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Dawn of war SOULSTORM!

7K views 72 replies 20 participants last post by  Marrius 
#1 ·
Yes! Its out! Its new! Its awesome!

I'm installing it right now!

Due to copyright I am not allowed to tell you other than what it says on the box.


Command Two new races: the Dark eldar and the Sisters of battle. They each have their own new resource: soul essence for the DE and Faith for the SOB's (not what it means out side of the 40k universe...)

Customize your heroes and armies in the all new interplanetary campaign! Take your fighters to the skies with all new aircraft!

Stand alone! dawn of war, winter assault, and Dark crusade are only required in multiplayer if you want to play previous races!

The races are

Space marines
Chaos
Eldar
Orks
Guard
Tau
Necrons
and the two new ones.

I don't own the rights to any of this.

Possessed
 
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#2 ·
i realy did not like soulstorm in some aspects
i was realy disapointed with the stuff they left out like space batles

the fact that theres only 1 flying unit per race really pissed me off because that was one of the things i was really looking forward to

as well as the campaign map that realy hit me as just slacking off on the dessigners side (there may be more teritory than dark crusade but only a few per planet and 1 per moon that was really anoying)

and they didnt put any scenimatics in for any of the races


on a lighter note though 0:
the graphics are awsome for it

the SoB arent OP as we were told they would be and the dark eldar are awsome

the main scenimatic for the campain is pretty cool


the dificulty is realy great because i got a little bored with being able to win on Hard but now i think they have uped the dificultty which makes it more of a chalege


overall im glad i bought it but i was a bit disapointed with a few aspects of the game
but thats just me, i sugest you guys do buy it and try it for your selves :)
 
#6 · (Edited)
I think SOB are weak as piss to be honest, I had trouble overpowering a few gaurd squads with 2 squads of SOB, dark eldar are wayyyyy stronger and will eat their souls!

Only useful unit I found in SOB was the sisters of repentia and pertinant engine.

I'm disappointed that once you win a battle, and if you get attacked, all your buildings are gone, its annoying spending 10 minutes to win the same war again and again, so I'm going for the main bases first to stop that crap happening.
 
#11 ·
I'm disappointed that once you win a battle, and if you get attacked, all your buildings are gone, its annoying spending 10 minutes to win the same war again and again, so I'm going for the main bases first to stop that crap happening.
They probably had a camera on my comp or something and saw me set up turrets of doom around frickin' everything. ;)

Wait... camera... damn *mumbles about having to hide more bodies*.
 
#7 ·
Dark Eldar are strong starting out, but can't handle the more powerful units later on. Seriously I had a larger force than my opponent, and even after soul hording and slamming with raiders (Very fun) I was wiped out in less than a minute.

Scourges are wrong though, as is the Tau Barracuda. Necrons got the shaft, nothing much but a rarely seen C'tan thing.

SoB's I think are balanced and fun, Exorcists are downright sick, and Immolators are the ultimate horde killer.

Game still ticks me off to no means, and the lack of a better zoom out annoys me.
 
#8 · (Edited)
I don't find the SoB balanced, since once everyone gets to the top of their tech trees, Sisters are way outgunned (Living Saint is not the equivalent of a Baneblade). I had a BB and two Leman Russes basically slaughtering anything I tried to get out of my base!

Granted, I haven't played DoW in quite a while, so the problem might be that I need to relearn the strategies again, but I do have to say that Sisters have similar weaknesses in DoW as in TT (Exorcist is not accurate, but can be deadly on occasion, lack of long range/anti-armor - and no, two melta/two MM do NOT count as effective anti-armor when you can only have 4 members in the squad). The Acts of Faith are wonderful to watch, though.

And what's with calling the Retributor squads Celestians???
 
#9 ·
I found that the campaign is a bit harder than last time. I hit hard, which was how I always did my campaigns in DC, and I got slaughtered in the first three minutes.

So I started A DE campaign this morning on normal and I control Kaurava prime and IV. THe sisters are gone, my archon can kill a bloodthirster in CC(not kidding), the guard are gone, the smurfs (no offense) are gone, the orks are gone, chaos is gone (they just pissed me off by attacking my stronghold!) the Necrons are gone, and Tau control Kaurava II, while the eldar control Kaurava III and keep trying to kill me on Kaurava IV. I did that in like, 7 hours of playing. I have not slept in two days!

The Eldar are the worst people to put against the Dark Eldar, because the lightlings slaughter us and those stupid fireprisms disrupt my stratagey.

Which is, to say, build a bunch of hellions and reavers and send them out with my Archon and ret following on a raider. It works quite well.

Possesed
 
#10 ·
Can't say I was that impressed with the Dark Eldar. I need to have another go with them, but my first attempt wasn't a shining start...

The voice acting for DE (bit chaosy) and odd things like Ravagers not being able to jump (if a fire prism can, surely it can) annoy me somewhat too. Units like Wyches show promise, though.

I've been putting the boot into the guard (who aren't that strong on their planet) with the Sisters, and they look pretty reasonable, if far too marine-esque - Sisters squads toting several heavy bolters is way too familiar. The melta weaponry on immolators and celestians does seem to do the job pretty well, but so far all I've done is take down chimeras and sentinels (6-7 with a single unit of celestians in around a minute :D) with them.

But they do have the Forward Base, which is hugely useful to get boots on the ground early on in the mission.
 
#12 ·
Is it just me, or are Dark Eldar warriors really strong? I mean, I've been out-gunning marines with them. And mandrakes tend to stand up to marines in cc. They are probably the strongest race at the start of a map, which is kind of balanced by the fact that they are a bit fragile later on. I guess you need to canstantly attack your enemy to prevent him from building too many Elite units, rather than try and match them.

Anyway, as much as I was looking forward to it, the campain was a little dissapointing. I was hoping for a more in-depth campain map (Star Wars: Rebellion anyone?). The Dark Eldar are fun, although Warp Beasts need so much babysitting it's not even funny. A chaos marine sneezes and they start attacking eachother... Sisters are nice, kind of like squishier space marines with more burnyness. For a laugh I played sisters vs 4 standard orks, I lost eventually but Immolaters killed hundreds of orks. It was great:D

Something i notices. Hellions are useful in SoulStorm, but useless on Tabletop. Same goes for scourges. Incubi are uber-killy on TT, but barely stand up to marines in ss. Reavers are decent on TT and horrible in ss. Whats up with that?
Bob
 
#13 ·
I found 3 squads of warriors and 3 scourges full upgraded will take down almost anything.
for the main bases on the campaign I get raveners and a bunch of raiders (the transport ones right?) and just jump into the base and let loose as many wych squads as I can, its worked well so far.

The only thing I had trouble beating was those damn krootox they take so much damage and dish it out well... but I had so much trouble killing anything with SOB, they suck for me, I thought for a weapon that can crush a tank in TT, meltas only do 90 dmg, which is fairly crap compared to say, horrors, sents, or even the humble bazooka.

Very disappointed in the campaign so far though. echos all round.
 
#14 ·
Soulstorm Review

well

I did the same thing for DC about 18 mos ago... so a year and a half later, Im older, thinner, and ready to finish law school in a month or two if anyone wants to know.. here goes:

Soulstorm is an interesting, enjoyable game if you like the Warhammer Dawn of War series by relic/thq that has pretty much defined decent RTS PC gaming over the past 4 years. Whereas many games take to WW2 primarily, or some alt. reality of the modern or near modern future, DOW takes the player to the WH40K universe, which makes those of us that frequent this forum likely interested in the game and willing to shell out money for a game that lets us play with multiple armies that cost MANY times more than the one time purchase of the game.

DOW has provided my college chums and I hours of endless entertainment, with all the khorne influenced catchphrases I could hope for short of a games-day size tourney devoid of players under the age of 21 and filled with Kegs of beer, bottles of Vat69 Scotch, pecan pie, and strippers... This was then followed up somewhat well by the Imperial guard being added into the game in WA.

WA continued the DOW franchise tastefully and in my opinion the guard were a likely, and enjoyable addition to the present races, however it left me needing more. WA skimped in the "Add another army department, and choked out by not really adding a WHOLE other army, but rather taking the models available, slapping some xtra stuff to it and sending the old girl out on stage like a drunken pitbull at michael vick's house.

Regardless, I still liked, bought, played, obsessed, and defiled the game, not in that order.... until DC rumors came about.


DC had alot of the same issues I had with WA, once again, an army was pieced together from available models (crons)... but here, we had a whole new army added, and say what you want of the tau, they were a welcome relief in the game that made "stealth" actual worthwhile in the game. DC is probably one of the better RTS titles/expansions I've played short of company of heroes and starcraft. Even then, the games cannot be truly compared, and for my own enjoyment, they rank about equal.

When I heard about SS coming out, I was honestly angry at first, because I had just gotten a new rig and was hoping they would go along to DOW 2 or its equivalent, and finally add the nids. As soon as I heard that the game would not be changing the engine at all, I felt it was highly unlikely GW or relic bothered to engineer nids for the game, so I was not really all that pissy about that. I will say however, that compared to the additions and improvements of the other expansions, these additions are actually a fresh breath of air in a rather stale room. sisters and DE, like them or hate them are rather different from the rest of the armies, and paint/swapped marines aside, I think the addition of a "witchhunter" army was not a horrid idea in the end. The DE are more or less as I imagined them, although I would have liked more warp-teleporting around from them on the boards rather than just skirting around.

Flying units basically work like over-hyped skimmers, and are not all that amazing to me... I would have preferred fighter/air unit SUPPORT in the manner company of heroes does this thing, where it is a chargeable power rather than a unit per se.

The campaign is basically an expanded version of the DC campaign... and sadly, no matter how you dress it, the campaign essentially consists of repeated skirmishes with the occasional base boss fights.

My point is, that its just not all that much of an addition, but at the same time, I was aware of that coming into the game.

At $40USD for a "Standalone expansion" (Read: way to get you to pay 80% of the orig game price for less than 1/2 the functionality of the original at initial release) it is basically a "booster pack" to the DOW series, adding some multiplayer fun, maps, and two characterful, new races.

DOW's draw has been its involvement with 40K and its variety of game factions... as such, Im not mad at all at the limited scope of changes in the expansion.

Graphics, etc are equal to DC, and I was able to run the game on high on my OLD 3 year old laptop (it runs flawlessly on the new rig)

If you like the series, go get it...
 
#15 ·
Flying units basically work like over-hyped skimmers, and are not all that amazing to me... I would have preferred fighter/air unit SUPPORT in the manner company of heroes does this thing, where it is a chargeable power rather than a unit per se.
Agreed. I remember when a Star Wars version of Age of Empires was made, X-wings etc. were similarly just 'floaty units'.

While Soulstorm is pretty good (the computer has some nasty surprises for you), I think it could turn out to be an expansion too far. With most races only receiving a flyer and the campaign to be just DC with some tweaks, developing a sequel for next year may have been a better idea in the long run. With starcraft II on the horizon, the somewhat tired DoW may get dropped by loyal players for RTS royalty.

Soulstorm certainly seems to be challenging, but I don't think it is going to be as memorable as DC or WA.
 
#16 ·
I honestly cant think of any game I have been THIS disappointed with in a long time...
Compared to WA and DC, SS seems rushed, badly put together, shallow and ultimately lacking.
I'm going back to playing Dark Crusade....
 
#17 ·
In a way Im disappointed. But I've been disappointed since DC so I guess Im used to it now. I was upset that whenever I conquer a territory that my buildings disappear when someone trys to reclaim it. And that stupid capture the critical points is annoying. They still have a limit on the damn Stormtroopers and the guardsmen are a bit expensive. But apart from that its a good game.

Just one thing though. Can anyone explain their reasoning for subtracting units with building limits rather than adding units to balance the game?
 
#18 ·
I'm addicted to it. I don't care what anyone thinks. I'm addicted to the dark eldar. They are awesome.

IF YOU ARGUE WITH THAT YOU CAN TASTE MY NEW-INFANTRY-KILLING DISSIE!

The only reason that I actually slept last night was that I had obligations today. Otherwise, I don't think I really slept since I got the game.

I am now sitting back on a hard campaign, I am about to kill guard, lightlings are wiped out, Chaos is trapped on Kaurava II since I hold all the webway gates (muhahahahaha!). Orks, smurfs, and tau can't get out of their strongholds. Crons will not stop attacking me. Guard will not stop attacking me. Thats mostly because guard are trapped and so are crons (they wiped out the eldar! Those *says rude things in other languages*! I wanted to do that!) Sob are dead. (I love their power. Its AWESOME! total ownage...)

Also, I discovered the cheapest way of getting a territory.

YOU MUST CUT OFF THE SUPPLY LINES FIRST! Obviously, this doesn't work on chaos/anyone whos killed chaos. You can achieve this the conventional way, or you can kill the race that controls the territory. Use this with those cheesy-brings-in-everything-in-the-game-10-structure-point-territories.

Go and attack them. Then, as soon as the game starts, abort. They still loose one defense point. do this until they are down to like, one, and then WIPE THEM OUT! IN the meantime, you get oodles and oodles of glorious requisition.

See, I told you it was cheap.


Fav DE quotes:
Death is my meat; terror, my wine.- Archon
The banner! RAISE THE BANNER!- mandrakes
I will pwn you with my awesome cheeseyness- (I screwed around with the system coding and this popped up... Yes it exists. No I don't know how I did it. I can't get rid of it...)
-Haemonculous

Possessed.
 
#19 ·
I love the game. Seems quite balanced, started with Dark Eldar, but started getting flogged by Guard with plasma weapons. Sisters of Battle seem a bit underwhelming at first glance, though i haven't played them in depth yet. Flying units feel tacked on, nice firepower and not as flimsy as they appear. New graphics effects are awesome. Still annoyed that the 'Nids are still lacking.
 
#24 ·
Nids... Nids can't be put into DoW.

le gasp!

Yes, its true. Nids have the basic bodyframe as 6-limbs, but the DoW bodyframe is only 4. There will probably be a DoW 2, once the rest of the races are out, and that will incorperate Nids. But until then...

Sorry.

Possesed
 
#25 ·
There is a limit of 3 units of Warp Spiders, which seems a little overpowered (seeing as 1 unit of stormtroopers and 1 of ogryns is still the limit, for example). But its so much fun to jump the spiders in behind the enemy and let them go to work!

That sucks about the 6 limb thing too... surely they could work out a way to get around it.
 
#26 ·
Been playing it for the past 3 days. Now for some first impressions.

Firstly, with regard to the new stuff, we all saw the Dark Eldar in the demo so I haven't actually tested them out but I did do a test run on the Sisters of Battle and found them fairly challenging to use well. While they can be played like Marines where you mass loads of basic Sister squads, it just doesn't work as well and I found that their morale is actually a bit rubbish. I haven't yet had any success with the sort of rapid strike tactics that I usually employ with Space Marines and Chaos but once I got my head around how the Acts of Faith work, they're actually pretty good. The Confessor is a godsend for Tier 2, indispensable. Penitent Engines rock. Good anti-tank is a bit difficult to come by, though, since you're limited to Celestians and Immolators early on, as well as certain acts of faith.

The flyers, while not brilliant, have their uses. I've actually had some success using them to flank enemy positions when assaulting their strongholds - the maps have a tendency to give the AI a lot of high ground and several expansion bases that must be taken out quickly before they start putting pressure on you and having flyers to swing around and blow up their turrets from a different angle or go straight for their power generators is quite nice.

As for general changes, morale seems to impact squads more than ever, some anti-tank weapons now do phenomenal damage to infantry and can pick them off if you're not careful. Defensive turrets are a bit more powerful but not much. I've found that the campaign is actually a bit more challenging than Dark Crusade as well, which is always nice in my book, but it's disappointing that the stronghold cutscenes don't have the same sort of inspiring speeches about how badly your ass is going to get kicked like they did when Relic was running the show, or the kind of banter between your character and the enemy.

Currently playing as the Blood Ravens for now, will try out the other factions later. Now, to go and kill those tricksy Eldar...
 
#28 ·
mini-rant!

IMHO, Sisters are bad. I can barely keep my feet in a skirmish game with them, though blasting away like cowards just ain't my style ;). I prefer to take the fight to the enemy, which is why I like oodles and oodles of DE reavers/ravagers/DoD(dias of destruction) that can kill anything.

In the sister's stronghold, I took on three crusades with just ONE set of 2 ravagers, 1 DoD, and 6 reaver jetbikes. I armed one of the ravagers with all dissies and I took down infantry like there was no tomorrow. All my footsoldiers, which were 6 squads of scourges, my three sybarite clans, my two helion scubbus clans, my normal haemonculous, my campaign haemonculous, my elite incubi, my elite warpbeasts, my Archon, my raider and my two elite reaver jetbikes, and I think that was it. Most of that was my honour guard. I find that attatching a Haemonculous to a warp beast pack increases their effectiveness.

Another strategy I've used with DE is twenty jetbikes (bring in the broken record that screams "CHEESE!" I'm all grown up. I can take it.) and 6 scourges w/my archon. Also, did you notice that they never give you the named character for yours, or the AI's, in the campaign?

And one thing that annoys the hell out of me is that THEY WON'T GIVE ME MY WARGEAR! I have like, four defeated enemies, three defensive victories (I never have to defend...) 15 conquests, a gizzillion kills, a 400:1 kill ratio (making the last two up) and a pwnage rate of 1000% (everything there was intentional.)

I have three pieces of wargear. THAT'S WACK!

I got it for 1 conquest, 2k kills, and 2:1 kill ratio.

THATS WACK!

Possesed
 
#29 ·
completed all races on hard.

Was the easiest game ever.

Was disappointed by sisters. They're a little disappointing. No fun to play

Dark Eldar are ridiculous in the early game but die in the late game.

The flying uits were just slapped on there and are rubbish. All in all the game is entertaining yet disappointing.
 
#31 ·
I have a technical problem...

My computer keeps taking 5+ minutes to load even a simple battle!

I've adjusted settings, but I don't know about my processer, though. I may have to check that... I'll call ********** (not putting name in there)

Possessed
 
#32 ·
I am a bit disappointed. One thing that gets me is that your pre-built stronghold and buildings aren't there when you defend a territory. You have to rebuild everything which is annoying as hell...

BTW.. The Possesed One, I have the same problem. The game takes forever to load.
 
#33 · (Edited)
I don't like the idea of the flying units either, I would of preferred them as a sort of off screen attack that you just launch, but you pick where they approach from, and if they get shot on the way there then bad luck? anything but just hovering units, thats what raptors are for.

I also found that it didn't run anywhere near as well as DC ran.
I had no issues with DC on full graphics with 1024 resolution, but on soulstorm I'm waiting about 5 or more minutes for each map to load, and about the same AFTER each battle is won.

I think dark eldar are incredibly powerful in my opinion, and their spells do add quite a lot to it in terms of balance, sure later in the game they might be outgunned and outCC'd but just summon a warp storm, destroy their morale, and a corruption while the archon makes a squad of termies attack eachother, knocking half of them out... and the ability to summon these ANYWHERE at any time as long as it's charged is a very big deal.

The one thing I did find incredibly useful was the dark scythe, wiping out almost any troops it came in contact with, and the TALO vehicles wild fire special ability does 700 dmg with each hit that lands on an enemy squad, potentially doing thousands of damage in a few seconds.

I don't have a dvd rom in my computer, I've had DOW installed at a mates place while we LAN'd and it ran without the cd the whole time, this time around, once I gave the dvd rom back, I was stuck without playing it, at least with DC I could vs comps without the cd... or play campaign, but not doing anything because the CD isn't in really bugs me.

I'd love to give it a shot online, and see how other players are going, but all in all, I'm really disappointed and if I had the receipt, I'd take it back.

I think thats my rant...
/rant

EDIT: thats not my rant!

Sisters of battle seem just too weak overall, I mean they don't have nice morale, they are a little healthier than basic troops, but they do as much damage as guardsmen, so putting a full guard squad with a few nades vs a full sisters squad, maybe even two squads, the guardsmen would almost certainly win.

Dark eldar warriors are very tiny with their health but I think they were about 50-60 dmg, with their range not being so bad, early troops can't get CLOSE to stopping that.

In my opinion, I would of liked the planets to revolve when you target them so there is much more territories, and maybe mini-strongholds on different planets that can be taken over by any race at all.

I found that defeating the home bases of the races was way too easy, I took out guard and SOB with just a warrior squad and the archon for my honor guard.

I think the single player was WAY easier than DC, I under-estimated the attacks the first few times around, but once I realized the enemy comes in for the kill pretty hard, I was always ready for it...
 
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