Warhammer 40k Battlesector

Thanks for the tip about the Fanatical deal. I was perturbed by Steam taking away the ten percent discount due to the release being rolled back to today. Getting ten bucks off the purchase made my day!

My 17 year anniversary coupon comes up at the end of August, so I might hold out until then.

Missed the Fanatical deal sadly, and have enough on my plate that I think I’ll wait for a sale or coupon or whatever. The demo was fun though, and I’d imagine 20 campaign missions would be a good chunk of play.

Really liking the game and I usually prefer grand strategic or strategic to tactical. Best Warhammer 40K gaming experience I have had since sitting down to the original Space Hulk.

The only thing turning me off this was the turgid writing you sit through in the campaign.

Yeah, that is a turnoff.

Kind of traditional/expected now no? It’s hardly a subtle setting (although the Gaunt’s Ghosts series was actually pretty cool.)

From the Kotaku review:

But what narration . My favourite thing about this entire game is its voice acting, which takes a solid strategy game and turns it into a memorable 40K experience. One of the biggest attractions of 40K for me is just how ridiculously over the top everything is. Everything’s big, and epic, and universe-defining, it’s all just a lot . The vast majority of Warhammer games released over the years don’t just fall short because they’re bad games, but also because they pay only the slightest hint of lip service to the license they’re based on.

Battlesector revels in it. Every mission briefing is a joy, every debrief a chance to let these ridiculous men and women’s voices wash over you. Best of all is the constant chatter livening up the missions, all delivered in exactly the way you’d hope a 40K character would sound. WE ARE THE WALLS, WE ARE THE GUNS your heavy troops might bellow as they face up to certain death, while your main hero doesn’t say “affirmative” when you move him, he’ll shout stuff like I AM THE SWORD OF SANGUINIUS.

Later on, you will meet the Battle Sisters, and their hero character’s voice acting is good enough to make the whole game worth playing just to enjoy it.

I know it sounds wild to focus so much on voice acting here, but I’m someone who has always flirted around the periphery of 40K fandom, intrigued by the overall premise but constantly let down by fiction’s attempts to breathe life into such incredible designs and artwork. The voice acting (and writing!) here manages this effortlessly, whisking me away to a place that shows—like Black Lab did with Deadlock —that a real love of the source material went into this game, and not just a fast paycheck from Games Workshop.

So yeah, there are still too many Warhammer games, but this is exactly why that’s a problem, because if you start to ignore them and let them wash over you, you risk missing out on the good ones. Like Battlesector

Well, they have a point I guess. Subtlety and nuance are most definitely not the hallmark of W40K. It’s a setting tailor-made for bad dialog, hammy acting, and over the top exposition if there ever was one.

The Meatloaf of PC game lore and setting.

“and I would do any-thing for (The Emprah), but I won’t do that…”

“Paradise by the multimelta light”

The visuals of the pew-pew are impressive in this game from the videos I’ve seen.

They’re good, but I’d like to zoom out further. They have a map screen, but I’d rather have a higher view.

Other than that, seems pretty good so far. I have a few other quibblies, but I mostly just wish I would have started on the difficulty above default. I’ve only lost a few units so far. Part of me is disappointed units don’t gain experience, but another part is happy I don’t mind losing them. Attrition seems appropriate for Warhammer.

I’m also a little annoyed with all the narrow battlefields. Shuffling units shouldn’t take so much of my time from killing things. This game will inevitably be compared to Gladius, and I like a few of the things Battlesector has done, but think Gladius is still the superior game.

I think I’m about 6 or so missions in. Some of the new Tyrannid units can one shot some of your squads, so I’ve lost a few that way. I like how they explain that the earlier missions have stupid Tyrannids because they lack their synaptic link or something. I’m just not sure that they seem that much smarter now that they are linked.

I too hope it gets harder, so I’ll stick it out as well.

Argh damn OK I’ll get this. I’m about done with my Thorek campagin in WH2 anyway.

I’m really enjoying this, but with some work it could become really great. More factions plus a dynamic campaign (even just linked skirmishes) would make this amazing.

I imagine slitherine will add more factions.

As surely as the sun will rise so will an endless parade of warhammer DLC shall spew forth endlessly for years.

Three years later and we’re still seeing them for Gladius.

How does everyone feel about having to scrub the map of Tyranids at the end of every single mission? That style of mission design is what’s keeping me from getting Battlesector for now. Map scrubbing as the dominant strategy is what makes so many RTS campaigns boring. I can tolerate some dumb AI in a campaign mission, and long-winded expo dumps between missions are effortless to click past, but there’s no easy way around having to wipe every single map of enemies.