Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters Review

Into The Immaterium

HIGH Great story for a turn-based strat, and the Grey Knights are quite cool.

LOW Key elements are under-explained. An overcomplicated RNG drop system.

WTF The final battle goes hard for ‘epic’ and ends up closer to ‘JFC.’

Being a fan of Warhammer 40K videogame adaptations is a dicey thing. Games workshop, The IP holder, has famously played fast and loose when granting rights to developers. At best, any release bearing the name has had a 50/50 shot (at best) of being any good.

That’s recently changed, though! I have no idea what shifted, but 40K has seen a string of real bangers lately, and despite some missteps, I feel comfortable adding Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters to the ‘win’ list alongside recent luminaries like Martyr: Inquisitor, Mechanicus, Battlesector and Rogue Trader.

In Daemonhunters, players assume the role of a commander who’s joined a group of Grey Knights — a faction in the 40K universe known for being dedicated warriors who use psychic abilities, and in their long history, they’ve never lost a member to corruption. Essentially, these are some pretty hardcore badasses. The premise is that one of the evil big bads from the 40K universe is cooking up a scheme to kill billions of people by growing corrupted plants in our dimension, so it’s up to the player and his group of Knights to stop them.

In terms of structure, Daemonhunters borrows liberally from XCOM2, although this is not a bad thing. If one is going to be inspired, then be inspired by the best.

Before and after missions, the player makes plans on a ship called the Baleful Edict as it hurtles through the cosmos. As the player joins it’s in bad shape and needs several repairs, much like the way players must enhance and expand their HQ in XCOM2‘s base building mode. Many of the bays and defenses are offline so over the course of play, the player will restore the ship and gain access to things like faster travel speed, shields to protect from enemy craft, a larger barracks to hold soldiers and more.

Once upkeep is done, the player selects a mission from a galaxy map (there are usually three sorties to choose from at any time) and then select a strike team of four Grey Knights who will beam down to the surface and wreak havoc in isometric turn-based tactical fashion. There are a slew of soldier types including the Justicar who can grant additional turns to other characters, the Apothecaries who can heal their teammates, Purgators with enormous guns, and probably the most potent of the starting four classes, the Interceptors who specialize in supporting strikes and teleportation.

When the campaign starts, people experienced with turn-based tactics might think they have a handle on how Daemonhunters plays, but while it may look identical to others in the genre, there are a number of key differences. I learned this the hard way, as I stumbled through my initial run and realized that I hadn’t been leveraging its special quirks. Once I realized how different it was despite appearances, I ended up abandoning my first 15 hours and started fresh, with much greater success.

To be fair (to me, that is) the developers leave many key aspects under-explained. For example, it’s far too easy to miss out on important abilities that build powerful synergies. For example, the interceptors’ ability to teleport isn’t just one random skill out of an entire tree — this hyper-flexible mobility becomes the backbone of successful play. They also have the ability to fire when a teammate fires (another optional upgrade that doesn’t initially seem vital) but with careful manipulation and placement, it’s easy to trigger three free attacks for every one the player keys off. Focusing on abilities like these which aren’t called out in any special way completely turns the tide of battle.

There’s also an unspoken philosophy here that the best way to survive is to strike first. While it may seem as though playing defensive is viable (especially since every Grey Knight comes with a built-in ability to magic-shield themselves) it becomes easy to eliminate entire groups of enemies before they have a chance to hit back, and I completed many missions without taking a single point of damage. However, this approach is not overtly surfaced, and like many aspects I mentioned, it falls to the player to discover these nuances — and if they don’t, they can expect a very rough ride.

Once I gained this knowledge and everything started to click? Playing Daemonhunters was great! Being able to read the battlefield and move my Knights in before delivering devastating, squad-wiping strikes is a fantastic feeling, and triggering the correct synergies between Knights absolutely pops. There are some wonderfully fresh and enjoyable tactical concepts here, and they are what ultimately make this a noteworthy experience.

However, the lack of transparency that initially caused me difficulties extends to other systems as well. For example, Daemonhunters offers four classes from the get-go, but there are four more and I found it difficult to access them, as they’re awarded through randomized drops that hinge on a few factors. It’s too much ‘inside baseball’ to detail here, but there’s no guarantee a player will ever see the other classes — or even know they exist! — outside of a one-time story event. Burying the new troops is a shame because they offer interesting variations in play, not to mention the campaign is at serious risk of stagnation without something to spice it up after 20 or 30 hours.

On the upside, the developers lean into the script — unusual, both for 40K and for turn-based tactics in general — but the effort pays off in spades. When on the ship, the player will interact with three main characters, and they have much to say about the nature of the campaign and the 40K universe in general. The dialogue is well-written and the voice acting is superb, so I greatly enjoyed all of the interludes with the cast and got to know them quite well by the time credits rolled. Surprising, but extremely welcome.

Before concluding this review, I do feel like it’s necessary to give two warnings — one thing a little bit spoilery, and one not.

The non-spoilery heads up is that there are significant DLC additions only available on PC. At the time of this review, the developers have said there are no plans to bring any of the DLC to consoles, which is a great disappointment — I would have gladly played more! For those who might want the full package, PC is the only way to go.

The other caveat is for the final battle, which absolutely must be mentioned. Spoiler warning for the paragraph below.

In trying to build a truly epic finale, the devs overshot and ended up going too far. Not only is the last fight a huge war of attrition that’s longer than five regular missions put together, it requires the player to deploy a full second squad — something I never had to do at any point prior. It would have been incredibly disheartening to be unable to roll credits when faced with such unexpected circumstances, and I barely squeaked out a win. The developers should give more foreshadowing about the requirements for this final battle because I suspect many players will get through the 50+ hour campaign only to feel overwhelmed and quit at the very end.

End spoilers.

Despite the fact that there are several rough edges and key instances where Daemonhunters feels unnecessarily obtuse, I did enjoy my time and it’s certainly one of the better 40K games to come out in recent years. It’s an adventure worth taking for tactics fans (and that goes double for 40K folks!) but anyone considering riding shotgun with the Grey Knights should read up on it before starting and feel zero guilt for doing so — spare the lost time and heartache of learning things the hard way, and see the best of what Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters can offer instead.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Complex Games and published by Frontier Foundry. It is currently available on PC, PS and XBX/S — FYI to completists, at the time of review none of the DLC currently on PC is planned for consoles. If you want the full experience, PC is the way to go. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 55 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore and Violence. The official description reads: This is a role-playing game in which players lead genetically enhanced soldiers as they battle to contain the spread of a dangerous plague. From a 3/4-overhead perspective, players complete mission objectives and battle enemies (e.g., demons, human heretics) in tactical turn-based combat. Players use swords, spears, machine guns, and grenades to kill enemies; large blood-splatter effects occur when enemies are struck. Some gameplay is highlighted by zoomed-in slow-motion sequences. Attacks can result in decapitation and/or dismemberment, leaving large blood stains and body parts on the battlefield.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles for all spoken dialogue, but the text cannot be altered or resized. There are no audio cues necessary for play, as this is a turn-based game. Daemonhunters is fully accessible.