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Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (Classic)
Tactical fleet battles and a campaign across the Gothic sector are the draw of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (Classic), with multiplayer and co-op alongside the solo story. At $1.29 from 
CDKeys, weigh that mix against how you want to play and which platform you use. Steam players rate the game 68%% positive across 5,149 reviews, useful context when deciding whether its ship customization and real-time strategy suit you. At $14.99 from CDKeys, Standard is offered for Steam; Dec 17, 2026 – Jan 4, 2027 is the next announced Steam sale window, though participation is not guaranteed.
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01About Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (Classic)
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (Classic) is a real-time strategy game about commanding fleets of immense warships in tactical space battles. Between engagements, customize ships, crews and abilities; surviving ships gain experience. Four factions bring distinct strengths and skills. Steam players rate it 68%% positive across 5,149 reviews. The Steam PC version includes single-player, multiplayer and co-op.
Credits
Developer
Tindalos Interactive
Publisher
Focus Entertainment
Lowest recorded in 36 months
No reliable history availableLanguage support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 3 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-11-10
02Before you buy
Play modes
The Steam PC version has a single-player campaign, multiplayer and co-op for up to four players. Four factions are available.
Languages
Interface languages include English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian. English has full audio; the other listed languages have subtitles.
03Frequently asked questions
What is the gameplay like?
Command fleets in real-time battles, customizing ships, crews and abilities between engagements.
Is there a single-player campaign?
Yes. The campaign follows the Gothic War between the Imperium and Abaddon the Despoiler during the 12th Black Crusade.
What multiplayer does it offer?
The description specifies persistent-fleet multiplayer for up to four players, as well as tactical PvP.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
IT IS BETTER TO BUY FOR THE EMPEROR THAN TO SAVE MONEY FOR YOURSELF!Show moreShow less
27.7 hours at review431 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I was really looking forward to this, but I cannot recommend this in its current state. It's going to need some big changes to improve, changes I don't see them moving to make. The 2 big problems are micromanagement and grind. Micro management hell: In order to give it the RPG elements that seem mandatory in every game these days, each ship can be upgraded with tons of special abilities, all of which have their own separate hot key and button. It's common to see ships with a DOZEN ability buttons each. Many of these are ridiculously powerful (nova cannon, stasis bomb) and tend to overshadow the basic guns. The game ends up resembling an MMO style ability cooldown management experience rather than a naval maneuvering game. It doesn't feel like you're fighting with ships so much as you're controlling dueling space wizards casting spells. It would be one thing if all these special abilities were limited to support style ships, but EVERY ship gets the SAME "spells". A light cruiser can "cast" the exact same stasis bomb as a battleship. Speaking of the upgrades in general, there is no strategy to choosing them because a couple are obviously useless (+5 degrees/sec turn speed when instant turn maneuvering thrusters are already practically free?) while a couple are obviously better (almost any of the damage/gunnery skills). You end up seeing fleet with 90% the same skills (oh hey another stasis bomb). All of this is made worse by the default speed being way too fast. WAY too fast to be managing what amounts to controlling 2-6 individual MMO characters. You can activate a "bullet time" mode (tactical cogitators) which effectively pauses the game, but it's jarring having to do this constantly. If you really want to be serious about your micro, you'll rarely let it run at default speed for more than one second at a time, having the announcer scream "TACTICAL COGITATORS ONLINE!" every single time you pause (holy hell will you get sick of hearing that). The speed also causes large groups of ships to crash into each other constantly. In the tabletop, it assumed the distance between ships in space was big enough that collisions were only possible if one ship was intentionally trying to ram. In this game you're going to have ships constantly bumping off each other like pinballs unless you use your annoying and precious pause time to avoid it. The grind: Holy hell the grind. You start off only being able to use a single light cruiser and a couple of the smallest escort ships. It is very boring playing with just these. To unlock more, you must grind battle after battle to gradually earn xp until you're "allowed" to use whatever ships you want in a battle. It's so slow and obnoxious that it feels like a F2P unlock model designed to make you go "screw this" and fork over cash to skip the grind, except this is a full price retail game you already paid for. This unlock model would be fine in the single player campaign which plays out like a long term RPG experience, but for skirmish and multiplayer? Completely unacceptable. It's going to take 10-15 hours to unlock every unit for a race, and you must repeat this for every...single...race. If that wasn't enough, you must repeat the grind again for every...single...difficulty level. Spend 40 hours unlocking everything on normal and want more of a challenge? That will be 40 more hours to unlock everything on hard, please. Totally unacceptable. This isn't even getting into the horrible mechanic where fleeing or losing a ship means you cannot use it for X number of battles. This would be fine for the single player campaign but it carries over into skirmish and multiplayer Ridiculous. Imagine playing a Warhammer game and having someone take away your models if they die. "You can have them back at the end of the day." Whether it's laziness or insanity, the developers are obsessed with carrying over all the campaign mechanics to the skirmish or multiplayer modes, regardless of how badly it doesn't work. Some insane people will defend it saying, "It gives your ships value!" All it does is promote overly cautious play where people give up at the first sign of losing and run away. Some battles start with players retreating right away because they don't have their good ships and are just trying to "grind" X number of battle to get them back again. Ridiculous. I realize you can’t make it an RTS and have it be a perfect conversion of the table top game, but they screwed up so many of the core concepts. In the table top, you got ONE special order per turn and had to roll to see if you could carry it out or risk losing control. Many special orders had drawbacks (full speed wouldn’t let you turn, brace for impact cut your firepower in half, etc). It was a risk vs reward setup. In BFG Armada, everything is just a free MMO cooldown ability. All movement is no longer tied to special orders but a stupid boost gauge. There is no drawback to any of the special orders (other than waiting for the cooldown) and the movement stuff is free. Carriers no longer need to use the Reload order between launches and can use just as much extra speed boost as other ships. The result is boring, overly long games of chasing endlessly kiting ships around. There’s the whole damage model. In the TT, the point of manuevering was to “cross the T” like old naval battles since it gave you the best chance to hit. In this version, heading does not matter. 90% of maneuvering is just getting into range of the MMO spells and trying to keep ships from bouncing off each other like drunken bumper cars. The campaign? I thought this would save the game. A longterm campaign with strategic decisions to make inbetween battles? Sadly, no. The only choice you're presented with every turn is "choose one of two systems to fight for and you'll lose the other one". That's it. It's like an XCOM game with nothing but terror missiosn but dumbed down even more. Special mention really must be made how awful the sound design is. You're supposed to be firing massive thirty FOOT shells and 100 meter long torpedos and other outlandishly massive weaponry, but all you hear tinny fart noises that have all the impact of a pea shooter. Your ears should be blown away every time these shots land. Contrast this to World of Warships where weapons 2% the size have 100 times the aural impract and you hold your breath when torpedos are about to hit. You know what's even worse about the sound? While your massive cannons pack the sonic punch of a baby's burb, your crew shouting will shatter your eardrums with TACTICAL COGITATORS ONLINE! FULL SPEED A-ALL STOP-FULL SP-RESUMING NORMAL SPEED TACTICAL COGITATORS ONLINE RESUMING NORMAL FUNC-TACTICAL COGITATORS O-RESUM-TACTICAL COG-RESUMING NORMAL FUNCTION! If they took half the effort they put into having your crew constantly scream at you into making the weapons sound halfway decent... If it was just the over use of MMO cooldown abilities and too fastly paced combat, I say maybe get it and hope that they improve it. However, that in combination with the insane F2P grind model and ship loss penalty push this into an emphatic thumbs down. If you're interested, check the updates and only purchase it if they fix 2 out of 3 of these things. UPDATE: Turns out there's an Android game in the Google Play store of all things that's a perfect 1 for 1 recreation of the tabletop game: Battlefleet Gothic Leviathan. Amazing how a bare bones $10 phone app manages to be a better Battlefleet Gothic game than this bigger budget $40 game.Show moreShow less
11.8 hours at review808 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
This game is getting so many negative reviews that I really have to write my first review now... with a more or less good english. Omelette du fromage. Battlefleet Gothic: Armada is a game where you will command a fleet of more or less half a dozen space ships. You will play battles in space where you will have to fulfill your mission to win the battle - destroy/protect cargo, retrieve data and warp out, assassinate/protect admiral ship, and so on. The game features 4 factions : - Imperial Navy : humans in slow, sturdy ships. Only faction available for the player in story mod. You like cathedrals ? You like battleships ? Get this Emperor or Retribution class Battleship and wreck all heretics and xenos. - Chaos : heretics in fast, less sturdy but stealthier ships. Like, sneaky heretics. If you like weird, weird ships and being the bad boy, that's for you. - Eldar : emo style xenos. They keep on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥' about their cruel fate and destiny. But they have cool/weird ships too, insanely fast, manouverable and hard hitting weapons. You want to be the "can't touch dis" admiral ? Go on, but beware they're not the easiest faction to start up with. - Orks : much betta' than dis punny ummies !!! Fun faction that can ram the hell out a cruiser with a stoopid "Brute Ram Ship" -sic. Hard to play with as it can be easily outmanouvered by experienced player. DLC factions : - Space Marines : sturdy flying boxes. Quite fast, strafing attacks. Captains got power armour so it's cool. - Tau : communist xeno scum. Still got some firepower. In the story mod, you will play a narrative campaign, the 12th Black Crusade, a classic of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Now I am quite a fan of this universe, and the game is really faithful to it. Sometimes it will feel a bit grindy, as you will play the same missions over and over, with different opponents... but you will do so with new ships, new equipments. Indeed, in each battle you win xp for your zee cap... uh your captains, and renown that you can sell - yeah don't ask me why - for upgrades, ships, and favours. So beside your tactical decisions on the battlefield, you will have to define the gameplay you want, and pick ships and upgrades accordingly. Wanna pretend you're an ork ? Get some Power Rams on these battlecruiser. For multiplayer, I'll let you check other reviews because I'm really not so much into it. Of my 33 hours, 32 are in story mod. TL;DR +Really cool graphics +Awesome battles with gigantic ships +Story driven campaign -Somehow repetitive missions in solo ?Multiplayer, well there's one Buy it, burn heretics, kill xenos and praise the Emprah. EDIT : Wow. Well I wasn't expecting my first real review to be upvoted at all actually. So uh, thanks. I guess I'll go back to MP to try to expand this review further.Show moreShow less
33.6 hours at review410 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
the devs have abandond the game thus abandoning the emperor of mankind and his will, thus this heresy should not and will not be tollerated in his glorious name. do not buy this unholy game for it will only feed those who have shyd away from his lightShow moreShow less
53.9 hours at review346 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Aesthetically this game fits the Warhammer 40K universe more then any I've ever come across. it looks like 40K and the voice acting is amazing. As a game, I believe Battlefleet Gothic Armada accomplished what it set out to do, It captured the feel of the original Table Top game. And while many may argue about the implementation, and the balance, the majority of players agree that it is fun. One challenge new players might have is the different factions. Remember that each faction has it's strengths and weaknesses, which means each faction has different play-styles that fit them. You will need to learn how to play each faction that you wish to use, and you will lose some battles in that learning process. Be patient, learn, and remember: sometimes a faction just might not fit your play-style. The only problem I have with the game is that sometimes, it's easy to forget that you're commanding ships that are miles long. these are not small vessels. yet there's so much going on so often that you just don't have the time to zoom in and enjoy watching your space cathedral floating along.Show moreShow less
59.5 hours at review288 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Single player is great. Skirmishes are fun only on hard mode. PvP is full of cheeze and imbalance, if you don't use battleships, you're crippling yourself. Ranked PvP never increased above 1v1, dooming the game. If you can get it on sale, do it for the campaign. If you're looking for multiplayer experience, don't bother, devs abandoned the game long time ago and don't adress imbalances.Show moreShow less
84.7 hours at review310 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I will review this game from three different angles. -As a WH40k fan. -As a fleet action strategy game. -As a multiplayer game. - As a fan of the universe I must say outright that this title does WH40k very well. It is true to the universe, setting just the right atmosphere of gothic warfare between the most well-known of the universes races. It gives a good portrayal of the 12th Black Crusade, also known as the Gothic War, from the perspective of the Imperial Navy. It gives us reasonably believable characters, acceptable dialogue and excellent cinematics. Those who worked in the art department and the writers of the storyline has earned their keep. There are a few things, here and there, which could have been written or done differently, but these are minor issues. - The game as a fleet action strategy game is true to the tabletop mechanic in the sense that it is 2D, not 3D. This might be an issue for some, but I understand why they went this direction. There are already a lot of management, and potentially a lot of micro-management, without adding a third layer. Also, most of the ships of the WH40k universe have always been portrayed as broadside vessels, It makes sense. As for micro-management, that can become an issue, especially if you have a large fleet and wish to do everything yourself. Luckily most abilities can be set to trigger automatically, and the AI does so in a mostly effective manner. The game is a solid, if not excellent strategy title. Single-player also has skirmish and custum game modes; now with co-op. - As a multiplayer game, however, the game has flaws, flaws that are not quite as apparent in single player and co-op games. Despite multiple patches the game has balance issues, some purely to do with the strength or firepower of certain ships and factions, others to do with map mechanics versus mobility, or certain faction's lack of mobility. Eldar are highly agile and fast and have a distinct advantage when it comes to maps where mobility is key. Arguably some of their ships still have too potent firepower, though equally arguably, their ships are too fragile. On the other end are Orks, who's ships are very tough, good short range firepower, but overall are slow, lacks agility and as such, seem to suffer in many cases, and are sluggish compared to not only Eldar, but also Chaos. Even the Empire can outmanouver them. These balance issues can make multiplayer frustrating. Note: There are those that reports bugs, and crashes. I have however only encountered a few bugs and in my almost 200 hours (199,3 at time of writing) playing this game, never had a crash. In conclusion; this game is good, but it could have been better. It is of course very easy to come with critque. The designers have done a job which must be described as solid. Are there a few bugs that needs ironing out? Yes. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Is this a bad game? No. This is a good game, which I feel deserve a better reputation than it has gotten. Lastly; I usally give games a score, based on a die 1d6. Unlike with a die however, a 0 is possible. This would be an abysmal failure of a game. Equally well, I occasionally deal with x.5. This is in this second category. I do recommend this game to fans of WH40K and those who otherwise are fans of Space Fantasy games. - 4.5 out of 6.Show moreShow less
216.3 hours at review274 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
At the present time I can't recommend this game for a number of reasons as noted below: - There are a number of bugs that have carried over from the Beta into the game. Although these may get fixed, some of them are really annoying. Examples include UI errors, key binding problems and crashes that occur. A particular favourite crash seems to be when I go over the number of ships "allowed" by beaming in reinforcements using a particular favour. - There is an interesting single player campaign, but on normal there are insane difficulty spikes. A good example is a mission defending a crippled ship from waves of other ships. Unless you resort to "pin ball" (more later) it is very hard to win with proper tactics. - "Pin ball" revolves around using high energy turns and thrusters to ram other ships and keep ramming them. The AI is poor at avoiding this tactic, so for example in the aforementioned mission, a cruiser with the 50% ram upgrade was able to take out most of their LCs leaving the crippled ship over 75% HP before it warped out. Without this pin-ball attempt, I was failing it badly. This tactic works in MP as well, although some players are skillful enough now to try and avoid it. - The graphics are great, but there are problems. Despite having 'Epic settings', I need to Micro my dual graphics cards to smooth out rough edges and deal with zoom problems. Maybe it's my config, but don't normally have to do this. - The skirmish is limited to 700 points. For those who aren't yet aware, this means a handful (4 to 6 ships). When you try and team up with a friend or AI, this is reduced to 350 points each which in extreme means one capital ship and a tiny escort each. - Missions in MP and Skirmish include horrors such as "Assassination" or "Data Retrieval" which against a few of the factions (looking at the Point Ears here) are very hard. They are much faster and you have to board their ship to try and win. Kiting Imperial or Ork becomes easy. Overall, this game reminds me of Star Fleet Command and Star Fleet Command 2, but with less features. Those older games, while set in a different universe offered all the same tricks (bombs, shuttles, high energy turns, cloaking, ship design, etc) while also offering a 6 player multiverse for persistent fights. There were also better modes for MP (e.g. start in a tiny ship and progress upwards as destroyed) that rewarded skill more than BFG. Although BFG is now very far ahead graphically, there is no gameplay innovation, so this is a purchase for people who like the universe (or who don't like Star Trek). Finally, the MP and Skirmish is poor. 2 v 2 is the max, and you can't matchmake with friends, so it's allways randoms.Show moreShow less
18.3 hours at review180 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Before starting the review, I want to get two points out of the way that those giving this game a negative review usually complain about: Difficulty The game isn't that hard, simple. The problem is not the difficulty, but the players themselves. Too many are playing this game on the highest difficulties when this is their first time playing a game such as this one. Not just that, but this game had in mind an old school difficulty, where hard REALLY is hard unlike most of the games nowadays. Easy and Normal modes are there for a reason, for you to use if you struggle. For you, to IMPROVE. Many on the forums and the reviews are spoiled by gaming nowadays, they want it all and they want it NOW. They don't want to spend hours to learn and improve their skills, and that's the issue. And the beauty of this game is the fact that in the campaign, even if you lose a battle, is not game over. You obtain XP and rewards and you can still overcome whatever the game throws at you. Micromanagement Seriously? Most of the time playing this game you control a bunch of ships, usually at the beginning a mix of 1-2 "big" ships and a couple smaller ones. Is micromanagement really a problem in an RTS that is about commanding a bunch of ships? If you think so, then you haven't played that many RTS's. Hell, you even have a "slowmo" button that you can use as much as you want to give quick orders if you can't keep up with what's going on. Not just that, but you can set the skills of the ships to auto, so you don't have to worry about it. With that said, I want to mention that I wasn't trying to sound arrogant. I'm not a "PRO-MLG", I'm not a great RTS player, but that's how I feel right now reading many of the threads and reviews. Those points (IMO) aren't valid to give this game a negative review. Now the review, I'll try to summarize everything and expose my biggest complains at the end of the review. Review Now that those points are out of the way, let's talk about the game. If you had always that itch for a W40K RTS based on space ships, then this is your game. Even if you are not a W40K fan, you are more than welcome although the universe of W40K is one of the reasons that makes this game so special (IMO). Gameplay The gameplay is very simple, you have an "armada" (duh) under your command and you have to use it wisely in order to be victorious. Like any RTS, you give them direct orders. Most of the ships have skills, that if used correctly, can be the difference between victory and defeat. There's different types of victory or "modes". Sometimes you have to defend a point, others "grab" some info from an enemy ship. Overall they aren't ground breaking but are good enough to keep the game "fresh". You can choose your ships, modify them with new skills, upgrades and you can even upgrade your crew. Each ship has a weakness, so don't ever think that a big ship can assure your victory. And each one has a role, one type of ship is better at CQC, others at long range. Is pretty simple in theory yet complex enough to allow players to create a unique armada that fits their playstyle. Game Modes There's 3 game modes, Campaign, in which you command an Imperium fleet in a "risk" style map. If you have played games like DoW1 Soulstorm, is more or less like that although more scripted at the beginning. You can choose your fleet, upgrade it, and "customize" it to fit your needs. It has some great voice acting and perfectly recreates that W40K feeling. And the best thing, like I mentioned before, is the fact that a failure doesn't equal game over. If you fail in a mission, things may get tougher but you move on. Giving some replayability, and best of all, you will never get "stuck". There's always a way to be victorious even if things get tough or don't look so good, however, that doesn't apply if you are always defeated (The logic is strong on this one yet many miss it). Skirmish vs AI. No comments, the name says it all. Although it has a rank system like the campaign and MP. Multiplayer, that needs some serious tweaking. It has some balance issues, and the matchmaking and servers need to be polished. It uses a rank system like the SP modes, in which you start with the lowest tier of ships and you have to "grind" your way up. It sounds nice, if it wasn't for the fact that matchmaking is kinda broken and it can match you with a guy who has way stronger ships. If you want to play this game for the MP, wait for it. Tech and Sound The game looks nice and clean, most of the time. The graphics aren't that great, and the game has some bugs related to the graphic options. In fact, I have a few complains that I will talk about later. The design and style of the ships though, is superb. They perfectly recreated the ships, and everything fits perfectly. The ships are canon, and that's the biggest plus (If you are a fan of W40K). The AI is one of the strongest points in this game.It is very competent, sometimes it feels like playing against a human. They will always try to win, never stay passive. It will make very logic decisions (Most of the time) and use every tool at its disposal to defeat you. I.e. a battle with the AI is never a walk in the park, although on the lowest difficulties they won't react that quick nor use skills that much. Personally, I have no complains about the sound effects. They do their job, but sometimes they bug and you hear nothing. The quality is there though, and with a 7.1 headphones you can perfectly feel the "kick" of an explosion. The soundtrack is average, not in a bad way. It's nothing extraordinary, but that's mostly because of the universe of the game. It adds to the immersion, it is very "W40Kish" but too similar to the soundtrack of other W40K games. Complains First and foremost, Unbalanced game modes. Basically a couple game modes need some tweaking. Depending on what faction you are up against, they can be really frustrating, unless you get really lucky. I think the devs didn't spend enough time playing these game modes before releasing the final game (As far as I know, they added most of them with the 1.0, so people couldn't test them back when the game was in Early Access). In my opinion, Planetary Assault and Data Recovery are the ones that need some tweaking. Next, the multiplayer. Again, nothing that I haven't said before. Unbalanced and has a horrendous matchmaking. SURPRISE bugs... Yeah, this game it's been in EA for a long time and from what I read from the forums, there still bugs that have never been addressed. In my experience, so far, I haven't had experienced that many bugs, but I have to mention it because there's a good number of complains and I can understand that. I may be lucky, but others aren't so. Personally, I've experienced sound bugs and a couple times I lost my mouse cursor, but could be worse. (Personal complain) The campaign, not the campaign itself but the wasted opportunity. I'm sick and tired of always playing as the Imperium, simple. I think they just wasted a great opportunity of making a campaign like DoW, allowing players to pick their favourite race giving the game almost unlimited replayability. Like I mentioned before, the campaign itself is great, with a perfect atmosphere and top notch voice acting, but a change would be most welcome, specially when most W40K games focus on the Imperium. I.e. wait for it to get patched and properly balanced, the game is really good and it has a promising future but right now, it needs to be polished a bit more to become a true gem. If you want to focus on the MP, just wait a couple months and come back. Edit: I've updated the review after beating the main campaign on HARD. Again, it is not impossible as many like to claim.Show moreShow less
29.1 hours at review266 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I like this game, but I cannot recommend it. Multiplayer's dead. Still has bugs and development has appeared to have stopped. My friend and I cannot successfully play a game against each other without one of our PC's crashing. Singleplayer's fun though. If you want a good singleplayer game, it's worth getting when it's on sale. It's not $50+DLC good.Show moreShow less
30.1 hours at review175 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.