Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate

Fun game, its aesthetics, score and gameplay are solid. In my opinion, one of the best games of WH40k.

О великий суп наварили.

At the currrent time of writting 1/14/24 on windows 11 it runs like a champ. Thanks GOG for bringing this classic back to life. So many good memeries playing this with my dad when I was a wee lad. Just as good as I remeber

It's a mix of mandatory story-related sequential missions interspersed with optional randomized simple side missions. Troops gain better stats with experience and can equip different weapons, but limited to codex compliancy (e.g. you can't equip a whole tactical squad with heavy bolters, even if you had enough). You can also find unique weapons with better stats hidden in some missions. The story is pretty basic WH40K fluff, moved forward in the form of technically pretty good cutscenes for the time, but with sometimes beyond corny dialogue. Overall a very good game with lots of tactical options, but quite hard bordering on the unfair on the higher difficulties.

This game is a product of its time, for better and for worse. It gloriously captures that feeling of 80s and 90s warhammer and if that's what you're into, you honestly probably already own this game! This is the game's main draw, but with troopers that progress through the campaign, new weapons and squads to unlock, and a good variety to story missions, the gameplay is very fun. There are downsides. The UI is very clunky by modern standards. This is to be expected from an old title, but it can make even simple tasks pretty labour intensive. The internal balance is pretty poor too. (Spoliers) Once you unlock terminators, and specifically give one an assault cannon, all other squads almost pale into irrelevance. Your baseline marine with a bolter quickly becomes fairly useless, especially in more confined missions such as inside a spaceship, where you can't even get them into a decent firing line and try to use mass bolter fire to make up for their individual weakness. Other quirks of the tabletop game also seep through, like how many librarian powers are incredibly niche/useless. With all that being said, it is an utterly charming game and a very nostalgic throwback to a time when Warhammer didn't take itself too seriously, and you can simply have fun chasing down a Sunday morning cartoon Chao Lord and give him the Emperor's judgment.