So Eternal Crusade is.....
Not bad? TLDR: It's very 40k and worth the $20 I spent to unlock the full game.
It was enjoyable enough to get me to pony up $20 for the full version after playing 4 or 5 hours last night. To be honest I didn't even really need do that, the game is more or less fully playable just doing it F2P. Going full game just lets you dig deeper into the guts of what you can already do.
Performance wise it ran well. Didn't have any lag or disconnects all night, and just one client crash. FPS held pretty steady for most of my games. no constant egregious slowdowns or FPS drops. This was with all the graphical settings set to high, and my machine is fairly beast, so people with lower end systems might not get the performance I did.
In terms of gameplay it feels little loose, but it is a 3rd person FPS rather than a 1st person. Even after 8 or so hours the gunplay still feels a little like spray and pray. The camera tries to help but it makes things like shooting out of cover feel wonky on more than one occasion. At certain angles you'll struggle with the camera trying to aim on an enemy because the camera will keep popping up or over a wall or railing trying to help, and cause your gun to not be able to fire because it's going through the wall. Melee combat is also pretty messy, with players flying at each other with lunge attacks and missing constantly. The Rock-Paper-Scissors method of melee combat does work though; I used it to my advantage several times last night to turn the tables against new players who were just spamming their quick melee attacks. Timing your dodge rolls, using cover, flanking, baiting, luring....it all gives gameplay a level of mastery that isn't immediately apparent in your first hours. It's not enough to elevate gameplay to something truly special but it's serviceable. The level designs are decent. Aesthetically they look great to me, other than the occasional barren level edge. Vehicles are highly restricted where they can go, so you can't just pull a predator up to the front doors of most objectives or the static enemy spawn point and unload on the poor bastards inside. Most of the levels are multi-storied too, so there's always at least a roof or a balcony you can get up on for sniping and defense. Level knowledge is a thing in this for sure. Levels feel huge but what people actually play on is not. There are sniper and holdout spots galore, and if the battles were just free for alls instead of objective based, you'd get your ass shot off within 5 feet of stepping out of most buildings. Knowing where people like to camp to cover doorways to objectives, both from the inside and outside, can save you a lot of deaths.
The battles themselves are all of the "capture the point" variety, where you might play either the attackers or defenders. In one mission type, there are multiple points to capture. The defenders get a countdown timer until they win while the attackers have a victory bar that fills up by holding objective points. If the attackers control 2 or more points, their victory bar increases and if it's the first time they've captured the point, time is added to the defender's victory countdown. So it's possible for attackers to lose in the first five minutes if they don't at least capture one point. Other missions take the same form but require the attackers to attack and capture points in sequence. These battles are much, much harder to win because the enemy is all defending the same objective. Sometimes there's minor side objectives like destroying the gates to the fortress so your vehicles can advance forward. (Which is actually super important to winning because rhinos function as mobile spawn points.)
Which leads me to my next point: the biggest parts of this game are assault and defense. As the attacker, you'll be assaulting a small, usually 2-level room trying to activate the point capture node. As defenders, most of your team will be camped in this room gunning down any enemy that dares to enter. So attackers are usually at a disadvantage against a team that knows how to defend. Luckily there are entrance points all over said building but it still makes for some nasty, entrenched, grenade happy fire fights when you're trying to capture these things. Stupid teams that don't get the entire match is on a timer will sometimes frustrate you as they sit outside the capture point in vehicles and try to snipe, or just cower in cover somewhere outside the objective like a pussy. What contributes to that frustration is not all classes can capture. In fact only one or two per faction can. And so when half your team is playing classes that can't capture, AND they won't storm the breach beside you or give you adequate covering fire or even assault from a different flank....you basically have no prayer of winning the match. You can sometimes maybe take down two people at once, but when you're facing 3 or more enemies alone you're pretty much fucked. So you generally need your teammates both on attack and defense to win a match.
All that said still works though. In a few games I got to be the difference maker because I actually charged in and disrupted the static defenses the enemy was laying down, giving the rest of my team enough time and distraction to actually get inside and make a foothold. On the other side though, I've spawned at the start of the game, immediately gone to the capture point, started the capture, gotten in to cover and prepared to defend, and had the whole enemy team roll up on me....with not one of my team members in sight. And when I looked at the map, half my team is somewhere between our static spawn points and the objective, usually camped out behind a line of armor. In a locked objective game where there is only ONE FREAKING PLACE YOU NEED TO BE AND THAT IS ON THE EMPEROR-DAMNED OBJECTIVE.
So for the bold and the heroic, you can turn the tide of battle. Or just get fragged instantly while everyone stands around outside in cover and watches you die. Such is war, I guess.
Special mentions for executions. Not only is it a great way to shame the fuck out of the person you just killed, it gives you experience toward ranking up as well. (The total is slightly less than double than what you'd get if you took them down and then just shot them the rest of the way to death.) It really taps into the animosity between factions, and I've watched players literally sign their own death warrants simply because they HAD to get that execution kill. It's pretty fun. At least until players learn they can just rob you of it by choosing to bleed out. It actually starts to become a bit of a race, whether you can execute a guy you just killed before he chooses to bleed out. But there is something deeply satisfying about spotting an ork crawling away from a fire fight on his belly, walking up, flipping him over, looking him in the eyes then planting a bolt right between them. It gives combat this little personal edge that's so very 40k.
Other than MP battles, there's the coop/survival mode as well.
The "tyranid dungeons" are from what I've seen the weakest part of the game. There's two modes, coop wave survival and coop dungeon crawl. Neither are particularly fleshed out. There's three types of enemies (termagaunts, hormagaunts and what I assume is supposed to be a broodlord) in both modes and that appears to be it. In wave survival, you just end up camping in a corner by some ammo boxes that eventually stop providing ammo to the team. I found that no one has enough ammunition to last, everyone is running out midwave by the time you're at wave 7, even with everyone packed into the same corner and shooting the same direction. The ammo boxes run out and the only other ones available require you to run out into the swarm during the wave, which is pretty much a no-go. Then the Broodlord shows up and takes you out one a time.
Dungeon crawl, meanwhile, is you just going through hallways and fighting off swarms as they appear. While I like the pace better, it sucks if your team doesn't stick together because it only takes a few hits to bring you down. In one game I was getting chain taken out by the same genestealer, because my teammate would rez me, then walk away, and the same genestealer would pop out from behind a door and take me down again while I was still performing the stand up animation. Kinda frustrating. Right now the Tyranid Dungeons are essentially there for people who want to play this game but hate PvP. Hopefully it gets more love.
On the F2P Economy/Progression side of things....again, a bit of a mixed bag. There's a two currency system like most F2P games: Premium Currency (Rogue Trader Credits) and in-game currency (Requisition.) Req is earned in battles based on your performance, and is used to buy gear from the store that is Requisition-only. (For example, basically all non-starting weapons for all classes in each faction are Req-locked. So if you are playing a Tact Marine and want to use a plasma gun instead of a bolter, you have to buy the plasma gun in the store for Req first to unlock it.) RTC are used for buying cosmetics, primarily, and a couple special snowflake versions of existing weapons. Such weapons have a flashy skin and very, very minimally increased stats over its regular version. (Slightly less recoil, slightly faster reload/cooldown, but never ever damage.) F2P players cannot make any purchases in the Rogue Trader store using Requisition until they upgrade to the full game, which is the primary incentive to do so.
On the progression side, you earn XP toward your character rank in each faction. As you rank up, you get points to spend in each faction's skill tree. The skill trees are essentially organized by class. You use points to unlock a couple things:
-You make stuff cheaper to put in your loadout.
-You unlock more and better options to attach to your loadout, like stuff to increase your health, armor and armor regen stats.
So how "big" your loadout is, is based on your faction rank. And the fancier the 40k weapon is, the bigger chunk of your loadout it reserves. So a plasma gun for a tact marine costs like 400 points, for example, versus a Meltagun which might be 300. So in a sense you advance by class through the skill tree, buying up skills that make tact marine weapons cheaper to field on your tact marine loadout, or heavy weapons cheaper to field on your heavy weapons loadout. So it's a little grindy. But it's flexible and open in that don't have to earn experience and rank up as a tact marine to spend skill points on apothecary skills like a better Narthecium for healing.
For example, a starting player may only be able to have their bolter, bolt pistol, combat knife, frag grenades, ammo kit, no weapon mods like scopes and 6 or so basic starter boosts for their tact marine loadout. A higher level player though, who has both unlocked the weapons and spent the skill points so they take up less loadout space, could have a plasma gun, grav pistol, krak grenades, multiple uses on their ammo box and the best boosts they have unlocked equipped, all at once, on their Tact Marine.
Eventually at the end of the skill tree you unlock "elite classes" which I'm not sure are in the game yet, but they appear to be souped up versions of existing classes. Kinda disappointing, I was hoping for unique stuff like a Pskyer or Dreadnought or Terminator for Space Marines.
It's not terribly interesting, TBH, as far as progression systems go, and if it sounds a little confusing it's because it is. (For example, the stuff you buy on the skill tree is all loadout options, not just passive bonuses to your character that continue to stack up. When you buy an upgraded Apothecary Narthecium, it's an actual item that goes in your loadout that needs to be equipped and has a higher loadout cost than the basic Narthecium.) But I see where it's inspired by the table top, and I like some aspects of designing a load out. There's just too many places you do have to buy stuff, unlock stuff or set stuff that the system feels a little disjointed. Some progression systems flow and are actually enjoyable to look at your options and figure out how to progress. This one just kinda feels both bland (ok so I just make all my class stuff cheaper and/or more effective, and buy up my boosts) and awkward (ok so I have to buy the plasma gun first with Req, then buy the skill that makes its Loadout Points lower, then I have to go into my loadout and equip the weapon and save it....)
If I have one true gripe that stands above all the others about the class/progression/gear system, it's this: weapon choices are restricted by class. Tact marines can't use ANYTHING beyond a combat knife, assault marines can't use plasma guns, and ground assault marines just can't take a pistol at all. And while such class restrictions are very 40k, it doesn't do a lot for customization or feeling like a special snowflake to be that restricted. The only exception to the strict gearing by class, at least on the Space Marine side, is the Apothecary, who can seem to take a higher variety of weapons than other classes. They still can't capture though. ><
RE: The F2P economy. I've played more than few F2P games now and EC's F2P Economy is....weird by most standards. It's mostly cosmetics based, which isn't unusual. What is unusual is amount of depth they have on offer. See, EC does not have a lot of vertical depth, on any level. What it does have is horizontal breadth though. You have 4 factions with between 5 and 8 classes per. Each of these factions also has 5 visually distinct Clans/Chapters/Craftworlds/Warbands. And each Clan/Chapter/Warband/Craftworld has its own personalized cosmetic microtransactions.
What you end up with is this: Space Marines of all chapters get the same ~3-6 cosmetic armor upgrades for each slot (head, chest, legs, right/left shoulder, head. Arms have no skins right now.) Shit like Heresy Mark or Corvus armor. And then they get or two or three chapter-specific skins per armor slot. This is 40k after all, fans want to see sub-faction specific, iconic armor for their pet faction and EC does that.
But what you end up with is this: like most players, you probably have a favorite faction and class. You can buy up pretty much all that chapter or clan or warband or craftworld's skins for like...$50. And then you would just end up doing the same thing for all the other factions. Behavior Interactive's F2P economy seems based around you playing every faction and buying up all the skins for everyone, both their faction-specific armor and weapon skins. The thing is....I'll never do that. I'll likely rarely if ever play orks and I don't like them enough to spend money on them for bitz. I don't particularly like playing heavy weapons classes so I doubt I'll ever buy the weapon skins for those. I've already identified the handful of Space Marine armor skins I like and would use, and bought most of the Blood Angel ones I wanted. So.....the chances of me spending more money on the game are slim. And I'd bet that'd be the same for a lot of players, even dyed in the wool 40k fans.
Granted, they're obviously behind in development. The need to make the same thing 4 or 5 times over because of 40k fan expectations means what they entice you to buy with is fairly limited in depth. There aren't a lot of variants per chapter or, when you get down to it, faction. There are just a lot of factions and sub-factions. There'll be more on offer as time goes on but the basic structure remains the same: skins for normal weapons that perform just slightly better than their normal counter parts....and armor skins. To add to that, you can actually spend Requisition to get "Supply Drops" which give you yet more skins. Could be alt skins of normal stuff that just recolors it, or it could be actual paid skins and "artificier" equipment. So there's even less actual incentive to pay.
Not that this is necessarily all bad. They've got a seemingly not P2W economy that so far feels fair and I appreciate that. But I've gotten pretty used to aggressively orchestrated F2P economies and there's something distinctly amateurish or naive about how EC's seems built. Decent but fair F2P economies entice all players to spend, some less than others. EC's seems designed to be supported by true 40k whales, but for average joe to moderate 40k fans who actually like the game? The hooks don't seem that strong.
Anyways, for F2P players who feel like trying it out:
-You can make a character in any one of the factions.
-You can play all classes EXCEPT Jump and Ground Assault classes. Which believe me, they actually require some game knowledge to use right so you're not missing out on much at the start not playing them.
-You can level up and spend points to buy stuff on the skill tree. You earn 1/3rd the points to spend you normally would, the rest you would have gotten are locked to your account and made available when you go premium.
-You can't buy anything from the store with your requisition. So you're basically limited to the default starting weapons (bolters, bolt pistols, heavy bolter, las cannon, chain sword and storm shield for Space Marines) until you unlock the full game and level up some. The Techmarines ain't giving you shit unless you pony up some cash first.
-Your max rank caps out lower than other players with the full game, so even with all the grinding in the world, you can't unlock things like Elite Classes or the advanced loadout items (which the bonuses for those due start to add up by the time you've got the best ones, so you would be a distinct disadvantage to any leveled, full game player.)
But that's still a lot of hours you can play free and have a good time. With so many F2P players on now, there is no end of level one scrubs to mow down.
All in all...I've been enjoying myself. It's been a while since I've played a competitive MP shooter so that might be contributing a little, more discerning PvP gamers might not be as charitable. But it's definitely very 40k. Unloading a bolter on full auto into something feels good. If you like defensive play this game is chalk full of it. Players tend to work together on defense fairly well, it's coordinating assaults that is touch and go. Some map designs too really force teams together, until you are walking into a literal hellstorm of weapons fire trying to reach the objective and capture it. I've had a couple legit 40k moments of "FOR THE EMPEROR!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!", charging in to a heavily defended position fully expecting to be instantly gunned down....and somehow managing to turn the tide. I think that alone at least deserves $20. I've been skeptical of this game from Day 1 and it is not what it originally set out to be. But through all that, it's still produced something fun that I believe has earned the right to stand proudly, if a little shakily, next to 40k titles people remember fondly.
Because there's no way I'm ever going to forget the line "CAN YOU SMELL MY BLOOD?"
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Topic: WH40K discussion thread: [loading grimdark, please wait] (Read 1049575 times)