Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch received a major overhaul to accommodate and justify its existence on PC, and thus I present to you Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch – Enhanced Edition!
Some key points that this game offers:
- Remastered Game.
- New Space Marine units to acquire.
- High Quality Graphics.
A lot of changes were made to Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch, some minor and others massive. This review will focus on the Enhanced Edition mostly with quick references to the IOS version; other than that, the game stands on its own, most of what made Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch a game was changed or removed to accommodate this version so it deserves its own voice.
Gameplay & Controls:
The games “port” to PC was done quite neatly, the controls for the game can be customized giving us full range of how to play the game. The game handles very well, and it plays even better. The only issues I have here is speed, for some reason the game feels quite slow, and then the speed up enemy’s turn button has to be pressed each turn which feels unnecessary.
The game shares the same experience as the original, or in a better sense, the essence of the original game is still here. We have a Turn-Based game here that has strong RPG elements set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The RPG elements can be better described as each Space Marine gains XP or a fraction of XP for every kill that has been made on the battle field, these XP points can be used to improve your Space Marine’s Health, Accuracy and Critical Hit, other than that XP is used to unlock traits, abilities and wargear slots. With XP comes a wide variety of weapons and wargear that can be obtained for your Space Marines. These items along with the Space Marines themselves comes in four different Tiers, with Tier 1 being the lowest and Tier 4 being the best.
The weapons, wargear and Space Marines are all obtained from card packs which can be earned or bought with requisition points that are earned from in game actions. Do note that this is a feature that was changed specifically for the PC version of the game.
The actual gameplay allows you to assemble a team of five Space Marines to take into combat, from here you have to carefully plan and execute your plan to not only withstand the enemy but to annihilate them, remember, thou shalt not suffer the Xeno to live!! The game is divided into nine Acts and each act has four missions.
As I mentioned the “port” was done neatly and is very enjoyable, however there are some QOL features that would have made the game much more enjoyable; For example, better inventory management.
Graphics:
The game has been beautifully remade, Unreal Engine 4 is performing marvellously here. Every level looks so clear, and well-drawn. Every object and obstacle have been beautifully remade to offer us gorgeous levels to purge Xenos in.
Character models have received the same treatment, the enemies look so much more lifelike and colourful, whether it is one of the large beasts or a tiny one, they all look unique in appearance and they all have their own behaviours and patterns adding to the realism that it creates.
Under the settings panel, we have a few options to customize our gameplay.
Sounds:
Here the game falls a bit short, the music itself is pretty much the repeat of the same tone over and over and to be honest if you are in a difficult mission struggling to hold that line, the same tone over and over becomes annoying and not very entertaining.
Fortunately, the rest of the sounds and other background music has been pretty well implemented to give each category a life of its own. Enemy sounds along with attack sounds are all unique to creature type and it adds to that realism that the game creates.
Character voice overs have been done very well as well for the Space Marines, those deep encouraging voices really adds hype to the game, The same can’t be said for the Watch Commander though, his voice acting was done well but as the commander of the Elite Deathwatch I would of wanted a more encouraging voice that not only commands authority but inspires you.
Replayability:
The game has numerous achievements that will require a lot of grinding. There are three difficulty achievements which can only be obtained by beating the game three times.
There is plenty of replaying to do if you plan on completing all the achievements.
MGR Gaming’s Conclusions:
Spoilers Ahead:
Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch – Enhanced Edition shares a lot of similarities from its IOS counterpart which is to be expected, it is the same game, just massively improved and altered to cater for PC players. The game comes very close to a high quality game, but lacking some minor and major QOL features does bring that high down quite a bit.
The grinding seems acceptable but to be honest, there is way too much grinding requirement, an unfortunate side effect of changing the game from buying requisition with real currency to earning it from in game actions, unfortunate but understandable.
The game is fun to play offering a fun and enjoyable experience to a very challenging one, some missions will require you to think out of the box like never before, but that is what makes RTS games so fun.
The improvements and changes really make the Enhanced Edition stand out as its own game.
Additional Info:
Platforms: PC
Genre: Turn-Based: Warhammer 40k: RPG
Censor Rating: Mature
Age Rating: 16
Developer: Rodeo Games
Publisher: Rodeo Games
Release Date: 16 October 2015
MGR Gaming Steam Curator:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32364038/
