Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters - space "scavengers" cleanse the galaxy of "blooms"

The Warhammer 40000 universe has a huge, confusing background: a whole pantheon of demons, thousands of orders of space troops, hundreds of planets, dozens of races and a couple of dimensions of space and time.

Get into all of this at once is not possible, and the series Warhammer 40000 for a long time did not dispose to himself. Hope poured into the announcement Warhammer40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters in 2021 from little-known company Frontier. Turn-based tactical RPG is not a new format for the Warhammer 40000 universe, but it was with Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters that it shot.

The Grey Knight Routine

In Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters the player will have the honor to control the fighters of the most powerful of the space commandant orders - the Grey Knights. Among geeks of the Warhammer 40000 universe there may be a controversy that the Grey Knights do not belong to the Space Army, but serve in the Inquisition, but that's another story...

The Grey Knights are a special order with psyker abilities to fight against demons. The forces of Chaos are able to subjugate the will of the spaceman, so only the spirit-hardened Grey Knights are able to resist this Evil. This time we will have to clear the galaxy from the minions of Nurgle, God of Chaos - the God of pestilence, decay and disease. Grandpa Nurgle spreads his ills across the universe COVID-19, which means that our hope is only on us.

In general, the plot for the Warhammer 40000 universe here is pretty standard, and the formula for success "pathos + epic = a good product" did not fail.

At the very beginning of the game our space cruiser gets hit, the Inquisition comes to our aid, and all the members of the event decide to heroically overpower it, at the same time arranging a crusade in the universe - a classic of the genre.

The Art of the War Hammer

Our hit cruiser will be both our home and the hub for upcoming missions. Before the game begins, we assemble a team of 4 Grey Knights - this is where the tactics begin. All Knights use different weapons, armor, and equipment, the only thing they have in common is that they all have psyker abilities.

Here, as in any RPG, all playable characters are divided into classes: someone can teleport, someone carries a heavy bolter, someone is just clad in a huge armor, but cannot shoot. There are healers - here they are called apothecaries, and buffers - Capelan, Justicar. Not without a class "for a tick" - this unenviable role is played by the Purifier, aka Flamethrower.

Having decided on the classes, we have to decide on the equipment, and here Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters creates a large field for the players to improvise. The arsenal is not limited to a couple or three almost identical weapons - there is a lot to choose from. Hand-to-hand and firearms differ not only in characteristics, but also in features.

There is a little less armor to choose from, but some outfits significantly affect the gameplay: Terminator armor makes the Knight a walking tank, but restricts his movements.

The game is not friendly to newcomers, so in many aspects and nuances have to understand as you go. Another thing is that in Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters the player can completely fail the passage. Then you will have to start the game from the beginning, not from the last save. If you are new to the Warhammer 40000 universe and immediately chose the high difficulty, be prepared for the fact that you will regularly lose the thread of logic of what is happening. The game is full of terminology and suffers from the "curse of the smart man": when the narrator knows what he's talking about, but doesn't explain anything.

On the other hand, the Warhammer 40000 universe has never been ceremonious with newcomers - either learn to play and dig in, or pass by. Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is no exception. Let the game really turns into a courtyard for walkthroughs on low difficulty levels, which completely kill the tactical element of the game - a stick with two ends.

What's interesting is that it's hard to...

Gameplay is the same as XCOM, but without the dice rolls and hit percentage. Levels can be leveled to the ground, the destruction system is not implemented for beauty, it has a real tactical use: a group of enemies hangs around the statue - bring the statue down on their heads.

You have an Interceptor with a teleporter in your team, a group of small but numerous enemies is moving across the bridge, and your squad is being shelled from the high ground? Blow up the bridge and problem solved. But no matter how brilliant strategists we are, a lot depends on Action Points.

Each Action Point is spent on one specific action: move, attack, or go hand-to-hand. At some point, stun grenades appear in the game. Stunned enemies can be executed and rewarded with +1 Action Point for the entire squad. This tactic is a serious balance flaw, as stun grenades essentially give endless moves.

Thankfully, cheating tactics won't keep you from the ruthlessness of local management.

The game is always throwing sticks in our wheels: the warp engine explodes, injuring a crew member and slowing down the study of improvements, then some kind of contagion breeds on the planet.

Problems occur not as they come in, but constantly, all the time. Turmoil forces the player to control all aspects of the game, rather than settle on one winning tactic. There are no extra resources either, so don't neglect what now seems useless. Remember: Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is full of hidden mechanics, you need to know them all.

Both on the global map and on the map during quests, there is a "Blossom" indicator - this is what the plague is called in Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters. If the bloom indicator gets to 100% - there will be a random nastiness: your squad will be weakened, you will be banned from healing for 5 turns, or the opponents will get reinforcements. But the developers went further and allowed the players to throw sticks in the wheels themselves. Since we play as the Grey Knights, each of the characters is endowed with psyker powers to tear heretics apart with the power of thought, but there's one thing...psyker powers flirt with Warp - a local alternate dimension with all sorts of devilry.

That is, using psyker powers, the Grey Knights reinforce Chaos, against which they fight... The mechanics seem completely idiotic, but fit into the lore of the universe, so bear with me.

Conclusion

The game would be a success if it didn't have so many bugs. Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is clearly not the kind of game that treats the player leniently. The abundance of hidden mechanics and subtleties make you think about the next step and do not forgive mistakes. In some ways Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters may seem too difficult to understand, which unequivocally hints at the fact that Frontier developed the game for the veterans of the series. And it would be OK if the game worked stably...