Dawn of War: Soulstorm Review
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I know it’s a bit late for this, but I’ve got to cover the latest installment in the Dawn of War series. I only attained a copy in the past few weeks, and have at this point extensively tested both the skirmish and online modes.
This is the only expansion to Dawn of War that wasn’t by the original company. Relic sanctioned the group Iron Lore, who created Titan Quest, to do this one. With a group of fresh developers on the case, radically new features were added to the game:
- Two new races, just like the other expansions. In this case Dark Eldar and the Sisters of Battle.
- A new resource for each of the new races. The Dark Elder gather souls wihle the Sisters of Battle generate faith.
- Various abilities on the Sisters of Battle race require faith to execute.
- The Dark Eldar receive a special addition to the UI to use special powers anywhere they choose, costing souls.
- An air unit was added to every team.
Needless to say, the new teams play quite differently than the existing ones. The Sisters of Battle are a very unique race. Faith is fairly simple to get, with an addition to any requisition point, and several unit types just generating it over time. It can be used to unleash otherwise latent abilities of units, providing a new dimension to the resource management. The Sisters of Battle (like all races) have a superunit, and theirs is the Living Saint. The Living Saint seems weak at first glance, with easily enough HP and damage to deal with most units, but last a far shorter time than other superunits. The real kicker, though, is that she has two lives. When she dies, a few seconds later she is ressurected on the spot, which can lead to unfocused fire on the proper unit, as well as twice the power for the Living Saint (two lives, of course, means twice as much damage and lifespan).
The Sisters of Battle love fire. Almost every unit in their arsenal just spews random flames, from their upgraded infantry, to their turrets, vehicles, and requisition point buildings. Even their Living Saint is on fire. These weapons are great in large numbers (or higher-end weapons) but the weaker ones are actually surprisingly so. A turret can have a tough time taking on a squad or two of infantry. The vehicles are another story.
Aside from the obvious flame tank they have, the Sisters have two very cool vehicle units. One is the Penitent engine, which is a devastating walker unit that is limited in quantity on the field at a given time. This unit has flamethrowers and a few other tricks, and excels in taking out buildings, or pretty much anything that gets in it’s way. The other interesting vehicle is the Exorcist, an “artillery tank” that consists of a standard tank shape, topped with a Sister of Battle playing a missile-firing organ. “What?”, you said? No, you haven’t heard me wrong, I said “missile-firing organ”. The combination of long-range artillery and infantry has been proven to be a valuable ability, ala Imperial Guard. When further combined with a bunch of flamethrowers, jetpack infantry, and walkers, this is a devastating blow to the enemy’s… anything. If, while all of this is going on, the Living Saint comes in, you’re just plain screwed in most cases.
On to the Dark Eldar. As you might guess, these look similar to the Eldar in many ways, especially their helmets and infantry armor. This is where the similarity ends, however. Instead of an elegant race of constructive and artistic buildings and units, we have a soul-harvesting, slave-wielding race of tyrants. Much more my style (though I do enjoy playing Eldar)! Since most of the units in this race are unique, as opposed to the mostly-standard structure of the Sisters of Battle’s techtree, I’m going to leave some of it for you to discover in-game for yourself. As I said earlier, one of the most obvious additions is the resource of souls. You may have guessed that these can be harvested from dead things, and you’d be right. The basic workers can do this, but it is much more effective when done with these giant floating scorpions known as the Talos. These are adept at gathering souls, as well as kicking ass. They excel at melee, but can be taken out by a large number of infantry. They are probably the most effective counter-vehicle unit the Dark Eldar have, save for their superunit. They can also be upgraded to spin their tails around and fire lasers, but this is actually quite overrated (it is however pretty fun).
If you play as the Dark Eldar for more than a minute, you will notice a pattern of many, many, many flying-boat-with-jet-engine vehicle designs. Though repetitive, I don’t complain as they are all unique. My favorite vehicle is the Reaver Jetbike, which is an excellent unit for many things. They are incredulously fast, enabling them to counter infantry well with their heavy guns, and they can neutralize points (but not capture), making for good economy disruption (a big aspect of the online play). They’re totally useless against other vehicles though, like sendng a baloon to fight a shotgun, or a potato to fight a cat (wait, that doesn’t make any sense.. oh well).
There are transports capable of being fired from, anti-vehicle/building boats (limited in number), and more. Oh, and did I mention the gigantic boat that is anti-everything, can kill most vehicles and all infantry in a sweep of it’s special ability, and is laden with space whores? How could I forget their superunit, the Dais of Destruction. Unless facing innumerable vehicles, this is pretty well the only unit you need. I typically back them up with those anti-vehicle boats and they tear through all but the most well-armed and well-directed armies. The problem is that online you never get far enough in tech to build one.
I hadn’t owned my own copy of DoW for online play until this expansion, when I bought them all on Steam (the game purchase/download service by Valve, which if you haven’t picked up on I’m a fan of). It cost about $70 for the Dawn of War Premium pack, and the Soulstorm expansion (which isn’t yet in a pack). I was surprised to find that a decently active (though as expected, relatively small compared to games like Warcraft and Starcraft) community. I began to play online, and immediately noticed that I sucked. I always have toted myself as one of the best RTS players around, but I openly and blatantly admit to failing at this one. Why? - economy disruption. Since this game’s resources are point-based and generated over time, the idea of neutralizing resources becomes a huge tactic.
In most RTS games, killing off the workers or expansions of a player can cripple him, but in this game, losing a few points means *you will lose* (enough emphasis?). Since most games don’t work tihs way, I’ve found it incredibly hard to adjust, especially since every player online is well-versed in the tactics and counters already. Needless to say I was thrilled to fail at something, and relish the challenge I usually can’t find! This is the most fun I’ve had playing non-custom gametypes of an RTS online since Starcraft first came out (and I played an online game for the first time on 56k). You may or may not enjoy it as much as me, but DoW is undoubtably one of the most impressive and expansive RTS games out there, and it’s worth checking out.
If you haven’t played the series, there’s a free Soulstorm demo on Steam, check it out!
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