DLCWarhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters - Execution ForceLoading store offers
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters combines a personalised Grey Knights squad with turn-based battles, precision targeting and destructible environments. Its current low makes the purchase well suited to players ready to begin this tactical single-player campaign now. The displayed offer is $1.22 at 
Eneba, while the Steam PC version includes full controller support.
The Bloom campaign lets you develop your base, research, equipment and warrior classes. With 76% positive from 11,503 reviews, there is a substantial player response to consider, while English full audio and multilingual subtitles support the presentation. Standard is offered for $1.22 on GOG, with Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, Japanese, and Korean confirmed for the interface.
Loading store offersEnebaWarhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate (PC) Gog.com Key GLOBAL-97%from~ $1.22ALL-TIME LOWSave $10.02 vs SteamBuy now
KinguinWarhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters PC Steam CD Key
K4GWarhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters Standard Edition Steam CD Key
GGselWarhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters | Steam Ключ | GLOBAL | РФ | АВТОВЫДАЧА 24/7Credit/Debit CardAll-time low ~ $4.49across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
Loading store offers
Wishlist price
Set a target to receive an email when an eligible offer in your selected region is at or below that amount.
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $4.492026-05Current Low Across Stores~ $1.22EnebaAt its historical low now
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
Lead the Grey Knights against Chaos in a fast-paced, turn-based tactical RPG. A story-driven campaign spans multiple worlds as you develop a personalised squad, customise its skills and equipment, and contain the spread of the Bloom plague. The Steam PC version supports single-player and full controller support. English full audio and subtitles in multiple languages are available. Player rating: 76% from 11,503 reviews. Released on May 5, 2022.
Credits
Developer
Complex Games
Publisher
Frontier Foundry
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$4.492026-05-21 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Traditional Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Show 9 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-20
02Before you buy
Controls
The Steam PC version has full controller support.
Language and audio
English includes full audio, with subtitles supported in multiple languages.
Play mode
The campaign is listed as single-player.
03Frequently asked questions
What is the core gameplay?
You command a personalised Grey Knights squad and develop its skills, equipment and classes.
What tactical options are available?
Turn-based battles combine precision targeting, melee attacks, psychic powers and destructible environments.
What is the story about?
The campaign follows the fight against the Bloom plague, while choices affect which planets survive.
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
There are some traps at the start of this game and I can see how a lot of people with only a couple hours of play time would come away with a negative impression. They're not wrong. While XCOM 2 is the single biggest influence on the game and clearly the starting point of the design, it mixes in other modern games like Gears Tactics and has enough ideas of its own that you'll be very frustrated if you try to play it just like XCOM at the tactical level. The game does not introduce you to its systems well either. Not from the perspective of a new player, and very much not from the perspective of an XCOM veteran who's chiefly interested in the things that are different. Cover, overwatch, armor, RNG, critical hits, action points, movement, skills, etc. are all quite different and need to be re-learned. Optimal play patterns are very different in this game compared to the games that inspired it. At the same time, while in many ways this game is devoted to the 40K lore, the developers treated it as only a suggestion when they were tuning the early-game combat and progression. If you come into the game with lore based notions of how tough Space Marines are, and expect that power fantasy out of the gate, you're in for a rude surprise. Cultists with mere slug-throwers are going to damage and sometimes wound your marines, even those with terminator armor, with one or two hits. Your level one and two guys with the entry level gear, despite looking, walking and quacking like Space Marines, are closer in power to XCOM recruits you need to keep behind cover. It feels bad. The far-from-purely-cosmetic pre-order kit, the cheat-code marine in the special edition and the twitch drops all leave a bad taste in the mouth as well. But if you can get through those bad initial impressions, and engage the game on its own terms, there's something really special here. The game isn't just copying other tactical shooters, it's in conversation with them, mixing things up in some very interesting ways. The combat systems they've changed largely feel like improvements and after the rough opening, fit well with being elite Space Marines. The skill trees and the gear system allow real builds to emerge. As these builds start to take shape and you personally start to master the game's systems, the power fantasy kicks in and then some. Your squad of marines will be able to roll through tough encounters with some real momentum, not getting shot at all, or only getting shot when you intend to on troops with enough armor to shrug it off. At the strategic level, it feels even more like XCOM 2 out of the gate, but finds its own identity as the game goes on with constant and interesting tension in your choice of missions and how to spend your resources. The interplay between tactical and strategic are great, with the strategic often asking you to take extra risks and leave your comfort zone in the tactical for some extra resources. The story is better than anyone should expect from a game like this. In the now familiar pattern, it starts with XCOM and finds its own voice from there. Like XCOM, it's told largely by your supporting caste in your HQ. Unlike XCOM, there's some real tension between the characters and you make decisions that have real, if sometimes opaque, impact on your campaign. The writing and voice acting are solid. Cut scenes are fully voiced. The interactive dialog has about one sentence per paragraph getting voiced. My one complaint in this department is that that one sentence isn't always the first sentence of the paragraph, creating some real dissonance where you either need to just listen to their line without the context of what they were supposed to say before it, or try to read their response as written while ignoring what they are saying. It's a baffling choice in an otherwise very well produced story. This game is not without flaws, and they are unfortunately very front-loaded in the experience. But it's loaded with love for the genre and setting, and some real ambition to be its own game and create new thrills and challenge, even for those like me who've taken many a lap around its tactical shooter predecessors. There's a reason, I think, for the disparity between the near universal critical acclaim and the mixed player reaction. Critics had to get through the opening to write their review. Normal players are under no such obligation.Show moreShow less
29.4 hours at review558 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
The game is good. I like it a lot. The visuals are distinct and crisp, and though the vocoder used for the space marine voices isn't exactly like the one I grew to love from the Dawn of War series, it is good nonetheless. The spoken lines are great as well, and so far, there's some great voice acting. The game plays sort of like a mix of Xcom: Enemy Unknown meets FTL's travel system which works better than you'd expect. Sure, I really wish another Dawn of War game circa Soulstorm and (especially) Dark Crusade, as that would be a return to form, imo, getting back to RTS and abandoning the MOBA bs for good. However, that's a wish that maybe in a parallel reality I'm navigating to will have. That said, this game is by far the best TBS game of many that I have played. I won't compare it to Mechanicus, because the systems are too different, however, I will compare it to the other TBS Warhammer 40K games and say "No, this isn't table top, yes, it pretty much is XCom: Warhammer 40K Human Imperium Edition, and yes, that is a good thing." Every one of the systems thus far is great, and, on top of that, I detected only a few audio stutters with everything set to max... which I suspect is the fault of the reason this, like all games that bear it, gets a thumbs down, even if the audio stutter is different.... Denuvo Anti-tamper malware is present on this game, and is a very very distinct stain/taint of Nurgle in the form of a profanity of the will of the Omnissiah. Okay, sure, I just tapped into my inner tech priest with that, however, the reason that I did was very very specific, as, I do actually regard computers as having machine spirits. Computers haven't evolved enough to be considered Cogitators, however, they have evolved enough that, I prefer to ensure that they do not suffer from undue stress even if the company who makes this malware claims that "Performance will not be effected". Oh? Won't be effected? Hmmm... extra space is taken up on my NVME due to this filth, totally unnecessary space wasted that forces writes on said NVME drive due to the forced confirmation that this game hasn't been stolen yet... as if one can steal the game from the dev after buying the game up front and legitimately. I intentionally waited this long to buy the game, as I do with most games which bear the stain of Denuvo, specifically because, those first quarter sales get to suffer as a result. So, reasons that I consider Denuvo malware: 1. It is veritably a rootkit that is installed on your computer specifically to assure one business that the other businesses game will not be stolen. As such this malware does not have a permissions set and is intentionally obfuscated from your control, by design. The forced installation of this malware on your pc does not benefit you, nor was it ever intended to benefit you. If a hacker decided to use a vulnerability in Denuvo to compromise your computer, that would not affect either the company that made Denuvo, or the customer, the publisher who forces the install of that on your machine this far from launch. 2. It requires that data be sent from your pc to their servers on an indefinite basis. If at any point that data is not received, then, the malware is ordered to stop the game you paid for legitimately from working entirely. Got an internet outage for this game which can be played offline? Doesn't matter. What data do they get from your rig? Who knows? They claim to say what is collected, but, they have no onus to be truthful to you as you are not their customer, they are not selling you anything. As such, they could tell you all sorts of things, but, because there is no point to point business contract between you and them, they are under no obligation to tell you anything they deem as "proprietary", which unfortunately, is everything regarding this malware. 3. The software was designed specifically with hostile intent. What do I mean by that? It was designed to force your machine to comply, while firing with kernel level access to your computer so that another party can verify that you have not stolen their product. It doesn't matter that in order to download the game from steam you have to have bought the game from Steam or not. On an ongoing basis, the malware will report back to its servers to ensure that you're being a "good little potential thief". In other words, it was designed with the assumption that any and all who buy the game will be a thief at some point, and, in order to ensure that the person who buys the game legitimately is not a thief, they feel entitled to force your computer to operate just a few cpu cycles more on a continual basis indefinitely.... to continue to prove that you, their supposed thief, do not end up giving into your "thieving tendencies". When you uninstall this game or any other game from your computer, that game is removed, but as they intentionally hide the location of the files of denuvo, the remnants of Denuvo will continue to be on your computer. I have heard people white knight Denuvo as "DRM that's better than it used to be".... well, that's the issue, now, isn't it. The only good DRM that I've noticed is the DRM that Steam includes as a free option for devs. Sure, there have been more overtly intrusive DRM solutions in the past, however, just because a malicious software directive gets refined does not mean that it is "good", and actually, will never be "good", it's still a malicious action that is done because both parties are more interested in "protecting proprietary info" than what experience you, as the person who bought the game has. What's more, their claims that "no game which has current Denuvo has been cracked" is just as foolhardy as "Not even god can sink the Titanic." Just because someone hasn't been bothered to crack it yet, doesn't mean they won't. What's worse is that usually when such types do, they do so on the end user of the games, as in, you and I, and not the original company that made the DRM or the customer publisher. Having junk data on your system which you cannot easily find and remove is a bad thing, always. even if you do not know where junk data is, regardless, it being on your computer is not only a maintenance issue, but, also a security issue. A forced back door that you cannot override. What's more, is, if a dev of the anti-malware ever got jaded, there's no guarantee that they don't have a backdoor installed already that's set up like a timebomb. Sure, laugh that off, but, that's a common occurrence with multiple examples throughout the history of computer development. Whether or whether not you can see or cannot see a performance issue when running the game which has Denuvo installed is immaterial. The fact that it exists on your machine, the fact that it will exist once the game is uninstalled, the fact that it forces you to bypass the security of your computer by giving it authority on a level right below BIOS, is a problem, a very very big problem, compounded by the assumption that "every customer in all of existence will be a thief even if they bought the game legitimately, they can still be a thief at some point if we don't force this malicious code onto their machines to ensure that even after they bought the game legitimately, they won't be a thief afterwards." Sure, go ahead, laugh at the above as if I don't know what I'm talking about if you wish, but, one of the points remains solid: The devs who buy the expensive licenses for this malware and force you to install it on your computer consider you a thief, and will always assume that you are a thief, and as such, no matter how their other actions seem to indicate otherwise, you are being considered a threat to them without cause. That is not only anti-consumer, it is also malicious intent.Show moreShow less
6 hours at review1,513 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Spare a thought for the small-time 40k developer. You put all this blood and tears into making a Grey Knight game, paying close attention to all the little details and giving all the little Grey Knights last names for them to dramatically shout out, only to have some jerk like me come along and say 'hey, wouldn't this whole premise work a lot better with the Deathwatch?' Anyhow, when people say this an XCom clone, they really mean it. The story's got the same basic character dynamics (wise advisor guy, grumpy engineer, angry monthly report man and sexy research babe), it's got the same overworld where you pass time and wait for missions and the exact same squad based combat. All they've really done is applied a Warhammer 40k layer of paint. But is that so bad? It's been years since XCom 2 came out. There hasn't been a new Fire Emblem in a long time. I think I appreciated this just for scratching the tactical combat itch. I mean, sure, it isn't doing anything that XCom wasn't doing already. But I've beaten XCom 1 and 2 already, and even did the whole Long War thing, so I am sort of XCom'd out at this point. The combat does feel different than XCom though. These are the Emperor's Space Marines, which means that you can hug cover if you want to, but you can also just pray really hard and then stand out in the open and let whoever come at you who wants a piece. Everyone has psychic powers and gimmicks that let you lay the hurt on Nurgle's minions and make the Death Guard regret worshiping a living garbage can. I am really experienced with these kinds of games and found that the Hard difficulty kept a pretty consistent challenge going from start to finish. The story will probably be completely incomprehensible to anyone that isn't 40k literate. If the words 'Nurgle', 'Mortarian', 'Geneseed' or 'Immaterium' don't mean anything to you, then you should not expect to have any idea what these people are going on about or why beating up a bunch of fat green guys is the best way to combat an intergalactic pandemic. But even if you do know all of the first founding Legions by their numbers, the story is a fairly straightforward 40k affair. I enjoyed it and I actually quite liked the characters, but it's not at the level of the Dawn of War games or anything like that. The game does have some downsides, mainly: 1) There are random FTL-style events on your space ship as you fly around, and some of them are total crap. One of these things involved the monthly report man asking me to destroy all my upgrade materials because they were tainted by Chaos. I told him no and he cut me off from 'the armory' for sixty in-game days, which resulted in me not getting any rewards for any missions in the last 30% of the game. I never got a Chaplain because of this. WELL GEE THANKS GRANDMASTER ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! 2) Focusing only on Nurgle was kind of dull after a while. I would have liked to have seen more stuff from the other Chaos Gods. Also your guys always mention passing by Ultramarine forces, but you never talk to them. Sad. 3) Some bugginess. Now before you get too amped up about that, I would actually say that this is LESS buggy than either XCom game. At no point did I have a someone try to shoot a giant mutant two squares away from him only to find that your guy can't see him. The most frequent bug was having abilities get greyed out improperly, but selecting another ability and then going back to the one I was using before fixed that. No big deal. 4) The game doesn't allow mods, meaning that you can't add Tau Crisis Suits or anime girls to your Grey Knight squads. :( 5) No cameo appearance from Roboute Guilliman. :( Final rating: 8.924/11 Fists of the Emperor's Furah!Show moreShow less
58.4 hours at review314 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Update: the streamer drops issue has now been addressed, everybody gets them for free now. Thank you devs! Looking in the forums the common disussions are about many game-breaking bugs, poor performance and wanky balancing. I will be waiting for first 50% sale before checking the state of the game again. According to previews the game seemed to be really good and up my alley as a fan of UFO/XCOM style games. I also have very fond memories of the original Chaosgate from the 90s and this seems to be a commendable approach to re-imagine it with enough new ideas inserted. Here are some of my brief impressions: - Graphics are outdated, but not ugly (only the faces are hidious). Considering this the performance is disappointing, a RTX3080 won’t get you a locked 4k60. Scrolling feels jerky. - Readability of the maps and characters is not good, the art design itself is OK - The UI looks very soft. It seems like it is designed for FHD and does not scale to 4k. It is also clearly designed for controllers and has quite a few unneccessary clicks required. - Tactical combat and character skills seems closest to Gears Tactics. Does not bring anything significant new to the table. However, because of some BS the publisher is pulling it gets a thumbs down & refund from me. 1. The Castellan Champion Edition upcharge comes at 33% of the price of the full game and gets you just one additional character (not class!) and 2, most likely, OP items. This is a very steep price for very little content. (I don’t care about the soundtrack) 2. On top of that additional (update: not cosmetic, actual Tire1 items with better stats) content is gated behind streamer drops. Paying the extra money for the Champion Edition is not enough, you need to create accounts at the publisher and the streaming platform and waste apparently 11x 30-45mins with watching streams; aka you need to pay with your personal data and time for earing the privilege to access all available content. Just deplorable. 3. Denuvo. I personally think this is only a minor issue, but the money would have been better spend investing it in the game itself rather than in making it worse for your paying customers (multiple pirated games have proven that Denuo can have a significant negative impact on game performance). I am genuinely sorry for the developers, but I will not support these business tactics with a full-price deluxe edition purchase and will refund my preorder after posting this. I can wait until it comes in a bundle or at a steep discount, happy holidays 2023 :-). @Devs: good luck finding a better publisher for your next game, there seems to be plenty of good talent in your team!Show moreShow less
0.7 hours at review1,294 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
The game is very solid as a Turn-Based Tactics game that blends Warhammer 40000 and XCOM-style gameplay. Most of the (valid) gripes are that: 1. The devs locked some items behind Twitch drops. 2. Random and inconsistent performance issues. I do agree with the Twitch drop issue even though I got all of them, but I do wish future devs would stop putting exclusive items behind Twitch drops or at least unlock those items to the public after a period of time. I personally didn't get a lot of performance issues but there are at times where FPS dropped very low. As for people complaining about Grey Knights feeling underpowered and dying to cultists and giving it a negative review for it, people need to learn that there is a separation of lore and gameplay. In Dawn of War, 2-3 guardsmen squads with lasguns can gun down a single tactical marine squad, which would be unthinkable in lore, but it is a game and it didn't stop Dawn of War from becoming one of the best 40K games out there. Besides, the game wouldn't be very fun if you just one shot basically everything in sight now would it?Show moreShow less
22.6 hours at review260 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
My massive, hulking, genetically-modified supersoldier in massive, hulking Terminator armor walked through a campfire - wounded for weeks.Show moreShow less
3.5 hours at review1,162 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Well, after 120 hours and about 5 restarts, I've finally begun to figure out this game. A lot has been said about the difficulty of Daemonhunters, a major criticism being that you don't feel like a storied "Grey Knight" of the Imperium, that is to say, the power fantasy of playing the elite of the Astartes isn't evident in the game play. Much of this can be solved by playing on the easiest difficulty, where chaos cultists and other fodder are dispatched quickly, and while not a breeze, won't frustrate you. Once you've learned the mechanics of the game, it really opens up to become very strategic and tactical. The encounters can be tense and epic, especially during some of the new missions in the DLC. Once it all comes together, Daemonhunters is one of the best 40k games to have been released. It's not a power fantasy. This is a tale of desperation, which is a often overlooked 40k theme that is rarely touched upon but has always been lurking in the grim-dark universe we love. I appreciate the move away from comic book heroes to the a more authentic portrayal of the source material. Don't get me wrong, these are still bad ass Space Marines, larger than life and heroic in their bearing, but they're not invincible. Their duty is to sacrifice for the Emperor, and that they do. Only the Ordo Malleus could take on this challenge, and even then, victory is not assured. If you're looking for a deep and challenging tactical combat game, with well thought out mechanics and progression, a good story with great presentation, and if you're never letting go of this 40k crap until the day you die, Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters is a worthy addition to you game library. Honor the chapter, brothers. The Emperor protects. Recommended.Show moreShow less
119.4 hours at review254 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
TLDR: I think the game still needs some optimization work. The framerate on some levels drops as low as 10 from 60 during the enemy turn in particular. I have a suspicion this is Denuvo related. Further, even for minor wounds, the wound recovery time is way too long and needs to be balanced better. I have had some at 40+ days for minor wounds. This means you cannot use the same character and build them up as per the RPG element of the game. The audio in-game is very good, but not outside of it. The story doesn't make much sense lore-wise either. So while the author is, in my opinion, qualified, I am left wondering if it was double-checked by somebody more familiar with the lore? The interactions between the Imperial factions stand out to me as lore-breaking in particular. Special mention to the outrageous price for two items, one character and all the twitch loot you can get by watching streamers for hours on end. I think they need a better marketing department, to be honest. Charging people so much for things that should be in the base game is not acceptable. Full review: Do you like X-COM? Do you like 40k? On paper, this should be the game for you. Overall the gameplay is good, though wound recovery time needs balancing. 40+ days for minor wounds isn't acceptable. I mention this as even weapons that lore-wise wouldn’t damage Aegis Armour do so regularly. Cultist Autoguns are the main example. This would be forgivable if wound recovery did not take so long. Some of the abilities that show up at random are either useless or absurdly powerful. Due to being randomized, they often affect mission outcomes greatly. Imagine fighting through a mission that was super hard, only to know you likely have to reload and hope that ability does not spawn again. This is incredibly frustrating. Otherwise, I think the game is very good; though I'm not too fond of cover being up to 100%, I think it should be capped at 80-90%. Sound-wise, the voices and battle sounds are great. Honestly, they are some of the best I have seen from a 40k game. Outside of battles, minus the voice acting, it is subpar. This takes away from the immersiveness of the setting. I had hoped for better. Story-wise, I think several missions come across as filler and do not contribute meaningfully to the story in any way. When you have the Inquisitor, Astropath and other characters written so well, it sucks having to grind through meaningless missions that do not contribute overall. Dawn of War 2 at least had missions that were grindy, but there was a purpose overall to do them. Here it feels like you get a small reward, but that is all. I would like to see that improved. The interactions between the Imperial factions also needs to be improved as well. Performance-wise, it can be all over the place. My system is high-end, so getting frame rates as slow as 10 on the enemy's turn is not great and takes away from gameplay. I note this only happens on some maps, whereas others are near perfect 60 across the board. I would hope the developers optimize it some more and hopefully remove Denuvo. Finally, one cannot neglect to mention the marketing team deciding to make players watch over 10 twitch streams for items. Who thought that was a great idea? Further, the items + characters in the special edition could have easily been included in the base game. Neither adds anything meaningful to the experience, as far as I can tell. In conclusion, I would give this game a 7 overall, but it is a 6 due to the crappy marketing and value for DLC proposition. I hope the devs know that this would be a solid game with more optimization. Perhaps market it better next time? Buy it on sale. EDIT: The Devs were kind enough to give the community the twitch items in an upcoming update. I am bumping my overall score to 6.5/10. It is good to see devs listening to the community. Now please remove Denuvo.Show moreShow less
87.8 hours at review656 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
This game has issues. I recommend it, but it has BIG issues. I found the game fun enough to play despite that, you might not. EDIT: Also, I'd like to clarify that this game is no XCOM. I've spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours in XCOM, I don't think I'm going to finish this game more than once. It simply doesn't have the gameplay and option variety you'll find in either of the modern XCOM games. If you're a 40k fan, this game is going to piss you off. Your Terminators - that's right, Terminators - can't even walk through a tiny fire on the ground without getting burned for half their HP. You know, those suits of armor that are based on DAOT-level environmental exosuits? Basically, you're not wearing armor at all, it's just paper-mache. The cultists you fight shout "Knights!" when they spot you. You know, the Grey Knights, the most secretive order of Astartes in the entire Imperium, that most other chapters of Astartes and even some Inquisitors don't know the existence of? Yeah, some random cultist with a stubber knows what you are, even when they don't. And he's also capable of shooting half your HP away in one turn, despite the fact that you're in TERMINATOR ARMOR, and he's shooting a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AUTOGUN, of which not even regular Astartes are really effected by. Let's do some simple math here. 6-10mm of steel can stop all small arms fire up to about the .50 caliber range, where armor piercing bullets can get through around 25mm max. Grey Knights are wearing full suits of ceramite alloy, most of which is sloped and curved, increasing the thickness of the armor. Most of these plates (according to model proportions) are around 6mm (quarter inch) in the smaller end to a full inch (24mm) in for the larger plates. And, don't forget, it's stronger than steel. How. The ♥♥♥♥. Can a regular-ass gun. Do anything to it? The art direction of the game is absolute horsetrash and looks more like a Blizzard game than anything else. Many environments are FAR too bright and saturated, which really undermines the tone of the game. Which is a shame - the dialogue and character work is good, and the VA's have obviously put a lot of love into their characters (Andy Serkis!). It's just a shame all of their effort is put to waste when there's an Inquisitor in the scene who's character design mixes garbage waifu-bait with an edgelord OC. Couldn't you have just given us Spinoza?? Most enemy models are completely static and are significantly less detailed than models used in Dawn of War 2 and it's mods, for instance. The issue with this is many materials are ambiguous - is this man wearing a shirt, is he colored red, or is he wearing armor? You can't tell, because the textures in the game all reflect light in the exact same way. All the little details that make Daemons so creepy are nonexistent. I should be seeing eyeballs individually sloshing around in the chest-sockets of the Poxwalkers, leaking pus and ooze, growing bloodshot as they all swivel to a single point - my Knights - when we are spotted. Instead, it's a hilarious little scene of a fat blob of skin bouncing around as the physics of the game struggles to keep up with it's protruding stomach - a stomach with eyeballs seemingly painted onto it, as they lack any distinctive texture, detail, or motion. There are a lot of complaints about the "Healing" period that your Grey Knights take after getting papercut by a handgun, but the issue is far deeper than that. Not just is the healing period far too long, but the penalty for being "Wounded" doesn't even matter. I'm running full squads of -6hp Knights in the veteran difficulty with no problems. It just feels like so many aspects of the gameplay fall flat or are poorly implemented that they leave the player with a sense of "doing something wrong" no matter what they do. The cover, range, and distance mechanics are VERY poorly explained and don't make much sense mechanically. I don't understand why a Grey Knight in full armor takes the same amount of damage from an autogun hit as a regular, fleshy human. No, I don't care what their "armor stat" is at. Why is someone in full Terminator suit, with the blood of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Emperor in him, taking the same amount of damage as an unaugmented human? Conversely, your Grey Knights feel woefully underpowered in terms of damage. Once again - I'm playing this on the second-highest difficulty, with no problems, but that doesn't change the fact that your Knights being so weak utterly demolishes both the verisimilitude and the mood of the game. Let's remember that a single bolter round is effectively a rocket-propelled tank shell. How can a human survive ONE of them, let alone a salvo, with only 1 or 2 damage done? There's a second issue that this causes, too - since weapons are so lore-inaccurate, this also causes them to be internally unbalanced, which is obfuscated by how different weapons act to the lore. Weapons are COMPLETELY unbalanced. The Psilencer is the strongest ranged weapon. The Force Hammer is the strongest melee weapon. Why? Because this game is based around action economy - doing the most stuff (damage) you can in the least amount of time - and those two weapons do the most damage. That's it. Those are your tactical equipment decisions. Get 2 guys with Force Hammers, 1 Psilencer, and 1 Apothecary. Doesn't matter if they're all -6hp wounded. Doesn't matter your difficulty. If you play well, you'll win every single mission. All this works together to devalue and undermine the feel of 40k. "Oh, but the 40k universe is always inconsistent!" No, the 40k universe contains a number of different stories told by different narrators who are exposed to varying amounts of information and bias. Not a single one of these narrators has spent any time around a Grey Knight and thinks "Yeah, this is about as strong as some random cultist with a stubber made from scrap". "Oh, but they do it for the sake of gameplay!" You're telling me that lore-accurate gameplay is impossible? What about Space Marine? What about Mechanicus? Both of them managed to be fun, lore accurate games - the former even taking significant liberties in doing so, and still keeping that central "feel" of 40k. This game could've easily had realistic Grey Knights, with heavy, impactful suits of armor and weapons, wading through masses of cultists and demons. Instead, it didn't. Why? Laziness, and a lack of options due to poor optimization. This game is horrendously optimized. Their pathfinding and viewfinding is somehow worse than the original XCOM from 1993. I have a custom-looped RTX 3080 and somehow manage to drop frames on a game with PS3 graphics. No wonder they don't have larger, more threatening, more realistic mobs of enemies. It'd probably crash the game. -- So why play it? Because I'm so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ desperate for SOMETHING 40k that I'm willing to take this, even with it's faults, and somehow manage to enjoy it. Because somewhere, deep down, there were a couple people on the team who made this game who really put some love and effort into it. It's not worth the money, but neither are plastic figurines, and those seem to be doing rather well for Games Workshop too. Let's hope Space Marine 2 is a little better.Show moreShow less
14.9 hours at review227 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Cool game... But it has Denuvo... If you don't know - Denuvo grants root-level kernel access to your computer. It's under the operating system. A dangerous compromise of computer safety and hurts performance. No game is worth compromising your PC with Denuvo in order to play it. Refunded on principle. Denuvo is horrid.Show moreShow less
4 hours at review485 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.