Disappointment
The campaign seemed like a good idea to me in concept; take DC and make it bigger. I was expecting multiple planets, each one similar to the original DC planet. Instead I feel like they simply split the DC campaign up over multiple planets, changing very little. Because they used the exact same, nonscrolling view from the DC campaign, the map is incredibly intricate, forcing them to lose overall detail (no more army avatars, just triangles, non-detailed planets). Also, because we're dealing with planets and not one land mass, most of the main campaign screen is filled with space, causing the actual warzones to be miniscule. I would have loved the ability to zoom in on a single planet.
The battles themselves, at least to me, seem to have lost a lot of polish. It just has the feel that it was taken apart, stripped down, and then rebuilt to the detriment of the program. Some of the organization has been reworked and is nonsensical. why were the kroot soldiers moved from the kroot barracks to the tau barracks? I don't understand what was so pressing as to make that kind of change. Also, the units "speak" a lot more than in the last game, especially in battle. This might seem like a good thing (hey, more personality), but when there is only one line, repeated over and over, it gets annoying. I do have to not that the ai seems to be more on the ball than in previous games. I'll see how true that is as I play more
Also, the loading time for everything is incredibly long (note I'm using a downloaded version and not the retail dvd version, so this might be different). I don't see why it takes thirty seconds to go from the main screen, after clicking on campaign, to get to the screen asking whether I want to start a new game or load an old game. What is causing the slowdown?
I have only used one new army, the sisters of battle, and I have some definite complaints in the works, but I don't want to cry about balancing when I haven't played them enough. The sisters feel like weird space marines (it was weird for me to see the jumpers are set for distance combat instead of hand to hand, and I learned this after I jumped them into the middle of an imperial guardsman group with plasma guns at the ready)
The air units feel to me like generic units, except with a hover ability like they are perpetually in jump. I was expecting more along the lines of calling in air vehicles. Right now they feel like hovering tanks that are only useful in certain roles (most of the armies already have a specialist in taking down each of the unit types).
The story is pretty much gone. To sum up "guardsmen inhabit the area (even though they only control one area) chaos virtually wipes out the imperial guard (even though they too only control one area... not close to the imperial guard) the other armies show up to say hey. There is no beginning story for each army (where's the individual motivation here?) nor is there any witty repartee between the army leaders. There is nothing to connect me to these armies or characters. I know many people prefer more fighting as opposed to more story, so I won't necessarily hold this against relic, they are giving the audience what they want. I just miss chaos' humorous snide remarks.