More and more I am convinced that unless you are Blizzard, you need to be building games for single-player. Dawn of War 3 had nothing I could see for single-player.
I hear what you are saying. That being said, Multiplayer comp stomping is super fun! Join us!
Yes it is! Personally, I have no interest in SP RTS. I also don’t have any interest in competitive PVP matches, though. :) More interesting vs AI options in these games would be welcome and would get around the issue of lack of players.
To me, the main issue with Dawn of War 3 was that it just wasn’t a very good or interesting game. It even somehow managed to look worse than I remember DoW2 looking years ago, but maybe that was my imagination.
Anyway, I played it for a little bit but thought it was pretty meh. It felt like a rip-off at $60.
There doesn’t really seem to be a multiplayer RTS market at all. Even Blizzard has kind of surrendered Starcraft II at this point.
MOBAs at the multiplayer RTS market. Now you have a frame-perfect fighting game that’s also kinda an RTS in the same package.
My favorite single player RTS was DOW1 with the community AI mods. The game was actually challenging as all hell as the AI was great at using certain mechanics incredibly well - those dancing space elves (toggle ability to move faster but do less damage) drove me mad.
Please don’t screw of AoE4, please don’t screw up AoE4, …
AoE2 still finds itself in the top 50 games played every day on Steam with around 10k players, which isn’t bad for a game made almost 20 years ago.
OMG. I was just looking at this and I bought it in Dec of last year and never even installed it!? I guess I should at least give it a try, right?
You done good.
How much do you value your time?
LOL interesting. Highly!
I see it has Mixed reviews on Steam, so I assume the reasons I never got it at launch despite loving DoW2 for years and years still hold up (whatever they may be - I know I had my reasons but I can’t remember them now)? I mean, the screenshots at least look pretty, surely it’s worth a skirmish or two vs. the AI?
As far as I can tell, and this is my professional game critic opinion, that they roundly lost what made DoW2 any good. They added fiddly crap to a game full of fiddly crap. They lack the high quality coop campaign that DoW2 had as well. It’s just… not a good game.
I’d say so. To answer your question in a more serious way, I don’t think the game is bad, I just didn’t find it any good. I thought they tried to bring back some of the stuff from DOW1, like the base building, but they left out the things I liked while moving over the needless UI tasks.
For example, I missed the base-building aspect in DOW2 because I liked to build some defensive chokepoints. It helps me deal with RTS games, where I can kind of give one area of the map less of my attention while I focus on the other. I’m not fast enough to flick around constantly on the map.
So in DOW3, I hear they’re bringing back base building. Yay! But the portion of the base building they brought back was having to build the equivalent of barracks, armories, etc. I mean, that stuff doesn’t add much. It was the defensive structures that I was interested in, and somehow they weren’t included. WTF, Relic?
The game also had a light MOBA feel to it, and not in a good way. The cover system was largely neutered, where instead of having areas of cover around the map, you had very specific “this is a cover area”. Usually one or two in each Lane. And once that cover was gone, it was gone. It left infantry feeling extremely squishy, which was also a change I hated in DOW3. If you look away for a second, entire squads can get deleted.
Some of the stuff I know they tweaked in patches. I believe they added a skirmish mode that was less MOBA and allowed for some defenses, but by then I had long lost interest.
Wasn’t this in a Humble bundle? I think I own it too.
Ugh. Well, thanks @Jason_McMaster and @KevinC for the info. Super bummer though. Like I said, I was a big fan of DoW 2 (and the first one) and I remember being super excited when DoW3 was announced but that turned to ashes as it got closer to and after release. Shame they never really did anything with it. What a fuck up.
I may still give it a try. I can kick off the download over lunch and just play it for a quick tutorial/skirmish and see what’s what. At least my expectations are tempered. I wonder how much I paid for it last year.
Oh, and as for the screenshots? For some reason I thought this game looked worse and muddier than what I remember DOW2 being. That might be my memory of DOW2 playing tricks on me, though. All I know is that I loved the look of DOW1 and 2, this was the first one where I was like “This is… not ugly, but doesn’t really look great”.
So in that sense, the visual style really represents the game, IMO. Not nearly as appealing as either of it’s predecessors. :)
I was pretty bummed out as I love 40k and Dawn of War II. It’s not a completely unenjoyable experience as much as it feels hollow comparably.