I’m still feeling a bit burned out on Warhammer 40,000 due to overexposure but so many people have been raving about this take on the traditional 4X genre that I felt like giving a spin. This isn’t really a 4X game in that in line with the Warhammer theme there is only war, so there’s no diplomacy or trade between factions. But you do still get to found cities, build an economy and most importantly raise armies with which to wipe out the map.

The backstory doesn’t matter too much. Suffice to say that all of the factions find themselves fighting for control of the planet of Gladius Prime and everyone are enemies with each other. This means that even the Space Marines must fight the Imperial Guard if they meet. Still, there actually is a story in that in addition to winning by eliminating all other factions on the map, you can also win by completing a series of quests. The exact story obviously varies by faction but usually revolve around uncovering some ancient secret on the planet. However I have never actually won a game in this way as the final quests are brutally difficult. The quests cause new enemies to spawn in unpredictable locations on the map, which is really inconvenient when your own armies are most likely somewhere else fighting against the other factions. The final wave of spawns are so powerful that the only way to defeat it is if you spent the whole game preparing a large army and built fortifications specifically to deal with them. The game tempts you into believing that you can work on the quests in parallel with fighting with the other factions but this is a horrible trap.

The game works pretty much exactly as you’d expect. With it being all about combat, it feels more like a turn-based RTS game than a 4X strategy game as your cities exist only to generate resources and pump out units. Even before meeting another faction, there is plenty of combat as neutral units roam the map and they are powerful enough to pose a significant challenge early on. The base game comes with four factions and they each differ enough to be interesting. The Necrons for example don’t eat and use energy to activate their ancient units plus can automatically heal. The Space Marines can only ever build one city but can drop fortresses to collect resources on the map. Be careful of playing the Imperial Guard. They are extremely weak while you only have guardsmen and it takes a while for them to get the tanks they desperately need to be competitive. Regardless of which faction you play, tactics are involved as you try to take cover from ranged enemies in forests and ruins and rotate out damaged units to heal while trying to prevent the enemy from doing the same. You even have hero units with multiple special abilities that can be activated and you can even buy equipment for them.

I don’t feel that the AI is very strong as it even has trouble grabbing up all of the resources in its territory and dealing with neutral units. But of course at higher difficulties, it gets bonuses and that makes a big difference. After getting to grips with the mechanics and realizing how cautious you need to be at the beginning and that you need to be pumping out new units constantly, I really enjoyed the fast-paced nature of the game. As I said, it feels a bit like an RTS but more controlled and without the frenetic clicking. However I suggest that the game plays best on more modest scales. On large maps, it becomes a terrible slog as units take forever to walk from one end to another and there are so many units to give orders to every turn. I also dislike how the random map generation can be horribly unfair. Water tiles in this game are completely useless and so getting a start position with a lot of water tiles and land overgrown with damaging wire weed can really screw a player.

Fun as this may be in bursts, I think it’s long term appeal as a single-player game is limited. It’s cool to be able to build cities, fortifications and assemble an army, but as a tactical puzzle experience, I find that I prefer the more traditional Warhammer 40,000 turn-based wargames without the 4X components and with a curated list of missions to accomplish. Here once you understand how a faction works, I think you’ll more or less always follow a specific build order with limited variations depending on the map. In multiplayer, it would be different of course as you’d need to account for who is close to you and how close they are.

Finally I want to note that the game is especially obnoxious about its DLC. Four factions in the base game is very little but fine, you have to pay more to unlock the other factions. But then plenty of cool units in each faction are locked behind DLC as well. What’s worse is that you can see but can’t build locked units yet the AI can and will field all of those units against you. It’s just such a player hostile business decision that I refuse to buy any of their DLC even though I would have liked to try the Tau faction. Overall this game isn’t bad and it is kind of surprising that no one thought to make a combat focused 4X like this before but having tried it, it’s not really what I like.