Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Review (PC)

In a sea of Warhammer games, it’s hard to find a decent one these days. Whereas several years ago we would get one or two good Warhammer games every other year, we’re now so overwhelmed by the cadence of Warhammer mediocre game releases that the franchise has already diluted its value.

With that in mind, I’m happy to say that Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters is a really good game. A tactical strategy game with turn-based tactical combat at its core, Daemonhunters feels very much like an entry in the XCOM series, but with a layer of Warhammer flavor.

Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters tackles the never-ending conflict between the secret order of the Grey Knights and the daemonic entities of the Warp spawned by Nurgle, the Plague God. Beyond that, this is very much an XCOM game in disguise, but with its own twists on the turn-based tactical strategy formula.

First off, unlike XCOM that favors a more tactical approach, Daemonhunters rewards a more offensive playstyle. You’re going to have a hard time at the beginning of the game if your strategy focuses on waiting the enemy to come to you. Not to mention that until you get better gear and level up your knights, the enemy will always have longer range than you.

+4more

One thing I would say is that you might have to restart the game a few times to find a viable strategy, especially for the part after you get a few level ups for your knights. Daemonhunters is a hard game in the sense that it punishes you for every mistake, but if you know what you’re doing, it becomes a lot easier.

For example, your knights can’t really die during a mission, but they can be incapacitated if their HP reaches 0. They will regain consciousness after three rounds at only half HP. However, after your mission is over, your wounded knights will need time to recover. If they’re critically wounded, they will be unavailable for missions for many days, but if they’re lightly wounded, you can still take them in missions, although they will have a small penalty to their health.

The only way to lose a knight is if it gets critically wounded 3-5 times. The number of wounds a knight can withstand before it can no longer fight also depends on the level of the knight and the difficulty level of your campaign.

In Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, you step into the shoes of a recently-promoted commander of a Baleful Edict, a Grey Knights Strike Cruiser, which also serves as the base of operations for the Chapter’s strike force that fights The Bloom.

Play Video

The problem your ships has sustained heavy damage after a Daemonic incursion, so your job is to handle a full-fledged campaign against Nurgle’s minion and the repair of the Baleful Edict. While leading the campaign against The Bloom, you’ll meet various characters important for the story, each with their own motivations and goals in mind. That means that in addition to leading a campaign against the Chaos infestation and trying to fix your ship, you’ll also have to handle these characters’ disagreements.

This is where the roguelike aspect of the game kicks in. As you progress in your campaign, random events will trigger at various points, which will require your decision. These events are related to the characters on the ship and depending on how you handle these, you might get beneficial traits or disadvantages for a limited time (sometimes even both). As you repair more parts of the Baleful Edict, you’ll get to even more resources to manage, including research and construction. Just like in XCOM, research and construction are mandatory for the success of you campaign.

Your party composition is another very important aspect that you might want to consider. There are four main classes that you can choose from in Daemonhunters: Justicar, Interceptor, Purgator, and Apothecary. Each has their own skill tree so that you can customize their class to your playstyle. Later on, four additional advanced classes will open up for you to recruit: Paladin, Chaplain, Librarian, and Purifier. Apart from the abilities that you can choose from the skill tree, each of these classes has its specific traits.

After restarting the campaign twice, I found that a more melee-oriented playstyle leads to much better results. The one thing that I think it’s an oversight from the developers is the lack of respec. Once you commit to a skill path with a knight, you can’t respec.

+4more

What makes it worse is that you have limited slots for your recruits, so if a strategy is no longer viable and most of your knights are specced a certain way, you’ll have to get rid of them and recruit new, inexperienced knights. Not to mention that knights higher than level 1 comes with skill points invested in certain abilities, so you actually want level 1 knights to be able to shape them the way you need.

Besides classes and abilities, the game features a pretty deep loadout system where you can gear up your knights with armor, weapons, grenades and accessories. You can requisition new gear after each mission if it’s better than what you have, which adds another layer of strategy to the game. Did I mention that you can customize your knights in all aspects? Yes, you can change their names, add emblems on various parts of your armor and create the knight you want.

I also love the fact that there’s no hit chance in the game. As long as you’re within the range of your weapon, you will also hit your target, it’s just that you will make less damage the farther away you are from your target.

+3more

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion