Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II

I really, really wanted to like this game, as I'd been hyped for it since the release trailer came out. If you like turn based strategy games, you'll probably have a reasonable time with this, but it will ultimately disappoint fans of the first game. THE GOOD: •Most, if not all, units have unique abilities that make each one valuable on the battlefield •Random access to units means that, as you unlock more units, you will have to vary your strategy •Focus on named Tech-Priest Leaders with a modular skill tree allows progression without the ability custom craft the most broken Tech Priests since the Schism of Mars •Unit progression via research means you will feel the benefits of unlocking new techs •Unit rank system makes each squad a little different, possibly having more movement, HP, or special abilities that make a unit more versatile, hit harder, or live longer •The Lector Dogmatis' voice is phenomenal THE NEUTRAL: •The game isn't *un*stable, but you do need to save regularly to avoid progress loss from crashes. Don't alt tab. •The two campaigns do not feel very different from each other •Activity on the overworld map starts off being incredibly useful but only gets less useful over time •No unique Flayer or Destroyer Cult mechanics. Flayed Ones and various Destroyer constructs are units you can use, but I personally expected to have some of the Nobles interact with them in some way •Most melee units are decent when they arrive but have low movement, making shooting almost strictly better. •I personally like the focus on non-hero units, but people who really enjoyed building Your Dudes in the first game may not. THE BAD: •Optional missions do not matter. You can expand your territory, but that doesn't *do* anything other than let you play the game and get XP for your leaders •Enemy units have no progression, meaning your units will slowly eclipse them until even the most elite forces pose no challenge •Necron gameplay is incredibly boring, with almost no loadout diversity between Nobles and reanimation protocols very rarely mattering without the direct use of a resurrection orb. I struggle to tell the nobles apart. •The Leagues of Votann were shoehorned into the game •Mission diversity is almost nonexistent. There are precious few "hold out" combats, the occasional "Reach Destination" combat, and 99% of your gameplay will be "Kill them all." There are a few things I want to address in longer form. The lack of enemy progression is what makes this game ultimately a chore to finish. I have finished several combats in literally one shot from a Kataphron. There are no surprises with defenses like the first game; units of the same type always have the same armor, the same HP, the same amount of defense. There's no more firing a weapon at an unscanned unit only to find that that one resists the weapon you shot at them. I can fire an overcharged plasma cannon into a brick of Warriors knowing that my Minimum 6 damage will kill each and every one of them. There are, total, four Votann units in the game. Two of them are the same unit with different guns. It's very clear that the developers just wanted to be the first game to include the Leagues of Votann in a video game, a fact they trumpeted in their advertising. Ultimately, their presence is negligible. There are some interesting interactions in the campaign, and a few scripted missions where you fight them, but I think I encountered them on optional missions a grand total of twice. At one point in the game, I legitimately thought I'd just reached a point where they no longer appeared because you fight them so infrequently. I don't think they need the same amount of development as a playable faction, but very little work went into them and it shows. The lack of diversity in Necron gameplay ultimately made something I was very excited about coming into the game dull and uninteresting. Four of your five nobles are all possible combinations of Warscythe or Staff of Light and the Phase Arrow (I think this is what it's called?) or a Reanimation Orb. The fifth is a sword and board. They have different skills, but many are almost ineffective until higher levels of Dominion, which I seldom reached because of the speed combats resolve at. As a consequence of this, the major difference between the Nobles is the units they're allowed to field, as each has a fixed roster. This does lead to minor strategic gameplay but ultimately was unsatisfying enough that I just do not plan to complete their campaign. I know that there is an epilogue after completing both, but the game became such a chore towards the end of the Mechanicus campaign that my desire to play more has been snuffed out.

Game is full of bad decisions. Everything that made first game great is abandoned. No more making your custom super soldiers, now there is extremely restrictive barely existent customization. Tech Priests don't speak the cool machine language, they still sometimes default to English even if you pick the halfassed toggle option they added. But worst part is story. It is abysmal. They do this stupid "Oh there is one story you experience it from different parts" we had a working system since ages ago. It's called having two separate campaigns. One for Necrons one for Tech Priests, what the hell is this have your cake and eat it to nonsense? Unsatisfying, full of holes for other campaign to go through and weird pacing. I wanted to play as Necrons, kick the humans out and win. Why is this a difficult concept? Even losing the last mission in first game gives you a more satisfying Necron ending. Here I just finish a mission telling me I won a great victory then aftermath shows I am losing everything because of stuff from Mechanicus campaign. Two of the three bosses whole game builds up don't even come up because they got killed in human campaign. Complete waste of time.

Review by [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34633003-Gaming-Masterpieces/lists/] [u] Gaming Masterpieces [/u] [/url] - The greatest games of all time on Steam. Is this game a masterpiece? No, not really. It is something for die-hard Warhammer fans who always wanted to command the mysterious Necrons. Here you can play them for the first time in a fully playable Necron campaign. Eight years after its fantastic predecessor, the sequel to one of the best turn-based strategy games of recent years has finally arrived. This time, players can command one of two factions: the ancient, immortal legions of the Necrons or the techno-religious worshippers of the Omnissiah, the Adeptus Mechanicus. The story begins when Vargard Nefershah, an ancient Necron leader, is awakened from her millennia-long slumber in a cryo-temple by what she considers a pest infestation. It is time to exterminate the vermin. At the start of the game, four difficulty levels are available, ranging from Narrative to Grim Darkness. I chose the Normal setting. The campaign takes place on the overgrown planet Hecatus IV, a world that the Adeptus Mechanicus intends to transform into a new Forge World filled with massive manufacturing facilities. Your initial objective is to investigate an ancient ruin. Unfortunately, the expedition accidentally awakens the Necrons, for whom Hecatus IV is a sacred tomb world. This sparks a war between the recently arrived Adeptus Mechanicus forces and the awakened Necrons, who are determined to defend their world to the last warrior before eventually reclaiming the galaxy—ambitious plans require ambitious actions. The story is told from the perspectives of both factions. Rather than playing one entire campaign and then the other, the game initially alternates between the two viewpoints, allowing players to experience events from both sides of the conflict. Once the prologue concludes, the real campaign begins. At this point, players choose a faction and fight for dominance across the planetary map. You conquer territories, expand your military forces, and develop your infrastructure. The two factions play very differently: Necrons focus on defending their tomb complexes while gradually awakening more warriors to join the war effort, Adeptus Mechanicus emphasize resource production and industrial expansion, enabling them to field increasingly powerful units. A mission typically consists of several battles connected by story sequences. Units carry their damage forward from one encounter to the next, making careful management essential. Before each mission, you assemble the forces that will participate. Combat is entirely turn-based and focuses on individual units. Your faction leader must survive, while other troops can be sacrificed if doing so secures victory. At the start of each battle, units are deployed, and reinforcements may arrive later to replace casualties. Every unit receives a turn each round. A timeline on the right side of the screen displays the upcoming activation order. One interesting mechanic is that, when your faction's turn arrives, you can choose which of your available units acts next. Units can move or perform an attack or special ability, which typically ends their turn. Some troops possess unique abilities, while others feature armor that must be destroyed before damage can be dealt directly. Each faction also has its own distinctive mechanics. Cover now plays an important role in battle, a feature that was absent from the original game. Units can hide behind walls and terrain for protection, adding another strategic layer to encounters. Combat flows surprisingly smoothly. Select a unit, move it, fire its weapon, and continue. Anyone familiar with turn-based tactics games will immediately feel at home. While many games with similar mechanics can feel sluggish, Mechanicus II maintains a brisk and enjoyable pace. Of course, complexity quickly emerges. Deciding which unit should move, where it should go, and what action it should perform becomes increasingly important as the campaign progresses. Victory requires careful planning and tactical thinking. Combat is only part of the experience. Between battles, the story unfolds through narrative events that frequently pause to present multiple-choice decisions. These choices have meaningful consequences, such as reducing the reinforcements available to your enemies in future engagements. One of Mechanicus II's biggest innovations is its planetary base-management system. Players can construct and upgrade strongholds both above and below the planet's surface. As with your army, strategic decisions matter greatly. The placement of your leaders influences available bonuses and improvements. However, assigning an officer to defend a position means that character cannot participate in battlefield operations. Determining the best use for every unit and commander is critical to overall success. The battlefield camera can be rotated freely, making it easy to maintain a clear overview of the action. Players can also zoom in using the mouse wheel to get a closer look at the fighting. Controller support is included, though I personally preferred using keyboard and mouse. My 3440×1440 ultrawide monitor was also put to excellent use, with the game making full use of the available screen space. One tip: consider limiting the frame rate in the options menu. Without a cap, my PC's cooling fans nearly achieved liftoff. [u][b] Conclusion:[/b][/u] Solid but a bit boring turn-based strategy game with limited customization options. It offers a single overarching story viewed through two playable factions, resulting in two distinct narrative campaigns and two very different playstyles. The Adeptus Mechanicus are technologically enhanced humans who worship the Machine God and rely on industry, resources, and advanced technology. Their rivals, the Necrons, are ancient undead killing machines composed of living metal—a race that once ruled the galaxy millions of years ago. Advancing relentlessly with ranks of Necron warriors, ignoring cover and marching forward with mechanical inevitability, is immensely satisfying and gives me a special Terminator vibe. Still, the game is not as good as part 1 was.

Needs infinitely more fleshing out, ironic for a game abhorring the flesh.

This game is so confusingly bad, I have spent less game-time playing it and more googling to try and figure out how it came out so much worse than the first one. Development was clearly rushed, with barely any marketing or hype. It kinda just came out during the Skulls event. Buggy, unbalanced, poorly designed and the audio downgrade is a tragedy. The story is okay, buy it on discount after bugs get patched if you are really into the lore. Design-wise the game feels like a bunch of ideas were thrown out, implemented in random order until time ran out, and never tested. Like, it makes sense to copy-paste the troop deployment limit system for the AdMec to keep you from trivializing later fights, right? But reanimation protocols is another mechanic ported over from the first game and downed Necrons count towards your limit while playing that faction. So if you can only deploy 6 units early on and 2 are downed, you are playing 3 turns with just 4 units unless you brought the leader that revives them. Because design is a mess, Necron units also have a mechanic to resurrect in the squad after being fully killed in a fight. So, instead of picking one and polishing it, you have 2 mechanics to recover troops as Necrons but the first is copied over from the first game and clashes with deployment limits, and the second is new but they don't lean into it because the first is already there. The music is composed by Guillaume David, who did an excellent job with the previous game. But this game's soundtrack is so bad by comparison, there is paid DLC to just replace it with the previous game's soundtrack. There is also a bug, probably in the implementation of this soundtrack switch, that stops the music from playing during cutscenes.

Like so many others, I trusted this game with the fate I had in the first one. I had also read the negative critics but I believed I could still find some enjoyment with this game. After completing the campaign, I can say this: it was a long, dull slog. The story is not interesting. The missions are repetitive, the units few. Everything feels... rushed. The third faction has like, three units. It's always the same maps. No real choices are to be made. It's all off balance, and the mask falls as you progress. The reason why I post this review is because of the end. Nothing happens. Credits roll. I think that after a while the ending was the only thing I was looking for, and even this was beneath all expectations. That was the last straw. The music is great. Altogether: quite a sad product. I wonder what happened there. It smells like something went very wrong.

I'll keep it brief as best I can. This game is NOT Mechanicus 1. It's taken away a lot of what made M1 interesting and unique, and streamlined it in favor of a more 'one commander multiple little guys no real customization' effect. The story is eh. The voice acting, as always, is top notch along with the music (expected from a 40k title) but the music doesn't hit the same as M1 (could be nostalgia goggles who knows) TLDR; Wanna play a watered down Mechanicus 1 just to kinda get an idea of what's happening in the story that could be covered by a 15 minute youtube video? This is the game for you!

This is one of those rare cases where a genuinely good game still deserves a “mixed” score. The core issue isn’t the mechanics themselves, but how the content is structured and presented. The tutorial, aside from being tedious, gives a misleading impression of what the actual game is like. And beyond that, several other problems start to show. Missed opportunities: Right now, the game offers a fixed set of maps with only mildly random enemy placement. There are almost no interactable objects on the battlefield and no additional objectives to spice things up. Enemy army compositions also feel repetitive—each map seems to have predetermined setups, or at least they behave that way. Meanwhile, commanders have unique armies, but in practice you end up using the same two or three because their kits are overtuned. More varied or unconventional enemy compositions could have balanced this out. Vibes are off: This part is more subjective. The first Mechanicus nailed the Warhammer 40k atmosphere, especially the identity of the Adeptus Mechanicus. I could write an entire essay about how well it captured the faction’s tone. Unfortunately, much of that magic is gone in the sequel. The developers made several odd stylistic choices, and my biggest gripe is the fully voiced Mechanicus characters. It just doesn’t feel right. Conclusion: It is a good game. I enjoyed what I got—it simply wasn’t what I expected or hoped for. I genuinely hope the developers listen to the community and learn from these missteps

I'm very disappointed. This game feels worse than the original when it comes to its design. I honestly think you should fire the lead game designer, because many of the design choices aren't just buggy or poorly implemented, they feel like they came from genuinely bad ideas. In the first game (if I remember correctly), we could build our own Tech-Priest. Here we're forced to play predefined characters. In the first game we could choose our own cohort, here we're stuck with preset squads (I don't want five Rangers in my team, but for some reason the game forces me to use them). In the first game we explored a maze-like structure where our choices actually mattered. Here there's no maze, and the decisions feel far less immersive. I honestly don't understand how you could get the design so wrong. And why, why does the music sound like it was generated by Suno after being fed the soundtrack from the first game? The music in the original was phenomenal. Here it's completely soulless. It might fit a city builder, but not a game that's focused on tactical combat. I genuinely don't understand the thought process behind these decisions. All I wanted was the first game, but with more missions, more Skitarii types, and more enemies. Maybe not Necrons this time, maybe Tau or Drukhari instead. That's it. Instead, I got a completely different game, mixed with a deck builder. Why!?