Complex Games succeeded in creating a real tactical hit with Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters earlier this year and follows it up with Duty Eternal, its first DLC. The XCOM-like game set in the grimdark universe of the 41st millennium is an all-around strongly implemented power fantasy, which basically only had one major weakness: the mission variety. Anyone who spends hours in the game will quickly come across repetitions of the same mission types without much variation.
Duty Eternal steps up in this area, with Complex Games managing to hit multiple targets with one stone while staying true to the game’s core experience. In a new mission type, you receive a call for help from the surface of a planet, where members of the Grey Knights, your Crusader-like Space Marine chapter, take on a superior enemy force. You fight your way to the source of the signal, where an enormous Dreadnought is the final survivor of the besieged squad, holding the Nurgle hordes at bay in a final stand.
Dreadnoughts are enormous armored fighting machines on two legs that pack the firepower of half an army and are piloted by veteran Space Marines whose bodies are so devastated they can no longer use normal power armor to participate in battle. It’s a badass concept – and the base of the DLC’s title. Duty Eternal allows you to take control over these juggernauts on the battlefield. Advance to the Dreadnought and join it to complete its mission. The objective itself isn’t really different from the base game’s standard missions, but controlling this powerful toy will make you forget about that really quickly.
Dreadnoughts have flamethrowers, plasma cannons, charge attacks, and melee combat prowess at their disposal. They flatten any terrain they touch – this is worth noting, since this way you’ll be able to deprive the enemy of cover. However, it also leaves less cover for your own Grey Knights, so tread carefully and tactically. The Dreadnought itself unfortunately doesn’t serve as mobile cover – that would have been an interesting approach, opening some risky combined-arms tactics. The animations don’t always look perfect when the behemoth brushes the corner of a large piece of terrain, which then completely collapses, but the core of the experience – the power fantasy – is obviously helped by such displays of might. With every step, the battlefield shakes, with every shot you eliminate several enemies. The Dreadnoughts feel bloody amazing to use.
As with some of the main missions, commanding more than just four characters is also a lot of fun. You don’t feel quite as outnumbered, but still get that feeling of beating the odds. It’s a good thing that you can now put fallen Grey Knights into a Dreadnought yourself and upgrade it with various weapon systems to take it to the sector’s battlefields as a fifth squad member.
Additional permanent support is also provided by a new character class, the Techmarine. They add some more variety to squad building and specialize in interacting with mechanical entities – such as the Dreadnought. Techmarines act as healers and buffers for the venerable machines and are therefore perfect as part of their escort.
In addition to a selection of ranged and melee weapons that make them quite versatile as a fighter, the Techmarine comes with a complement of their own Servitors. These Servitors are armed and accompany them on the battlefield, where the Techmarine can give them movement orders. Unlike the Dreadnought, the Servitors are not independent members of the squad, but they can provide valuable fire support, which once again helps to offset one’s numerical inferiority quite a bit.
You’ll acquire equipment for Techmarines in a different way than for your Space Marines: in some missions you’ll find a new bonus objective in which you’ll have to recover containers of Archeotech – ancient technology that the Adeptus Mechanicus would like to get their hands on. Collect these containers to exchange them for new Techmarine equipment. This adds a bit more dynamics to standard missions – and difficulty, of course, because the Archeotech is guarded by enemy forces.
If it’s more difficulty you’re after, then there’s more good news for you: the new Technophage missions included in the DLC, which mix up familiar maps and objectives, come with all sorts of fresh Warp modifiers, among other things. This not only provides more variety, but also a fair amount of challenge. The rewards obtained from these missions are correspondingly valuable.
You also get access to another spaceship. The Gladius frigate can transport a small force to another front, where your Grey Knights will act autonomously. They return with the rewards after completing the mission – or leave their lives far from your control. In many ways, Duty Eternal ups the scale from the base game, while still providing that intimate squad-level tactical gameplay players have come to love.
Duty Eternal delivers exactly what a DLC pack should: it builds on the foundations of the strong base game and expands them with additional content and possibilities, while also working to mitigate any existing weaknesses. Complex Games manages to do all of this within the same coherent atmosphere that was already present in the base game.
2022 was already a very good year for Warhammer video games – and Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters: Duty Eternal is perfect to round it off.
Written by Marco Wutz on behalf of GLHF.
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