Dawn of War – Dark Crusade Demo Impressions

Have just finished playing the 2 demo levels for DoW – Dark Crusade.
What I knew before the demo/Demo Impressions
First off, its interesting to note that the Dark Crusade is a standalone expansion pack. Meaning you can buy it and still play the game without buying either the original game or the first expansion (Winter Assault). Obviously though this will limit what you can access. While i’m not entirely sure of the details, I imagine you wont be able to play the campaigns from the full game or winter assault and quite possibly cannot play the 5 other sides in skirmish or multiplayer.
My first impressions are that I don’t feel the expansion changes DoW hugely, but that is by no means a bad thing. The graphics are still the same and the gameplay is still as you remember it. I cannot however, comment on the new campaign mode (as it is not available in the demo). The new campaign looks a lot more fleshed out than previous installments and appears to combine turn based map movement, with skirmishes in between, as well as some sort of persistent armies. The other addition on the gameplay side is wargear (again not available in the demo). This will allow you to customise both your commanders look and abilities, should be a nice feature.
What I can tell you about is the Tau. The Tau are definitely the ‘Firepower’ race and have extraordinarily high damage ranged troops, but the downside is they get chewed in close combat. This is where the kroot come in, Tau’s close combat troops are strange looking alien creatures, built from their own barracks and are able to leap into combat (with an upgrade) and tie up your opponents troops while you shoot them to pieces. I won’t go into a lot of detail but they are great fun to play, sadly a heap of units were unavailable in the demo. However you still get to try Kroot (close combat troops), Fire Warriors (ranged troops), Pathfinders (allow you to mark enemy troops causing your ranged weapons against that target to do more damage) Crisis Battle Suit (dreadnought equivalent but much more ranged focused and have jetpacks), Stealth Team (stealthed scouts that can remain stealthed while shooting and capturing points) and the Skyray (A hover long range hover vehicle). My only concern with the Tau is they are perhaps overpowered, I found the Skyray in particular to be a little whorey, especially its cooldown ability. The missile barrage from this will obliterate almost anything, but I am willing to reserve judgement for the full game. I do realise that Relic are great at acknowledging problems and patching the game long after its released.
Conclusion
Am I excited about the Dark Crusade? Hell yeah! I only do writeups on worthy games afterall and this is definitely one of them. Will it radically change the game? Probably not, but what it will do is add a great deal more depth to an already incredibly deep RTS game. Hopefully the Necrons will be just as cool as the Tau and Relic should have a winner on their hands. 7 sides total, is just insanely good and I’m sure there will be many great multiplayer games to be had!
The demo is available from the Relic Bittorrent Tracker right now, so what are you waiting for! Try it out!

Other Stuff
Well for better or worse I have started playing WoW again, and yet again its destroying my life, but oh well, its an enjoyable way to do so! Pre-expansion I have pretty much decided it’s a big waste of time spending hours doing instances as all the gear will be obsolete once you hit 70 anyway. So I have decided to focus on levelling other characters. From reading the talent review I feel that the Shaman and the Mage look most appealing, but the talents will no doubt change during blizzards testing. So at the moment im working on levelling a lock (currently lvl 30), and if I get time, maybe my Shaman also. Well had best be off, but if you play on Frostmourne give Nizmox or Dethecor a whisper.