At once gorgeous, accessible, true to the lore and entirely engrossing, there hasn’t been as emphatic a tribute to the universe of Warhammer 40,000 since Dawn of War. Warhammer fans will love it and space RTS bods will enjoy its complexity and depth of tactics. Battlefleet Gothic is a game the God-Emperor Himself would be proud of.
Loved the game on table top and was gutted when GW discontinued it. Was overjoyed when I found out it was going on PC. I love the game because I love the universe of 40k and always thought the battleground of void combat needed to be explored (after all, if you can't control space it isn't much good having an army of super warriors). Yes there is still some work to be done on this game, but it will get there.
Great game - Ships feel good, models are nice, setting is great; A good game. However, the difficulty can be a bit... discouraging to some. Just take your time with the game, maybe look up a guide if you have trouble, and you should be fine.
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada is not your typical space strategy game. It's a fun violent strategy game focused on space combat rather than micromanaging an empire.
The developers of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada openly wanted to create a videogame with a feeling as close as possible to the original board game, and to that extent, their goal is achieved. The single player campaign feesl a little bit repetitive from time to time, but overall, fans of strategy games and Warhammer 40.000 will be more than pleased.
Tindalos Interactive did a good job of injecting atmosphere and setting from the fine tabletop-game into a great visual and entertaining RTS on PC. There are tons of options to develop your Battlefleet in the Warhammer 40k-Gothic-Universe. The campaign’s plot is a nice adaption of the 12th Black Crusade and the battles are based on tactical decisions. Unfortunately there is lack of mission-variety and often the time-limits during the missions can be frustrating. Units/Factions are not well balanced so far, so you often have no idea, why you win or lose a battle. Skirmish and Multiplayer is quite entertaining for a while, but it offers not that many options and only the same scenarios as in the campaign mode.
Battlefleet: Gothic Armada is a competent if slightly laborious first foray into the realms of Warhammer 40,000’s space battles, but there is potential here. As Dawn of War II changed almost all the elements of its precursor for the better, it will be interesting to see what Tindalos would do next were it to return to this franchise.
An adaptation of the Battlefleet Gothic specalist minitures game, Armada was created by, like many recent Warhammer 40,000-derived titles in the post-THQ age, what appeared to me to be a largely unproven developer. Also like many recent 40k games, it is an ok game that falls short of being a great one.
Thankfully for me, a strong point is in it's campaign: a tale of the famous Gothic War, where Failba-er, Abaddon the Despoiler led his 12th Black Crusade against the Imperium's Gothic Sector in an attempt to gain control of the six Blackstone Fortresses, immense and ancient space stations with the firepower to destroy entire star systems. Through the eyes of original character Admiral Spire, you command the Imperial Navy in battle against Chaos, Ork and Eldar fleets, with branching paths and persistent game flow regardless of the outcome of individual battles, allowing things to go better or worse then they canonically did. The 40k mainstays of Gregorian chanting over thundering orchestras and overacting faux-Englishmen help to set the feel.
However, certain parts of the actual gameplay fall short in portraying the scale and intensity of this war and, I feel, of the setting in general. Gameplay is strictly fleet tactics- there is no base-building or resource gathering, or any other aspects of an RTS. Battles are restricted to a two-dimensional plane and limited by an arbitrary "point value" as in the tabletop game, severely limiting the size of the fleet in each engagement, and for whatever reason, you are almost always outnumbered by enemy vessels. Towards the campaign's endgame I was able to field only my four most experienced ships against Abaddon's infamous Planet Killer, not to mention his infinitely respawning escorts.
Combat is extremely micromanagement-heavy, sometimes necessitating the use of the game's bullet-time function. Only your ships basic weapons are automated, requiring you to manage active abilities, heavy weapons such as torpedoes, strike craft, emergency maneuvers and virtually everything else directly. The AI is not smart enough to avoid stage hazards such as minefields and asteroids, or to dodge a speeding Ork Kroozer, though this goes for the enemies as well. The more upgrades and skills you install on your ships to give them greater survivability and lethality, the more difficult it becomes to get the most out of them- so perhaps it is better that you have fewer ships. Still, I preferred Sins of a Solar Empire's fleet combat. Armada's tutorial did not adequately explain all the game features, so much so that I was not aware that automating your abilities made them as efficient as those used by your AI opponents until after I had finished the campaign. Still, I was very proud of myself whenever I manually broadsided a Chaos ship with a full spread of my Retribution-class battleship's torpedoes.
There are a number of other modes, including online multiplayer, custom games, and skirmish vs. AI, allowing for a second player for coop, as well as post-release DLCs that add Space Marine and, if you're into them, Tau fleets.
Decent fleet action with a basic story. The combat is nice but leaves some to be desired. The scale of battle is not as big as it could be. The points system which restricts the number of ships to be deployed and the power of ships that can be deployed doesnt work out very well. The "fleet" is just too small. Homeworld 2 is still a better game.
The currency used to unlock ships upgrades etc is a bit too scarce. It doesnt allow you to swap around your configuration much at all. Some of the common missions are not designed too well. If you play normal mode and win all your battles you end up with too many "favors" that are just useless. But an abundance is alot better than shortage.
There are alot of things that can be polished in this game. The story while its ok it isnt something I desire to see a sequel.
If you like campy and silly this game is for you. Anyone who might remember the old star-trek bridge commander games will understand what they are getting into when they play this. Its purely based on tactics and even using a whole lot of ships didn't help. Have fun playing a level 20 times to figure out the right moves to stop random gen enemy ships from destroying your transports; or trying to destroy a ship that's faster than anything you have.
I love Games Workshop and I love RTS. I love the idea of commanding a space fleet against other space fleets. This game just **** awfully, and not just because it's in beta or newly released or what have you. The gameplay lies somewhere in between boring and frustrating.
SummaryDeveloped on Unreal Engine 4, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada is an RTS in which the player takes command of one of these battlefleets composed of the most powerful spaceships from the Imperial, Chaos, Eldar and Ork forces, in a no-quarter-given struggle for the control of the Gothic sector of space.