Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach

Because of high Expectations i guess. I rarely write Reviews,but here i have to. I waited a really long time with buying this Game,and im happy i finally did buy it with the Dlc's. What you get is a Game thats like the Tabletop,also in its Storytelling. Some Flavor Text and thats it.But even i think they could have used atleast some more Illustrations there. The Actual Combat is easy to understand,and for me atleast alot of Fun. Im currently about 20 Hours in the Game and cant get enough. I like the few Tracks in the Game,Athmospheric Stuff. The Animations are ok,but the Corpses could have needed some more Variations. But a Battlefield with Burned out Vehicles and killed Orcs still looks amazing. You also dont have to go too much into Units statistics if you dont want to,the Game is easily understandable. Its the right Game to get into for some Hours and evening,but also for some longer Game Sessions.

The solo play on this one is fun, but it does get a bit repetitive after a while. I personally like turn-based games, and this was no disappointment there. I felt like the Predator tanks were a bit on the wimpy side. As a fan of the classic Dawn of War/Winter Assault, I'm still looking for a LAN replacement, and this isn't it. It does play multiplayer, but you end up going into a waiting screen until everyone else has played, and then you get to see their actions at high speed, like a instant replay.

The Good: It really captures the feel of playing 40K. Units generally work more or less as I expect them to. Being experienced with the TT version, it was really quick to get the hang of the tactics involved here. The graphics, while not great, are more than serviceable for a game viewed on this scale. You're not going to be spending much time zoomed way in to appreciate detail, so there isn't really a reason to go that detailed. The Bad: The UI feels like it's from around the turn of the century, not 2017. Line of Sight and movement costs, in particular, are really badly presented. Not helped by the fact that a number of terrain pieces are clearly based on TT models that allow Units to fire over them, but are complete LoS blockers here. All the dead units staying around is cool, but there end up being so many that it's hard to tell what's actually still there some times. Could really use an option to hold down a key to highlight important stuff on the screen. Some Units have really weird balance issues. Playing both as SW and as Orks, I found that VenDreads, Kanz, and Deff Dredds were far stronger than Knights or Gorka/Morkanauts, which just feels wrong. Also, the SW have nothing that consistently works well on heavy armour. Meltas, Lascannon, and Thunder Hammers all just bounce off even Kans. And they work better than what the Knights are packing! The Meh. The sound has so little variation that it just gets annoying really fast. Just mute it and put on the Mechanicus soundtrack instead. Not much replay value, but if you pick it up on sale, there's enough content there to be worth it. I'm not a big fan of the "XP only for kills" system, since it makes it very hard to level up some units, even tho they're doing huge amounts of damage, but rarely strike the finishing blow (e.g. Whirlwind, Flamers). All in all, tho, I'm looking forward to picking up the DLC campaigns when I have a bit of spare cash again, so I'd call it worthwhile.

Much of the core mechanics are extrely solid and sets this game up for being a really enjoyable stratagy game for its price point. Its main problem is piss poor balancing all around especially for the orcs. The bike units hit way to hard, kill cans feel underpowered for their price point, Nobz just big meet shields when they should be decent melee infantry. The list goes on and thats just the orcs. Some of the space marines units like the predator feel underpowered and not as threatening as they should be. AI is decent it handles the scenarios mostly well though is prone to being lured into making stupid offensive actions. Such as leaving a cheat or durable unit as bait to lure the enemy army into a trap. The procedurally generated maps does provide some interesting scenarios which can be hit or miss as per the usual issues that come with procedural generation. Despite these problems a lot of fun can be had if you can tolerate some of the issues.

it's a kind of game i really want to like, and at least a bit i actually like it. it does well the rendition of a tactical space marines vs a WAAAGH. There are interesting units, and while being kinda basic, it doesnt cost a lot. but there are some MAJOR flaws that don't allow it to truly shine. -there is nothing that tells you what the los would be when moving a unit, if a piece of scenery only provide cover, or it totally block los. after a while you will get it right most of the time, but is quite frustrating moving tactically your unit only to discover that it cannot target what you wanted because of x. it's a basic tool in almost any tactical game and i cannot understand why someone decided that wasnt needed. it makes some moves feel "random", instead of a careful tactical decision. -way too easy ( i read that criticism and the counter argument, like fortress 26 was really hard. then i reached fortress 26 and ended the mission 10 turns earlier by destroying all the enemies losing 2 infantry. that basically was the end of the game for me as i felt there was no point continue playing ). -maybe a bit too relying on random leveling up: every level give you 2 option in upgrading the unit, totally random. some are really useful, others are quite strange ( i ended up having an assault unit i used as a medic, an anti infantry unit receiving only anti tanks upgrades ). but when it works, it can make your units almost gamebreaking.