Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview – In this Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview, we will be talking about the gameplay and features of the new turn-based tactical RPG. We will deep dive into the world of the Grey Knights when it comes to their classes, abilities, and customization, as well as the game’s combat mechanics and headquarters upgrades. Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters is developed by Complex Games and published by Frontier Foundry. It will be released on today, for PC via Steam and the Epic Game Store.

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview

What is Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters?

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters is a reboot of the classic Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate, which was well-known for bringing Games Workshop’s created Warhammer universe into the forefront of videogames, and is a game I have fond memories of playing. Similar to the current iteration, it featured a tactical turn-based style of play where every Ultramarine and Chaos enemy had a limited number of actions and movements based on their Action Points (AP). Moreover, players controlled and commanded several squads including the soldiers themselves as well as their vehicles with multiple formation options that changed how missions were approached.

Daemonhunters is also often compared to the more recent strategy game, XCOM. This is due to the level of customization you have when it comes to building your squad of Grey Knights from the detail of their weapons and armor to the classes they should focus on. They will then be sent on missions that are brimming with darkness, decay, and despair as they seek to defeat the brutal and unforgiving forces of Chaos. There is also a headquarters in the form of a ship where you can conduct research to know more about these enemies, enhance the capabilities of your Grey Knights, and plot the course of your next move.

However, what differentiates Daemonhunters from XCOM is that your attacks are not purely at the mercy of RNG, and this makes sense lore-wise. See, these Knights are Space Marines who are direct creations of the Emperor himself using his geneseed. It, therefore, is reasonable that they are more than capable of accurately shooting and slashing their enemies into pieces. You will always successfully attack them but your chance to deal critical hits is the only RNG-defining aspect of these elite units.

Daemonhunters is a purely single-player experience with four classes to choose from, tons of skills and psychic abilities to enhance, multiple customization options, and several Baleful Edict Ship upgrades to acquire. Combat is highly challenging since you are essentially racing against time to eliminate Plague Marines and Cultists as soon as possible. Otherwise, you will have to face an overwhelming number of them, which could potentially lead to your downfall.

For in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview – Story & Setting

In Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, you take the role of a Commander, since the one who came before you has died in combat. Initially, your mission was to return to Titan to replenish the Knights who have fallen with him as well as the ship’s resources, but before setting foot into your homeworld, Inquisitor Vakir decided to pay you a visit to demand your aid in investigating the rapid proliferation of The Bloom.

This has been corrupting multiple worlds thus far, at the behest of Nurgle, the Chaos God of disease and destruction. As such, your course has been diverted to Koramar Prime and its various neighboring sectors to begin a series of dangerous investigations and missions to put an end to this unthinkable plague.

Daemonhunters has a dark and grim yet colorful atmosphere that precisely brings Warhammer 40000 to life from the intimidating armor of the Grey Knights to their overly religious-looking equipment. Some of them like Ectar, uses Games Workshop’s font plastered all over his armor, which is a pretty cool easter egg. The level of detail doesn’t end there as the war that ensues is brutal and chaotic as it should be, including but not limited to exploding body parts when a grenade detonates and eviscerated Cultists who die at the hands of the elite Knights.

What makes Daemonhunters more exciting to play is the amazing narration and voice acting, coupled with the superb sound effects and music. You will hear the thunderous and heavy footsteps of the Space Marines as you command them to go to different points on the map. Even encounters themselves are brimming with heightened sounds of guns blazing as well as the meaty swings of their halberds. These meticulous aspects of the game are some of the things that I thoroughly enjoy seeing and listening to due to how cohesive and well-made they are, showing the dedication the developers have to expand the Warhammer universe.

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview – Gameplay Mechanics

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters follows a similar formula to other tactical Turn-based Games like X-COM. While you are on the ship, you will be able to repair parts, allocate points to your Knights’ abilities, and conduct research to learn about the infectious Bloom. You can also advance time, which will expedite your research and allow for more missions to spring up on the Star Map. These are just some of the things you are able to do based on the resources you gain from completing missions.

In terms of finishing missions, your ultimate goal is to locate and stem the growing disease that is plaguing the galaxies. On the Star Map, you will choose the sector you intend to rescue. You will then see the corruption level, the poxus or harmful disease that will be inflicted on your Knights, and the types of enemies you will face. Note that you can bring up to 4 Knights per mission.

Underneath the main objective is the “Glorious Deed”. This quickly ramps up Daemonhunters’ difficulty and poses a challenge, which when you complete, will yield additional rewards. It’s a risk-reward system that can critically wound your squad and lead to defeat if not executed properly.

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview – Grey Knight Abilities and Classes

Grey Knights are impeccable Space Marines whose goal is to eradicate the forces of Chaos and ultimately, the Chaos Gods behind them. They possess excellent physical strength and psychic powers that amplify their performance in combat. Because of this, they are extremely durable so they don’t immediately die. Unlike in XCOM where when a character goes down in a mission, they permanently perish, these hardy Knights survive due to their special resource known as Resilience.

This lets them take critical wounds afterward without succumbing to their death. When all 3 Resilience has been depleted, their geneseed will be harvested and recycled back in Titan for future use. Once again, this makes sense in the lore since they wear tough armor and have multiple sets of organs to pull through the perils of war.

Every time they level up, they gain 2 skill points, which can be used to improve Willpower or the resource to activate psychic abilities, for example, but note that only those who go on missions progress. There also are a wide variety of abilities available to each class such as improved crit damage, stronger armor, and higher health.

There are 4 classes in the game that distinguishes one Knight from the other. You have the Justicar who is a tank capable of equipping heavier and tougher armor to withstand the high damage dealt by enemies. This is due to their Aegis Shield ability, which further amplifies their armor. Next, is the Purgator who deals excellent ranged and melee damage due to the variety of ranged weapons and damage bonuses they receive.

For the more melee-focused class, you are going to want the Interceptor since their attacks are immune to getting parried. What’s more is they can easily teleport beside the enemy to deal deadly melee damage. And finally, you have the Apothecary who heals allies in combat.

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters Overview – Grey Knight Loadout and Customization

For every Knight you command, you can change their respective loadout, which is comprised of Ranged and Melee Weapons, Armor, and Wargear. Specifically, the latter lets you choose from grenades, servo skulls like the Medicae Skull to heal allies from afar, or additional equipment to improve passives. You can see their Armaments on the righthand side of the screen. Accumulating Requisition from missions and finishing Glorious Deeds will allow you to recruit more Knights while gaining higher-ranked equipment.

Similar to the tabletop version of Warhammer, you will be able to heavily customize each and every one of them under the Character section.  You can change how every Knight looks in terms of their skin and hair color, chest, pauldron, and greaves, to name some. It’s also possible to alter their crest and names. There are a ton of options to choose from to design every Knight in your squad!

Combat and Difficulty Modes

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters features a similar grid-based combat style as XCOM and King Arthur: Knight’s Tale. There is the usual AP System that restricts your actions and movements per turn while alternating from one Knight to the next. Actions correspond to skills that will allow you to reload your weapon, deal damage, and sever the arms of enemies to prevent them from dealing ranged damage. But you need to be careful in moving from one area to the next, especially when hostile creatures are nearby because you can get hit by Attacks of Opportunity or Rear Strikes.

They also like to cast Overwatch to automatically hit you should you enter certain boundaries.

Unlike other Space Marines, Grey Knights are able of utilizing psychic abilities to destroy enemies faster but this comes with a huge cost. This is another risk and reward aspect of Daemonhunters because doing so increases the Warp Surge Meter, which pertains to the sector’s corruption level. Warp Surge rises over time but you can slow the process by minimally triggering psychic abilities only when you are fighting select and powerful foes.

Once the meter reaches 100%, it will trigger an RNG event that will make the encounter much more demanding. This includes enemies gaining mutations, thereby amplifying the range of their weapons, and even dealing an affliction, which damages your Knights over time.

What’s unique with Daemonhunters is the Precision Targeting System. This lets you make strategic decisions on how you intend to attack an enemy from a distance or up close. For example, you can choose to stun a target or prevent them from shooting using their autogun. Should you select the latter, you will dismember them and limit their actions. It’s a very cool mechanic that gives you control over what you can do on the battlefield.

Furthermore, you also have bonus actions in the form of Strategems, which are employed to select Knights. One example is providing them with extra AP to perform additional attacks such as hurling a grenade over a group of cultists.

One of the best parts of combat is having the ability to interact with the environment as an alternative to destroying enemies. For instance, you can decide to shoot a statue and then determine the angle and position of where it will fall to considerably harm them. It’s a fun way to utilize your surroundings in the game.

Formation and positioning are keys to succeed in encounters. Prioritizing taking cover to reduce the ranged damage your Knights receive is essential to keep their wounds at bay. Knowing where to place specific classes to protect others and identifying the best course of action, whether to use grenades now or later, will impact the outcome of combat. Furthermore, and similar to King Arthur: Knight’s Tale, when you begin a mission, you need to finish it.

You won’t be able to change your loadout so you have to know the best gear to bring right from the start. In the end, your Knights can incur light or critical wounds, which determines the number of days before their HP fully restores. Should you decide to deploy them to the battlefield immediately after, they will incur an HP penalty.

One of the things that can feel repetitive is the animation involved for almost every action you and the enemy take in combat, especially after long playtime hours. Thankfully, this can be drastically reduced by going to the game’s Settings, General tab, and then Action Camera. You can then set both Combat and Ship Events to Never.

When it comes to the difficulty modes, you can choose between Merciful, Standard, Ruthless, and Legendary with Merciful being the easiest. Legendary is the hardest mode due to how long it takes to research and reconstruct the ship as well as how beefed up the enemies are because of a significant increase in their HP. You can also enable the Grand Master Mode to limit your saves to one autosave slot if you want to up the ante, similar to Ironman in X-COM or the rogue-lite mode in King Arthur: Knight’s Tale.

Baleful Edict Ship Upgrades

After every mission, you will be rewarded with several resources including Servitors and Grimoires, which are used in the Manufactorum and Libris Malleus, respectively. In the Manufactorum, you can fix and upgrade the ship part by part to make it stronger and to unlock additional features such as enhanced speed to traverse the galaxy faster. On the other hand, in the Libris Malleus, you will gain access to other Strategems and Prognosticars to help you understand the enemy to fight them better. Be sure to take the time to visit both areas after completing a mission so you can quickly upgrade the Baleful Edict. Doing so will make encounters much more manageable.

Final Thoughts

Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters is a tactical, turn-based RPG where squad formation, positioning, and ability utilization are essential factors for the survival and victory of your Grey Knights. There are even risk-reward features such as the Warp Surge that make them more challenging yet satisfying upon completion. What sets the game’s combat apart from the rest is its unique take on a Precision Targeting System as well as the many ways of interacting with the environment.

These both provide players with the freedom to control the battlefield however they like. But it’s not as simple as it seems as the difficulty can ramp up pretty quickly, especially since it takes a lot of strategic decisions to successfully finish every mission.

Similar to Warhammer 40000: Mechanicus, there are many customizations to be had with your Knights, making every combat encounter feel more meaningful. If you are a fan of the Warhammer 40k universe or you have been wanting to dive into the lore as I have, then you might want check out Warhammer 40000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters. It combines canon, characters, strategic turn-based RPG, and base-building elements of Warhammer, in a single title. It comes out on today, and costs 44.99 USD. If you’re buying it on Epic, you can use the link below to support the channel!

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