One of my absolute nostalgic favs. Played the Guard on hard (ha), and might be the first time I ever did a full campaign as IG.
Hard difficulty was hair pullingly frustrating, but in a way also made me think way more on the game and what I needed to immediately do instead of just turtling and death balling. Strongholds do NOT fuck around and instantly wiped me out as soon as I loaded the map the first few attempts against some factions. Even the higher strength normal maps had me restart multiple times to get a good start going, and sometimes making me realize rushing with a small force was better than sitting back waiting to amass a larger one. Even made me micro more than I'm used to when doing single player in an RTS, making my sentinels dance around because their building/vehicle kill potential was too good to be wasted and it would be a game over if they died.
The Risk campaign style makes for a fun gameplay loop, with some borderline cheating rewards as extra spice to keep painting the map fun. But honestly, it does get monotonous to essentially be playing skirmish mode with zero sense of tech progression. Being able to get your relic-level weapon on map 1 made me realize that I enjoy the sense of "Oh, this is the last level, so they're giving me all the really strong shit now" in RTS campaigns. But you already had two Dawn of Wars do that for you, so whatever, yknow? But I gotta admit, I enjoy a heavier narrative focus, and I realizing the single player was just a generic vs. AI with an intro and epilogue did make it lose a bit of magic for me. If I wasn't playing on hard and it kept my interest through the varying difficulty of the maps, this would have been my millionth "Okay I did one stronghold, I'm good" run.
Now, I gotta say though: fuck Necrons and their ability to just shut down any source of damage, and fuck the pathfinding. Oh my god playing a horde army like IG is miserable with how many tight corridors are in EVERY GODDAMN MAP. I had conga lines across the entire map unless I carefully microed each squad. Good lord it's somehow worse than Brood War dragoons. You made the Chaos stronghold have instakill AOE pulses with pathfinding like THIS? You fucking monsters. You knew what you were doing. The inquisition is on the way.
Hard difficulty was hair pullingly frustrating, but in a way also made me think way more on the game and what I needed to immediately do instead of just turtling and death balling. Strongholds do NOT fuck around and instantly wiped me out as soon as I loaded the map the first few attempts against some factions. Even the higher strength normal maps had me restart multiple times to get a good start going, and sometimes making me realize rushing with a small force was better than sitting back waiting to amass a larger one. Even made me micro more than I'm used to when doing single player in an RTS, making my sentinels dance around because their building/vehicle kill potential was too good to be wasted and it would be a game over if they died.
The Risk campaign style makes for a fun gameplay loop, with some borderline cheating rewards as extra spice to keep painting the map fun. But honestly, it does get monotonous to essentially be playing skirmish mode with zero sense of tech progression. Being able to get your relic-level weapon on map 1 made me realize that I enjoy the sense of "Oh, this is the last level, so they're giving me all the really strong shit now" in RTS campaigns. But you already had two Dawn of Wars do that for you, so whatever, yknow? But I gotta admit, I enjoy a heavier narrative focus, and I realizing the single player was just a generic vs. AI with an intro and epilogue did make it lose a bit of magic for me. If I wasn't playing on hard and it kept my interest through the varying difficulty of the maps, this would have been my millionth "Okay I did one stronghold, I'm good" run.
Now, I gotta say though: fuck Necrons and their ability to just shut down any source of damage, and fuck the pathfinding. Oh my god playing a horde army like IG is miserable with how many tight corridors are in EVERY GODDAMN MAP. I had conga lines across the entire map unless I carefully microed each squad. Good lord it's somehow worse than Brood War dragoons. You made the Chaos stronghold have instakill AOE pulses with pathfinding like THIS? You fucking monsters. You knew what you were doing. The inquisition is on the way.