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I finished Battlesector today. It's a very good WH40K game. It plays pretty much like a table top game. The whole campaign took me about 32 hours with a healthy dose of reloading.
I will say that of the 20 missions in the campaign there are maybe 2 that the devs really said "Ef you!" to the player. They both have an almost impossible win condition that requires that you save some group of units that is almost impossibly surrounded when the mission starts. So a few points about the game on completing:
Pros:
1) The game sounds great. All the weapons sound good and imposing.
2) Sticking with the melee, facing and retaliation rules makes each turn a nice knot to untangle.
3) Wide selection of units by the end of the game, even if you don't spend the extra $3 on the two elite units.
4) Nice array of buffs from the hero units provide some needed advantages if you use them wisely.
5) Good story as far as it goes, though it's really a setup to future expansion campaigns.
Cons:
1) As mentionmed above, some real ball buster missions.. though they are really ball busters because...
2) Some units are extremely underpowered. Here is the list, and teh problems:
- Assault marines: They can't upgrade from their starting melee weapon, and are made of tissue paper... as such, their only real use is as a finisher to a unit that was nearly dead already... at which point another ranged unit would do a better job. The lack of melee upgrade means they fail to scale withe the campaign. I stopped deploying them by mission 3.
- Sisters of Battle: If assult marines are made of tissue paper, Sisterrs of Battle are made of rice paper. Their two primary alternative units to the Marine and Assault Maries have teh same firepower but less health.
3) The jump jet system seems broken. Each unit starts each turn with a certain numer of action points (attack) and movement points. While the jump jets consume no Action points, they consume Movement points, so you can't jump and run any further than you can run. It's just used as a way of getting past terrain obstacles of skipping over melee overwatch... this mechanic also really hurts the Assault marine stength.
4) Not usually something I complain about, but some units are too powerful. The only reason this is a problem is that you have to resist the urge to just field an army of a given unit . For example:
- Heavy Plasma Marine: While they cost about twice as much as their marine counterpart, they are absurdly strong when you know how to use them. They have the longest ranged weapon, that does the most damage per shot. Two heavy plasma marines can fairly easily take out the biggest boss enemies the game can through at you, and they do it at a range that no enemy unit can match. In the final mission my two Heavy Plasma squads killed the boss and half of the boss' managerie of big units, each one taking a single turn to take down. It was just a matter of getting them in place.
- Any armored unit: It's weird saying that when every unit appears armored, but there are a handful of units with high armor values that make them practically impervious to more than half the weapons that the enemy can field.
5) Most unit weapon upgrades aren't really worth it. Many are so conditional that you end up making the unit useless in 90% of the encounters they have, while kicking ass in the one they are greated for. Some just make no sense at all... in a game where armor is king, what is the point of upgrading, say, the base model marine for a weapon that fires a few more bullets, but has worse armor penetration? Obviously this rule doesn;t apply to the Heavy Plasma upgrade as stated above.
I know that with the cons the wall of text makes them seem more game breaking than they are, but they aren't. While you do have a long list of units to choose from, you just learn quickly the handful of units you stick in the corner of the barracks with construction paper and crayons.
Anyway, 7/10 ... it's not often I like a game enough to finish it.
I will say that of the 20 missions in the campaign there are maybe 2 that the devs really said "Ef you!" to the player. They both have an almost impossible win condition that requires that you save some group of units that is almost impossibly surrounded when the mission starts. So a few points about the game on completing:
Pros:
1) The game sounds great. All the weapons sound good and imposing.
2) Sticking with the melee, facing and retaliation rules makes each turn a nice knot to untangle.
3) Wide selection of units by the end of the game, even if you don't spend the extra $3 on the two elite units.
4) Nice array of buffs from the hero units provide some needed advantages if you use them wisely.
5) Good story as far as it goes, though it's really a setup to future expansion campaigns.
Cons:
1) As mentionmed above, some real ball buster missions.. though they are really ball busters because...
2) Some units are extremely underpowered. Here is the list, and teh problems:
- Assault marines: They can't upgrade from their starting melee weapon, and are made of tissue paper... as such, their only real use is as a finisher to a unit that was nearly dead already... at which point another ranged unit would do a better job. The lack of melee upgrade means they fail to scale withe the campaign. I stopped deploying them by mission 3.
- Sisters of Battle: If assult marines are made of tissue paper, Sisterrs of Battle are made of rice paper. Their two primary alternative units to the Marine and Assault Maries have teh same firepower but less health.
3) The jump jet system seems broken. Each unit starts each turn with a certain numer of action points (attack) and movement points. While the jump jets consume no Action points, they consume Movement points, so you can't jump and run any further than you can run. It's just used as a way of getting past terrain obstacles of skipping over melee overwatch... this mechanic also really hurts the Assault marine stength.
4) Not usually something I complain about, but some units are too powerful. The only reason this is a problem is that you have to resist the urge to just field an army of a given unit . For example:
- Heavy Plasma Marine: While they cost about twice as much as their marine counterpart, they are absurdly strong when you know how to use them. They have the longest ranged weapon, that does the most damage per shot. Two heavy plasma marines can fairly easily take out the biggest boss enemies the game can through at you, and they do it at a range that no enemy unit can match. In the final mission my two Heavy Plasma squads killed the boss and half of the boss' managerie of big units, each one taking a single turn to take down. It was just a matter of getting them in place.
- Any armored unit: It's weird saying that when every unit appears armored, but there are a handful of units with high armor values that make them practically impervious to more than half the weapons that the enemy can field.
5) Most unit weapon upgrades aren't really worth it. Many are so conditional that you end up making the unit useless in 90% of the encounters they have, while kicking ass in the one they are greated for. Some just make no sense at all... in a game where armor is king, what is the point of upgrading, say, the base model marine for a weapon that fires a few more bullets, but has worse armor penetration? Obviously this rule doesn;t apply to the Heavy Plasma upgrade as stated above.
I know that with the cons the wall of text makes them seem more game breaking than they are, but they aren't. While you do have a long list of units to choose from, you just learn quickly the handful of units you stick in the corner of the barracks with construction paper and crayons.
Anyway, 7/10 ... it's not often I like a game enough to finish it.
