Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus ‪™‬ 12+

I really like this game, and have managed to accrue a significant number of the characters up to silver and gold rank, which takes a while if you insist on playing it free to play (as I do). But this game lets you do that casually; I’ll log on for a few minutes, auto play (raid) for items to upgrade characters, and then revisit when my energy has replenished.

If I want to work on campaigns I’ll spend some time actually playing the game. I’ve managed to complete the Orkz, Ultramarines, Chaos, Eldari, and Black Templars campaigns, all without spending any money. Having a good, active guild helps, as winning raids gives you guild currency to buy more character shards and upgrade characters. It’s fun and I’m not bored yet, and new factions come out at a good pace.

Some negatives are that the Necron faction isn’t that useful in the long term so it feels like a waste to build them up for their campaign. And as many people say, requisitions rarely met you anything of value. I got lucky the first few I did but I can’t say the last time I got a worthwhile new character from one, or even a large amount of shards for a decent character I already had. Having said that I still recommend the game wholeheartedly. But all of the pay to play stuff is overpriced, do not waste your money, and if you don’t have the willpower to ignore it, don’t play this game.

The game’s got a lot of great points. The artwork and animation stand out and the gameplay itself is engaging (there are enough things to track that you stay entertained but few enough that you don’t get confused, a bad decision can make or break the game, and the hero abilities feel fun, responsive, and impactful). The progression and character unlock systems are rewarding, too.

My complaints are that the game is very grinding driven. A lot of the experience is locked behind time gates or pay walls, and I’m not convinced that a series of missions that will provide maybe 20-30 minutes of dedicated gameplay are worth an hour or two’s pay - particularly not since there aren’t a lot of voluntary ad options with which to bypass obstacles. You’re looking at paying $30 for heroes that use the same resources as everybody else (so once you spend the money you don’t get to play the game more, just differently) followed by multi-hour waits to go through surges of gameplay that last, at most, five to ten minutes. It can be extremely frustrating, which makes me hesitant to spend money, which is sad because a lot of the heroes look like fun! The dollar to entertainment ratio just isn’t weighty enough.

Great way to burn through a few hours before you start hitting plateaus and getting frustrated. There are also a few bugs and oversights here and there but they’re not major. The main issue is how aggressively the devs decided to enforce a glacial rate of play.

Let me start by saying that I love this game. Some of the missions frustrate me though. Missions that require x amount of damage of a specific type are one example. Certain damage types are fairly common across characters, races, and factions. Some, however, are very specific to few characters which makes achieving them grindy. Fortunately with daily missions there is an option to reroll one mission per day. Event missions do not have this feature which presents challenges. Missions that target x kills of a certain race or faction are pretty easy to complete, unless a player doesn’t have access to all of the campaigns. An example of this is finding Chaos units without Fall of Cadia mirror unlocked. Arenas doesn’t offer a consistent format for headhunting in this fashion since opponent teams are “random” and victories become harder to achieve as you rank up. As well, this hinders progress in event mission chains, players being unable to efficiently finish these mission types. My only other big gripe is x10 requisition rolls. Getting orbs in half of the drops, or 5 character shards on rolls is wildly unsatisfying. I fear requisitions far more than I enjoy them.