the visible distance, refuse to *stop* meleeing enemies when you ask them to and instead get gibbed, and run around the map looking for consumables to keep your squad in the barest definition of functioning long enough to maybe kill things? Tough ♥♥♥♥. That is this game. Tactical cover? Enemy breaks it. Go in a building? You can't shoot enemies half the time, and if they blow up the building (and they will), your entire squad dies. DoW II's main game is a shallow, boring slog of slow, painful torture as your squads refuse to do what you tell them and get themselves killed, all the while having to move at a breakneck pace in order to actually DO anything.
What about the expansion campaign, i hear you ask? Well, that is honestly better. The additional room for builds and specialisations lets you create some really nice squads and actually mow through chaos hoards in a way that feels fun. There were times, when i was playing the expansion, when i could progress like an actual space marine strike squad and the missions felt tight and interesting. That is, until the last mission throws that out the window. First, you get two tanks that are somehow *less* durable than your marines to clear out a path to drop your troops in, as the game manages to ambush you from the fog of war with three or four tanks multiple times, when your only reliable way of killing said tanks is a long cooldown on one of your tanks, meaning you either have to inch forward very very slowly and hope to only aggro one at a time before using the ability and waiting minutes to get the cooldown back, then repeat - or you have to try using your regular attacks against them, being hit in your rear weak point from enemies that are directly in front of you, and probably blowing up while the world's worst rescue squad drives across the map to die in six seconds to the tanks that are spawn camping you. When you actually get to use your squaddies, it's not too bad until the game decides to tell you "hey, dumbass, go kill the boss" and I start looking at the minimap for a way down and find... absolutely nothing. The entire minimap looks like it's completely seperate from the section with the boss in it. So after running around while the pride of the blood ravens suicide charge the enemy fortifications, i finally look it up and find out i'm supposed to go down a random side path, where i have to fight an obscenely tanky and boring boss to be able to get to the final boss. Said boss then proceeds to immediately one-shot half my squad, through their armor, tankiness, defensive builds and buffs and then starts throwing around my soldiers like toys. After an incredibly arduous and thoroughly frustrating and boring fight that took about 15 mins of "chip damage, revive ally, try to avoid AoE but get hit anyway, try to group back up but can't and watch all the defenses in the game mean literally nothing", he dies. Then the game's over, and I have to say, i was glad it was done.
But completion wise? Not only is the actual singleplayer forcing you onto the most painful and abusive difficulty setting, but about half the game's achievements are MP only! The MP that barely anyone still plays! So, ♥♥♥♥ you completionists, you'll get nothing and be happy with it. I came because i wanted strategy and skill, and what I got was tedium, pain and suffering where barely anything I could do made a difference and half the game can't be completed without inordinate pain or grinding. I have no doubts i would've had a lot more fun on a lower difficulty, and maybe then i could've clicked a bit better with the gameplay system, but honestly? For a "strategy" game, there's often very little you can actually do to be strategic. Not recommended.
