Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 (Warhammer 40,000 Video Game Review)

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, there are only flying cathedrals. Battlefleet Gothic has long been the unsung extension to the main setting, veering away from ground-based battles and into the stars. With distinct visuals, extraordinarily gothic designs and representation of every race, it long maintained a small but devoted fandom over the decades while it was ignored. Well, now that wait is over.

Ever since Kevin Rountree has taken over as CEO of Games Workshop, we have seen a dramatic shift in attitude in terms of its attitude toward spin-offs. Rather than closely guarding its IP, we have ended up with a broad range of AAA, B-list and the odd C-list release, all of varying budgets. Some have failed, others don't quite live up to their potential, but the successes stand out over these. Tindalos Interactive's original Battlefleet Gothic: Armada was one of the best among these releases. As reviewed here, it featured a popular mix of controlled RTS and Action RPG elements along with 4X-lite mechanics. Like any sequel this one sought to take the original's strengths and refine them, keeping what worked while enhancing its grand strategy elements.

Does it work? Yes, but it's not without a few problems.


The Synopsis

It is the 42nd Millenium, and the nightmare continues. Chaos burns a path of corruption across the galaxy, destroying all who oppose the will of the Ruinous Powers. With the fall of the Cadian Gate, the Black Crusades have taken on a new form, as the Traitor Legions now attempt to claim territory from the shattered Imperium in the name of their patron deities.

Reeling from the loss of Cadia, and the scar of unreality which stretches across the known galaxy, the forces of the Imperium attempt to stabilise their dominion. Many heroes arise to challenge this new order, with Admiral Spire among them. One of several veterans of the Gothic War, Spire's time displacement thanks to a Warp storm have flung him into this dark future of awakening gods and falling empires. Yet the Imperium and Chaos are not the only powers contesting this galaxy, as the awakening Necron Dynasties and hungering Tyranid Hive Fleets both seek to expand their reach across every world in their path.


The Good

Every good sequel always needs to look into what made the first installment work an then to expand upon it. In the case of Armada 2, the big development here stemmed from its need for more campaigns. In the original, you had a cohesive, detailed and well-told saga with multiple mechanical developments and branching story elements. 
Unfortunately, it largely stuck to established storytelling developments, so instead, it has offered up multiple new campaigns for xenos species. The aforementioned Necrons and Tyranids are the big ones, retaining their own benefits and strengths. No, we're not just talking about different units and an emphasis on certain combat benefits, but entirely new sets of resources and means to claiming worlds. The Imperium is after traditional facilities, shipyards and established planets of importance. They need to take and hold strategic locations. The Necrons don't give a damn about this, as they need to unearth their greatest assets and find dormant facilities to benefit their power. The Tyranids, meanwhile, need to infiltrate planets, overwhelm their defenses, and then consume their biomass to further expand their fleets.

The very fact that each faction not only has entirely different resources they need to focus upon, and means to construct their fleets, gives the game immense replay value. This isn't simply a Terran, Zerg and Protoss dynamic either, as you have to approach each force with a vastly different mentality on a grand scale. This means that, even once the map is familiar to you, there is always a need to never fall back on the same line of thought in overcoming strongholds or devising means to cover your shortcomings.

The actual worlds themselves are a broad mix of named systems from across the lore. Ranging from several First Founding Space Marine chapter homeworlds to prominent battlefields which have emerged over the years, it's a fun bonus to see these cropping up with their unique benefits, especially in the Imperial campaign. This is especially true of those which retain resource that reflect their origins, and it even gives old hands of the franchise an edge in terms of what to predict upon claiming a planet for themselves.

Away from the lore related fanwankery, the maps themselves are extremely well thoughts out with their mix of Warp lanes. While the original only retained minor benefits and a few notable choke-points to hold back the oncoming tide of Chaos forces, this one instead expands upon this to create a complex jump network. It's easy to become blindsided by an advancing fleet, and it encourages the need for a player to double back and cover their tracks rather than just focusing on the frontlines. However, while Total War: Warhammer II made this into a frustrating element given how Chaos doom stacks could pop in out of nowhere, it's instead a case of just thinking ahead.

Speaking of maps, the tactical battle maps will be extremely familiar to anyone who played the original Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. The broad mix of minefields, nebulae and asteroid fields offers multiple sensor blind spots and hazards to navigate about as you engage enemy fleets. Yet what helps to make things far more interesting is how this ties into the new orders and mechanics of your ships. Options like Silent Running and bringing a ship to a full stop can allow a vessel to hide within an asteroid field without being harmed, and the minefields themselves can be more easily detonated with the likes of nova cannons to inflict extra damage on nearby ships. Plus it helps the whole thing look stunningly beautiful, with no end of bright colours and stellar entities to make fights look beautiful even amid the carnage.

The actual battles themselves hinge on the use of relatively small fleets, with a mix of escort and capital ships. While they fit broadly into the RTS genre in these battles, what helps them to have a specific feel stems from the level of detail in each vessel. You have orders as before, allowing you to command exactly how they move, behave and what resources to shut into their engine systems. In addition to this, you have options such as boarding actions which require the ship to be carefully positioned, and torpedo strikes which need to be guided into their targets. This is layered atop of the ships being structured, with subsystems and major defensive networks, along with morale and shield recovery systems. 

Combat requires a substantial degree of micromanagement to keep control over, but the fact it is limited to single units over small mobs helps to offset the learning curve associated with such gameplay. Well, that and the ability to dramatically slow the speed of battle to keep track of things. Yet even if you don't want to specifically bother with that, you can even designate pre-programmed orders into individual ships, such as engagement ranges, firing angles and priority targets, allowing the AI to take over in key moments.

With so much working in the game's favour, you're likely wondering what it screws up. Mostly it's where the Tindalos' ambition worked against it. 


The Bad

One of the major selling points of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 lay within its sheer variety of vessels. While only the aforementioned factions received a campaign, every race present on the tabletop was given a showing on here. Along with the Craftworld Eldar, Orkz and Space Marines, more obscure factions such as the T'au Empire's first generation ships and Adeptus Mechanicus put in a good showing. On the surface, this seemed excellent but it doesn't take long to pick out a notable failing as a result of this effort to add in everyone.

Because many fleets only saw a limited release on the tabletop, several of them lack the sheer unit variety present in other forces. While the major factions can have up to five or six frigate types to choose from, the smaller releases are typically stuck with a single one, and a very limited range of cruiser choices. This is especially evident during the campaigns themselves, as the Necrons have roughly one-fifth the roster of ships that the Imperium can call upon. As a result of such a limitation, certain fleets can struggle to keep up with the broader tactical options on offer to more notable armadas because of their limited choices.

A further point of contention also lies within how the developer devised control over fleets in the main campaign. As the tutorial (oh, and we will get to that in a minute) focuses squarely upon the tactical end of things, even the assistance offered with walking players through the campaigns can be quite unintuitive. 
You can quickly end up making a major mistake or misreading a major part of its resource mechanics, but not realise it until you're several hours in. This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that the simplest way to correct such a mistake at that point would be to start over entirely. Even then, after you get to grips with this properly, the actual scaling system itself is notably wonky. Fleet value limitations in battles and resource generation from your planets never fully lines up together, and you can be left struggling to keep up with rival fleets because of this aspect mid-campaign. While it's certainly not the worst system ever coded to a game, it makes playing Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II surprisingly arduous without looking up a few pointers on how to play first.

Also, the tutorial was a mistake. Well, sort of a mistake, in that the tutorial itself is well crafted, explains its basic systems in detail and offers a good deal of freedom, but it sets up the rest of the game for failure. How so? Simple: It's Cadia. The single greatest battle of the last two thousand years in the setting is a tutorial system, which downsizes much of the battle itself and never conveys much of its immensity in-game. By the time you do see the battle playing out in full, the entire thing is conveyed almost purely via cutscene. Hell, even the moment of controlling the Phalanx (yes, the PHALANX!!!) is undercut by the game telling the player how to shoot, fire and move. Cadia might have been the starting point to this new age, but it both started with a battle too large for many others to match up to it, and downplayed its key importance. Plus, there's the little detail of it requiring a lot of outside knowledge to understand just what the hell is going on during much of the dialogue there.


The Verdict

There are some big problems to be found in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II, but for all its issues, it's hard to fully hold it against the game. It's a situation of the experience taking two steps forward and then one step back, but it's never hard to tell where and how it can succeed on so many levels. Plus, even when you are forced to restart for the aforementioned issues, the experience is still engaging enough to keep you persevering through it. It's still a genuinely great game at the end of the day, and a must buy for modern Warhammer 40,000 fans.

Verdict: 8.5 out of 10