Warhammer 40,000: Rites of War

Trying to play this game in 2025 is terrible

Graphics and audio are nice, but the gameplay feels quite mediocre. I'd pick Final Liberation or Chaos Gate over this.

Late '90s reskinned SSI's Panzer General 2 / People's General engine with units & maps from UK's GW's WH40K; nothing more, nothing less.

You get an x amount of points to select an army, unlocking new units and slots as you progress through the campaign. You deploy this army on a hexgrid map then find the enemy and attack it - keeping an eye out for bonus objectives. Units gain XP and level up, though i'm not sure what that does. There's also an option to buy "strategies" which seem to be one-off spells that hurt the enemy (and i'm guessing later on help yours). This is yet another game with lots of big unmarked buttons (seriously, wtf was up with that?), but these make a bit more sense. Gameplay is kinda clunky because you only get one move action instead of a number of steps and weapon range isn't shown when you select a unit (or whatever). Your guys walk towards the enemy and you shoot each other from 0-2 squares away. There doesn't seem to be all that much in the way of tactics. Terrain doesn't seem to have much of an effect for instance (e.g. doesn't block LOS). Since you have to stand next to an enemy to fire on it you can't hide in a forest either, if that has an effect at all. I didn't see any unit abilities either, but they might be there at some point. Mostly this game feels very very dated. Even by 1999 standards the engine was old and the lackluster gameplay doesn't help. I'd rather play HOMM or Age of Wonders or XCom or whatever.

A great game. Not as pretty nowadays, but just as playable.