Post by Simon on Nov 8, 2006 20:01:59 GMT 1
Ok, I got this at the weekend and the verdict is in...
As far as expansions go for RTS's this is the best I've seen. Adding the Tau and the Necrons to the Dawn of War series has worked well, with both forces playing differently to every other race in the game. The Tau play quite defensively in the early stages of the game, and rely more on tech upgrades. They don't have turrets other than the listening posts, but their troops are quite decent to make up for it. They are balanced enough as well, dying in combat with relative ease. The Necrons on the other hand play well as a raiding force. You can phase them out of the fight back to most necron structures and they have a unique feel to going up the tech tree. Essentially, all you are doing throughout a game is bringing the Monolith (your HQ) back online and then using it to unleash an attack. The Necron ability to repair is well represented, allowing troops to rebuild. This works well in the attack. They are few in numbers but when they start coming back from the dead they cause a lot of headaches for anyone defending against them. This is especially true about the Necron Lord. He doesn't self repair, but when you rebuild him, he comes into play where he died...
The single player campaign is basically an RTW sort of thing with the complexity taken out. You just conquer provinces, there's no economy to worry about. On the plus side, when you fight on a territory that you've already conquered, you get to keep your base that was built there.
I've not played it online yet, and haven't really considered it yet as I want to have a decent win rate.
All in all, worth the £20 price tag on it (this game functions as a standalone, but you need to have the two previous games to play the multiplayer games as the original races and imperial guard)
As far as expansions go for RTS's this is the best I've seen. Adding the Tau and the Necrons to the Dawn of War series has worked well, with both forces playing differently to every other race in the game. The Tau play quite defensively in the early stages of the game, and rely more on tech upgrades. They don't have turrets other than the listening posts, but their troops are quite decent to make up for it. They are balanced enough as well, dying in combat with relative ease. The Necrons on the other hand play well as a raiding force. You can phase them out of the fight back to most necron structures and they have a unique feel to going up the tech tree. Essentially, all you are doing throughout a game is bringing the Monolith (your HQ) back online and then using it to unleash an attack. The Necron ability to repair is well represented, allowing troops to rebuild. This works well in the attack. They are few in numbers but when they start coming back from the dead they cause a lot of headaches for anyone defending against them. This is especially true about the Necron Lord. He doesn't self repair, but when you rebuild him, he comes into play where he died...
The single player campaign is basically an RTW sort of thing with the complexity taken out. You just conquer provinces, there's no economy to worry about. On the plus side, when you fight on a territory that you've already conquered, you get to keep your base that was built there.
I've not played it online yet, and haven't really considered it yet as I want to have a decent win rate.
All in all, worth the £20 price tag on it (this game functions as a standalone, but you need to have the two previous games to play the multiplayer games as the original races and imperial guard)