I’ve gotten a bit further in the campaign and am starting to really enjoy it. The last mission I played was against a Tyranid Zoanthrope and a hive that I had to destroy. The AI was extremely active – so contrary to what I thought, the campaign AI is not always just sitting around waiting for your squads to approach. Every time I moved forward, Tyranids from elsewhere on the map would swarm around behind me. I was constantly getting harassed. I’d move forward against a mass of them, and then a swarm would run up a side street and attack me from the flank. It was great stuff.
I captured a Flamer in an Ork mission, and loaded it up on my Commander to try out against the Tyranids. I’m not sure it was more effective even against swarms than the Commander’s usual melee weapons. I might switch it over to my Tac squad for anti-'Nid missions.
Im playing on the Hardest Difficulty, and am finding it extemely challenging, admittedly i dont have the fastest reflexes for RTS games, but im failing more than half my missions so far easily.
After getting stuck on a boss i went back and played on the default difficulty, and it seems, well gimped… the enemy doesnt seem to move or attack, or use their specials, it just sits there, even i blasted through it a million times faster than on the hardest level.
I have now settled for the second hardest, its much harder than default, but not as frustrating as the hardest setting, if i make a mistake i still die and lose missions quite a lot though.
I thought about playing Multiplayer, but im a bit wary, most people who play these RTS games online tend to be way way too good for me, or crazy Korean dudes who get paid to kick my arse or something. I normally manage one game, get slaughtered and never get online again :s
Playing on default, whatever that’s called. I’ll bump it up after finishing. Anyone know how many “days” the campaign lasts? I want to get to the good stuff…
And yeah, the way they have it designed I guess you need the ‘hero’ units to stay alive due to the voice work. I guess I was expecting the grunts to matter more, earning xp, making them more valuable as well. Not sure why I thought that.
I still think it would have been cool to have characters who could die and you had to assign new commanders. The whole idea of, “I cannot afford to lose Captain Whoever; he’s too bad ass.”
On Primarch things are actually getting easier as i progress and improve my squads statistics. But if there is something i sort of dislike it’s that it doesn’t seem like tactics matter so much as special abilities; it’s not so much placement or whatever, but using my abilities at the right time. Even a default Termagaunt squad will kill my Tac Marines 1on1 on Primarch, so there isn’t much point in slugging it out without some unit ability spam to back it up.
I really love the presentation of the single player campaign; while there may be some UI things here and there that aren’t objectively perfect i think they better nailed the “space gothic” atmosphere of the War 40k universe even moreso than in the previous games. And the graphic appearance of the Zerg ^H^H^ Tyranid swarms descending unto a planet is creative and memorable, imo.
The in-mission save isn’t as much of a pain as you think, your rewarded for being fast, i think my longest mission took maybe 20minutes, and im almost done with the campaign. If you fail a mission you either replay it, or just move on, it wont give you a game over message. I can’t think of a place i would use and ingame save, expect maybe at one or two of the bosses.
You just dont need an in-game save, it wouldnt add a thing to the game suprisingly.
Yeah don’t let the mission length turn you off. These missions tend to zip by. I am usually a real stickler for no in-mission save feature but you really don’t need it.
I also started a Co-Op campaign today which was a lot of fun…if I could get the voice chat to work.
I am “powergaming” my campaign right now. My actual squad composition is: force commander with good armor, hammer, autorecharging shield and two seals, Dreadnought, heavy squad optimized for endurance and normal squad with terminator armor. No scouts, no assault squad, no grenades or stealth or flanking or whatever. I just stomp over anything with superior firepower. Fun for a few levels, but now it’s being a bit boring. Perhaps things will change around the end of the campaign.
FWIW my mission times, which I previously reported were quite long, have dropped to around 15 minutes since I switched difficulty levels to Sergeant. It’s probably a combination of greater familiarity and things being much easier.
I still completely agree that the lack of an in-mission save was a horrible decision and should be remedied immediately.
IMO the AI in the very first game put up a relatively decent fight, it just couldn’t hold it for the long-haul. Then Relic produced inferior AIs with every sequel (though I believe the guy originally responsible for the AI left) and it was left to the Skirmish AI mod crew to produce something competent, which is amusing as their initial versions did all the stupid things the later Relic AIs went on to do, namely a hard-on for turrets.
Unless the AI in DoW 2 proves to be moddable and someone significently improves it, I won’t be touching the game. It’s a shame, I loved what they’ve done with it (though I think the mechanics in CoH are better, but it feels too vehicle dominated later on to hold my interest), but there’s no challenge at all and so what’s the point?
I’m really enjoying going through the campaign, particularly co-op. I haven’t played any of the other DOW series, so I hear that is spoiling the “comparative lack of variety” in campaign complaint. Playing the second from toughest difficulty, it’s fun and quick, but not impossible to lose.
From my perspective, I’d hate to be able to save mid-level. I think the pacing is good, with most levels coming in under 15 minutes, sometimes as little as half that. If I could save mid-level, maybe I’d be tempted to min-max everyone to always live and reload anything that goes bad. Being able to save mid-level would also give level designers the go-ahead to ruin the pacing that makes the game able to fit so comfortably into my schedule.
One thing I wish that was included is to play the campaign from scratch again but with my existing squads from a previous campaign to get better loot and whatnot. I can’t imagine it bieng that crazy to implement.
Adding an in-mission save doesn’t necessarily mean that users would be able to make multiple saves and do a reload to a previous save. They could go ahead and let us suspend the campaign wherever we are – be that at the battle barge or on the battlefield – and then when we restarted we would be exactly where we were when we last exited.
No in-mission save is stupid because it implies that there’s no reason why someone would need to interrupt their play, which is just dumb. Obviously there are real-life reasons why someone might need to stop playing in the middle of a mission. There are also DoW2-specific reasons. I’ve had friends logon and want to team up for 3v3 pvp, and I’m stuck in the middle of a mission and can’t get out. I don’t want to have them wait for me for 15-minutes, and I don’t want to take a mission loss.
My terminators use a Heavy Flamer, so they are more “close combat” than range troops. Also they can use well their power fists if some vehicle or hard Tyranid units comes.
You just missed the open beta, it has been available on steam for a good few months now. CAn’t see there being a demo for a while, i guess everyone interested was playing the beta on steam the last few months.
Yep. Missed the beta. Or passed on it since I don’t have a computer for this stuff. But I have an old laptop from work that doesn’t see much use now, so I thought I should try the demo to see if it can run the game properly.
