HomeReviewsWarhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters review: the best kind of tactical mayhemBloomin' marvellous
Bloomin' marvellous
40 Minutes Of Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters GameplayWatch on YouTube
40 Minutes Of Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters Gameplay
Now, I’m no Warhammerer, so much of its lore and character references have gone right over my head. Still, regardless of where you stand with either Warhammer or the dark, futuristic warfare of 40K, Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters is a compelling tactics game in its own right - and those early preview takeaways of “XCOM in space” do hit pretty close to the mark now that we’ve been let loose with final game. But Complex Games haven’t just put Firaxis' colossal strategy epic up on a fancy gothic pedestal here. Instead, they’ve added their own thrilling adornments to it, encouraging players to not only attack enemies head on with their tough as nails Knights, but also to get up close and personal with their misshapen quarry, thanks to its combat system that puts just as much weight on devastating melee attacks as it does on ranged potshots from afar.
Patient zeroThe number of potential infection points in this ill-fated galaxy increases over time, but even early on there’s still no way to stamp out the Bloom completely.
Indeed, Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters leans hard on that first word of its subtitle. With missions spread out all across your doomed star system, you simply cannot be everywhere at once. As time moves on, planets will inevitably start slipping through the cracks, and you’ll need to choose where best to deploy your efforts. Completing a mission will halt the Bloom on that planet for a time, but the more you let somewhere fester, the harder those missions inevitably become.
Combined with a progression system that prevents manual save reloading in the event of a mission going south, this really is a game that’s all about embracing the consequences of your actions and just rolling with it. You can restart missions from scratch if you’re really not pleased with how things are progressing, but that’s more or less it. There’s no going back to redo a turn, and definitely no going back in time to do a mission over if you fail it completely. I’m not gonna lie, part of me curses not being able to cheese my way to absolute perfection all the time, but if the likes ofDeathloopand the wider roguelite genre have taught me anything in the last couple of years, it’s that being wedded to the quick load key isn’t always the best or most interesting way to play a game. Enter Chaos Gate with that mindset, and there’s plenty to admire here.
The Precision Targeting menu lets you attack specific enemy weak points for additional effects. The Execute takedowns are always a gory delight.
Built to lastAdmittedly, Chaos Gate’s construction element isn’t quite as in-depth as its XCOM counterpart, opting for a simpler, more streamlined upgrade path rather than getting bogged down in proximity bonuses and whatnot, but it’s still an engaging, surface-level strategy layer that you’ll always need to have ticking over in the background.
Still, it’s that knightly endurance that makes battles so much more exciting than those I remember from XCOM. Instead of bracing myself for the pain to come, I’m raring to see the next gory takedown, whether that’s a regular blaster gun round searing a poor bloke in two, or chopping off entire limbs with one of my knight’s special precision attacks when landing a critical hit. For the first time in goodness knows how long, the word ‘critical’ actually means something here, as performing one successfully will take you into its Precision Targeting menu. Making the most of these is hugely important in Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters. Not only are critical hits one of the only ways of extracting those all-important seeds to further your research (and the wider story), but you can also use them to disable enemy weapons, stun them, or (my favourite), execute them completely, earning all your knights another action point, potentially giving you a crucial leg up in battle when times are tough.
These environments are made for carnage and chaos. Statues can be shot or pushed onto enemies, fire torches can be tipped over to blaze through hallways, and energy cells can be shot to explode like a makeshift grenade.
As any seasoned tactician will know, action points are the lifeblood of your party. Movement and attacks are drawn from the same pool in Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters, although here you’ll also have to balance your knights' Willpower points if you want to charge up certain attacks or use special abilities. Such power does come at an additional cost, however. Your Willpower bar is one thing, but in each level you’re also fighting against another ticking time bomb: the Warp Surge. This corruption meter increases every turn, and the frequency with which you exert your Willpower, plus the planet’s overall corruption level, will affect how quickly it climbs to 100%. When a Warp Surge does occur, enemies will receive additional mutations, making battles progressively harder for a set number of turns. These range from the positively knuckle-biting +5 armour to all enemies for a turn, (a truly despicable kind of punishment), to wider party debuffs that slow your movement speed or take away a Willpower point for the remainder of the battle, for example. You never know what you’re going to get, and the way it all feeds off your own desire to get things done quickly means you’ve got to be constantly on your toes, ready to adapt to whatever roll of the dice the chaos gods throw out next.
All hands on DeckI ended up spending the majority of my review time playing on mySteam Deck, and cor, what a lovely way to play! I had to knock the settings down to Medium to get a steady 30-odd fps, but its game pad controls were surprisingly serviceable. Text was a bit on the small side, but all the environments and HUD icons remained highly readable and easy to parse. Verdict: a good Steam Deck game.
The final mission of Act One is the moment I finally learned to let go of my XCOM cowardice, and it never felt so gosh darnright.
In the end, though, it was the only option left. I was convinced I’d fail, that if I was suddenly asked to hold out any longer (as missions often do), then I’d be done for. But I healed up as best I could, and used every last action point to manoeuvre my Knights round into a human shield, bracing for defeat as I watched my foes get into position and play their last turn. I winced as one Knight fell to his knees, but the others held firm, and let me tell you, victory had never tasted so sweet. It may not have been the most perfect win, but hot damn, it sure felt good. So embrace the chaos, friends, because Daemonhunters is the absolute business.
