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Dawn of War 2 Gone Gold
- Thread starter made
- Start date
feighnt
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2009
- Messages
- 149
fizzelopeguss said:
ick... hope this is better than it sounds. but if they DID put in a ton of skirmish maps into the campaign, i wouldnt be surprised, considering that the campaigns for the last two expansions for DoW were all skirmish.
only time i actually enjoyed skirmish maps in a campaign was the first Battle for Middle Earth. and i'm still not exactly sure *why* they work for me
MetalCraze
Arcane
Emperor: Battle for Dune had half-skirmish campaign as well - so it isn't something new. But it sucks as much.
DiverNB
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2007
- Messages
- 472
I bought the game on a whim, and I have to say that thus far I am enjoying it.
You can take your squads in the campaign in different directions, making your tactical squads equip chainswords and becoming melee or keep them ranged, or make the FC go ranged. It seems kind of like a neat option I'd like to try out on my 2nd play through.
Planets have infestation counters, the longer you ignore them and don't do missions for them the more they become infested. This effects the difficulty of your fights against the Nids, but I'm not sure what happens if it fills all the way (Possibly instant loss?).
There are main story missions and then there are optional missions, many of which have a time limit on them. Each time you take on a mission you basically pass 1 day in game time, BUT can be allowed to deploy up to 2 more times that day depending on how well you performed the first mission that day. The less units you lose, the more enemies you kill, and how quick you are in the first mission determine your performance.
The loot works, I just wish it was FULL squad customization and not just the leader for each squad. Also, I hope next time they don't hard code you with 1 tactical, 1 assault, 1 devastator, 1 scout and 1 Dreadnought. It would have been interesting to be able to build your own force on how you like to play, though with the experience and level up system trait rewards this is still some what possible.
As for the game play it feels pretty good, you often face overwhelming odds and have you use tactics, your abilities, and accessories to be successful, and I'm only on the normal difficulty. One thing I am not particularly fond of is the boss battles, as it's pretty much a duel between your FC and the boss while everyone else just pounds on the boss for 2 minutes.
I've played about 6 hours so far, and though it has flaws, I am still finding it pretty enjoyable.
You can take your squads in the campaign in different directions, making your tactical squads equip chainswords and becoming melee or keep them ranged, or make the FC go ranged. It seems kind of like a neat option I'd like to try out on my 2nd play through.
Planets have infestation counters, the longer you ignore them and don't do missions for them the more they become infested. This effects the difficulty of your fights against the Nids, but I'm not sure what happens if it fills all the way (Possibly instant loss?).
There are main story missions and then there are optional missions, many of which have a time limit on them. Each time you take on a mission you basically pass 1 day in game time, BUT can be allowed to deploy up to 2 more times that day depending on how well you performed the first mission that day. The less units you lose, the more enemies you kill, and how quick you are in the first mission determine your performance.
The loot works, I just wish it was FULL squad customization and not just the leader for each squad. Also, I hope next time they don't hard code you with 1 tactical, 1 assault, 1 devastator, 1 scout and 1 Dreadnought. It would have been interesting to be able to build your own force on how you like to play, though with the experience and level up system trait rewards this is still some what possible.
As for the game play it feels pretty good, you often face overwhelming odds and have you use tactics, your abilities, and accessories to be successful, and I'm only on the normal difficulty. One thing I am not particularly fond of is the boss battles, as it's pretty much a duel between your FC and the boss while everyone else just pounds on the boss for 2 minutes.
I've played about 6 hours so far, and though it has flaws, I am still finding it pretty enjoyable.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
Well this morning I wrote a much better 10 paragraph essay on the game but the power went out and I lost it, so I'll just rewrite a bunch of shit.
Dawn of War 2 is disappointing because the campaign sucks. There is basically one type of mission, with a second type of mission that is just sitting for 10 minutes while your marines massacre enemies as they come into range. You start off at the same point on one of maybe 7 or 8 maps and walk across the map killing everything until you get to a boss fight. I understand what they were going for but the boss fights are long, boring, and annoying. Some of them are ridiculously balanced, like the fight against the Eldar Sniper. He has a billion health and randomly teleports across the boss arena. The idea is you are supposed to get to him real quick because he starts charging a snipe attack, but you just don't have enough time so every 10 seconds or so he teleports and then snipe-instagibs one of your soldiers. You are reliant on random drops for good equipment such as flamers or power weapons and you are just fucked if all you get is Scout Armor over and over again like I did because then you start having to fight boss battles against tanks. If you don't have a power weapon the only thing you can do is run your squads around waiting for your meltabomb cooldown to finish.
The game is ridiculously easy (except for several retarded boss fights) and the balance in the campaign is incredibly poor. For the first ten missions your Tactical Marines instagib Orks in a single shot and then after that the only person capable of doing ranged damage is your Devastator squad, which is relatively useless until you rush and max out his ranged stat so he doesn't have setup time. I'm playing it through again since I got the French language pack with my Tactical squad kitted out for melee and they're much better that way. At the end of the game I finally got a missile launcher as a random drop, so dealing with tanks would be easier, except I already had my force commander with terminator armor and a thunder hammer so boss tanks and Carnifexes were no longer a problem (normal tanks are instagibbed by your meltabombs). Most of the special abilities you can get are just not that good, the only one worth equipping is the Tarantula Turret. The artillery barrage does less damage than a frag grenade (which is instarape and will kill a dozen or two enemies in a single attack) and the invulnerability power doesn't last long. The only thing that can even hurt your marines is the bum rush attack by boss tanks, and spore mines. It's kind of ridiculous, you can mow your way across a map and encounter 2 squads of spore mines and not be able to kill them fast enough so they explode 2 squads of marines before you can blink. It's kind of silly.
Overall the campaign suffers from severe balance problems and a severe BOREDOM problem. EVERY fucking mission is the same, except for the 5 or 6 defense missions you will do.
The item system is actually kind of neat and if it weren't reliant on completely random drops like Diablo fucking 2 it would be better. You get a suit of Terminator armor at one point in the story, and depending on who you give it to you get different stuff. You can give it to your force commander, or give it to your tactical marines for normal terminators, or your assault squad for assault terminators, or your devastator squad for normal terminators only the sergeant has an assault cannon. There's no reason, though, to ever give it to anyone but your force commander because unless you have a really good weapon item they will be much better in their original forms. This is double especially true for your Assault Marines because you lose their absolutely devastating assault jump which, as you upgrade their stats, knocks everyone about, supresses them, AND makes your squad temporarily invincible. You get a teleport assault instead which doesn't knock anyone about or suppress them, though you still get the invulnerability temporarily.
The voice acting is good but nowhere near as good as in the original Dawn of War and its expansions (also the French suck at doing Ork voices, complete failure). I went on Youtube to watch a few cinematics from the original to make sure I wasn't wrong. The cinematics in the game are neat, but you see them EVERY time you fight a particular type of boss. Is the boss a Lictor? Then you will see the same video of the guy dicking around in the woods with a camera Blair Witch style and then getting killed.
You spend almost the entire campaign with 5 squads, and you can only use four, and since I would always rather have tactical marines and assault marines instead of scouts I never used them. Later on you get a Dreadnought who dies very quickly and requires an accessory slot on one of your units just to keep him healed (and it has limited charges), he's just not good. The final mission is incredibly anti-climactic as I had both terminator armor and a thunder hammer AND Rapetron Angelos who is given to you, AND my fully kitted out devastator squad. I killed the utterly generic final boss in about 3 minutes.
Severe balance problems (most items and abilities are useless, after early game ranged damage is too low except from devastators (and for some bizarre reason plasma cannons do 1/4 the damage of missile launchers and fire 1/2 the time AND knock back and maybe hurt your own soldiers), kind of lame story, boss fights are a dumb idea, lack of different types of missions, and the driving force in this game is to get phat lewt for your marines instead of advancing the storyline. It's just really disappointing.
Anyways a lot of the ideas they had were good and could have been great additions to a more traditional type of gameplay, but I can only fight my way across the same handful of maps and fight the same generic bosses so many times before the game gets super boring.
Also, out of the 5 squads you have, only one marine hero guy is bald which is heresy.
Dawn of War 2 is disappointing because the campaign sucks. There is basically one type of mission, with a second type of mission that is just sitting for 10 minutes while your marines massacre enemies as they come into range. You start off at the same point on one of maybe 7 or 8 maps and walk across the map killing everything until you get to a boss fight. I understand what they were going for but the boss fights are long, boring, and annoying. Some of them are ridiculously balanced, like the fight against the Eldar Sniper. He has a billion health and randomly teleports across the boss arena. The idea is you are supposed to get to him real quick because he starts charging a snipe attack, but you just don't have enough time so every 10 seconds or so he teleports and then snipe-instagibs one of your soldiers. You are reliant on random drops for good equipment such as flamers or power weapons and you are just fucked if all you get is Scout Armor over and over again like I did because then you start having to fight boss battles against tanks. If you don't have a power weapon the only thing you can do is run your squads around waiting for your meltabomb cooldown to finish.
The game is ridiculously easy (except for several retarded boss fights) and the balance in the campaign is incredibly poor. For the first ten missions your Tactical Marines instagib Orks in a single shot and then after that the only person capable of doing ranged damage is your Devastator squad, which is relatively useless until you rush and max out his ranged stat so he doesn't have setup time. I'm playing it through again since I got the French language pack with my Tactical squad kitted out for melee and they're much better that way. At the end of the game I finally got a missile launcher as a random drop, so dealing with tanks would be easier, except I already had my force commander with terminator armor and a thunder hammer so boss tanks and Carnifexes were no longer a problem (normal tanks are instagibbed by your meltabombs). Most of the special abilities you can get are just not that good, the only one worth equipping is the Tarantula Turret. The artillery barrage does less damage than a frag grenade (which is instarape and will kill a dozen or two enemies in a single attack) and the invulnerability power doesn't last long. The only thing that can even hurt your marines is the bum rush attack by boss tanks, and spore mines. It's kind of ridiculous, you can mow your way across a map and encounter 2 squads of spore mines and not be able to kill them fast enough so they explode 2 squads of marines before you can blink. It's kind of silly.
Overall the campaign suffers from severe balance problems and a severe BOREDOM problem. EVERY fucking mission is the same, except for the 5 or 6 defense missions you will do.
The item system is actually kind of neat and if it weren't reliant on completely random drops like Diablo fucking 2 it would be better. You get a suit of Terminator armor at one point in the story, and depending on who you give it to you get different stuff. You can give it to your force commander, or give it to your tactical marines for normal terminators, or your assault squad for assault terminators, or your devastator squad for normal terminators only the sergeant has an assault cannon. There's no reason, though, to ever give it to anyone but your force commander because unless you have a really good weapon item they will be much better in their original forms. This is double especially true for your Assault Marines because you lose their absolutely devastating assault jump which, as you upgrade their stats, knocks everyone about, supresses them, AND makes your squad temporarily invincible. You get a teleport assault instead which doesn't knock anyone about or suppress them, though you still get the invulnerability temporarily.
The voice acting is good but nowhere near as good as in the original Dawn of War and its expansions (also the French suck at doing Ork voices, complete failure). I went on Youtube to watch a few cinematics from the original to make sure I wasn't wrong. The cinematics in the game are neat, but you see them EVERY time you fight a particular type of boss. Is the boss a Lictor? Then you will see the same video of the guy dicking around in the woods with a camera Blair Witch style and then getting killed.
You spend almost the entire campaign with 5 squads, and you can only use four, and since I would always rather have tactical marines and assault marines instead of scouts I never used them. Later on you get a Dreadnought who dies very quickly and requires an accessory slot on one of your units just to keep him healed (and it has limited charges), he's just not good. The final mission is incredibly anti-climactic as I had both terminator armor and a thunder hammer AND Rapetron Angelos who is given to you, AND my fully kitted out devastator squad. I killed the utterly generic final boss in about 3 minutes.
Severe balance problems (most items and abilities are useless, after early game ranged damage is too low except from devastators (and for some bizarre reason plasma cannons do 1/4 the damage of missile launchers and fire 1/2 the time AND knock back and maybe hurt your own soldiers), kind of lame story, boss fights are a dumb idea, lack of different types of missions, and the driving force in this game is to get phat lewt for your marines instead of advancing the storyline. It's just really disappointing.
Anyways a lot of the ideas they had were good and could have been great additions to a more traditional type of gameplay, but I can only fight my way across the same handful of maps and fight the same generic bosses so many times before the game gets super boring.
Also, out of the 5 squads you have, only one marine hero guy is bald which is heresy.
Right. Which means it's probably not worth dloading, not to even mention buying. Thanks a bunch fer yer insight pardnah.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
Yes they are in there. In skirmish mode they are a special ability requiring that 700 or 800 of that Waaagh thing and a level 3 stronghold. In the campaign it's like what I described, you get a suit of terminator armor as an item and you can equip on any of your squads except the scouts and dreadnought. In skirmish mode if the Force Commander is your hero then you can also get Assault Terminators, otherwise you only have normal Terminators available.
MetalCraze
Arcane
Well if KC with his shitty taste in RTS games, the guy who thinks that RA3 is fun says that DoW2 is boring - avoid at all costs.
Shannow
Waster of Time
Destroid said:
Assuming KC isn't lieing and it is the same for skirmish games.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
You are a whiny bitch. bawwwwwww kc liked ra3skyway said:
I've been playing multiplayer and the balance is absolutely terrible. Tyranids are by far ridiculously overpowered. Ripper swarms can take so much damage, are cheap, AND can cap points. I played a game where I just had a ripper swarm capping a strategic point, I let them sit, while a Devastator squad wailed on them. I lost 2 rippers. Add to that other another retardedly powerful unit (Warriors esp w/ with adrenal glands) and they take so much firepower to kill it's just silly. Carnifexes with VC are also insanely powerful and take heavy artillery to kill. Tyranids are overpowered not just by a little but by a lot.
On the other hand, Eldar are so weak it's also ridiculous. Their guardian squads can't do squat for damage and in order to make ANY of their units useful they have to have lots of power for upgrades. Since all the melee units tear down generators like no tomorrow it's not hard to just strangle them of power and let your units rape them. The only thing the Eldar have that does any damage is their plasma grenades, with Guardians you just have to throw a grenade then dance away and try to play cat and mouse games with resource points.
Space Marines are alright but have almost no anti-tank power. They pretty much have to rely in plasma devastators, and with their 10 year setup time they are easy to flank and hit with jump troops, warriors, rippers, pretty much anything.
Orks are pretty good, too. They're fairly strong and with large numbers of units have good map control. They have good units in general and don't have the anti-tank problems that space marines do. I don't think SM or Orks need much work but Tyranids need a fucking hard nerf and Eldar need a buff. Tyranid units (and by units I mean the 3 units that anyone uses: Rippers, Warriors, and Carnifexes) are impossible to kill and Eldar units (by which I mean all their units except the Falcon, which is their single powerful unit that you can get out around midgame) die too quickly and do no damage.
Uh, no, they have a teleport assault. As in, they teleport. I don't know how you got the idea they had jump packs.
fizzelopeguss
Arcane
Still gotta buy the game. But in the beta i pretty much gave up with the rocket launchers or plasmas, i just relied on my dreadnoughts for anti tank duty and used HPMG's as artillery (fucking retarded, where are my beloved whirlwinds.)
It requires a lot of dancing around, sorta like the wolverines in CoH.
Annonchinil
Scholar
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2007
- Messages
- 844
Balance was better at the start of the beta.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
lol spess meringues have failed us...another example besides haircuts of how DoW2 ruins the setting, Space Marines never lose ever it's built in
There's even a conversation between your characters about what a mistake "the Kaurava campaign" (alias: Soulstorm expansion) was.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
Ha, Eye Raping Bloom Marines:
Normally it's not like that, in the army painter however there are a small number of metallic colors which make your soldiers an offense unto all that is beautiful
Normally it's not like that, in the army painter however there are a small number of metallic colors which make your soldiers an offense unto all that is beautiful
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2002
- Messages
- 28,357
Only Blizzard know how to make a Warhammer RTS properly.
/Waits for Starcraft 2.
/Waits for Starcraft 2.
Hümmelgümpf
Arbiter
No such thing as a proper Warhammer RTS. A proper Warhammer strategy would be turn-based.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
I always thought 40k would make for a great fighting game. The final boss would be a Space Marine Scout.
Herbert West
Arbiter
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2007
- Messages
- 1,293
Right then, I decided to download it and try before buying, after reading all the negative comments contained here.
And I have to say, it's the worst Relic game to date. Shame that, since I enjoyed DoW 1 thoroughly. I can understand them trying to do something new, not to remake DoW 1 and I can easily praise this attitude. However, I won't praise the effect.
With this game, we got less than had been delivered in the previous title, while not getting anything really new in return. And I don't count the random loot drop idea as anything worthwile. It feels like a piece of DoW 1 cut and fitted into a new engine.
Singleplayer is shit, plain and simple. Easy as picking your nose and requiring similar intelectual effort. And it's not real time strategy by any means- far too much hack&slash vibe in there, which I hate in my RTS, as DOW2 has just proved.
Will try the skirmish soon, but not with any eagerness.
And I have to say, it's the worst Relic game to date. Shame that, since I enjoyed DoW 1 thoroughly. I can understand them trying to do something new, not to remake DoW 1 and I can easily praise this attitude. However, I won't praise the effect.
With this game, we got less than had been delivered in the previous title, while not getting anything really new in return. And I don't count the random loot drop idea as anything worthwile. It feels like a piece of DoW 1 cut and fitted into a new engine.
Singleplayer is shit, plain and simple. Easy as picking your nose and requiring similar intelectual effort. And it's not real time strategy by any means- far too much hack&slash vibe in there, which I hate in my RTS, as DOW2 has just proved.
Will try the skirmish soon, but not with any eagerness.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
Watching Force Commander/Assault Terminators beat the shit out of things with thunder hammers is pretty entertaining.
kingcomrade said:
This Act of Heresy shatters all ties of kinship. Those I was proud to call Brother, I now fight to bloody death. No quarter will be asked and none sought. These are the vilest foes we must face. There shall be no peace, no rest, no succour.
While traitors still live there can be no forgiveness.
kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
I borrowed my friend's copy of Company of Heroes and I don't agree with all the angst about how its game style was ruined. It's a good game, it's just not awesome and Dawn of War 2 is certainly a lot cleaner, with better pathing and less dicking around by your units.
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