Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising
Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising review & strategy guide by Honorabili
One Sentence Review:
“Chaos Rising adds much needed content to revitalize DoW2 with reintroducing Chaos and supplementing all existing game modes.”
Overall Score:
8 out of 10
This review I will do different than my other reviews because this is an expansion pack and not an entirely new game. To check out my overall initial review of Dawn of War 2 click here.
About the Campaign mode and Chaos:
The campaign mode for Chaos Rising leaves off where the campaign for the original game left off. You take up the role of the same characters in the previous game which were space marines. You can only play as these characters and you can’t play as Chaos. You will however be facing Chaos in the coming war and also this expansion pack has rpg elements from the pen-and-paper rpg game Rogue Trader in the sense that you can do evil deeds that give you Corruption or good deeds that give you Redemption.
The more corrupt you get, the more demonic your men turn. The more Redemption you have, the more normal they remain. Corruption modifies the characterics your characters have, making some stuff barely work anymore and some stuff become really expensive to you but make you deal out more damage and other secondary effects. Of all the characters, the only one that is uncorruptible is the Dreadnought, Davian Thule.
If you’re not familiar with the main storyline for Warhammer 40K I will let you know that basically Chaos are these Warp touched kind of Satanists that worship Chaos gods (really nasty beings) and are fallen humans that have become demons. Along with most stories for the imperium of man, Chaos has traditionally come from people who have sold their souls to these demons or have been tricked by them or what’s even more disturbing are normal space marines (and imperial guard troops) which have simply become Chaos by being in contact with them and elements of the Warp. Sometimes if you fail to meet objectives your men become more influenced by Chaos. This might be as a result of shame or guilt associated with the failure. For example, failing to defend some innocents in the conflict that fell to Chaos.
Myself, I wish would have liked them to include a campaign which lets you play solely as the demonic Chaos forces, sort of like how the Dark Crusade expansion did for Dawn of War 1 (along with other races, Tau, Eldar, Imperial Guard, Necron, etc). Just like the original DoW2, you can invite one of your friends to play the campaign with you, them controlling half your forces.
What’s really different in this campaign over the original DoW2 campaign is that now the supplies you pick up are not generic supplies which supplement all your troops. Now, they are specific supplies (explosives, medical supplies, and so on) which boost only those types of items. Another thing that’s very different is that you no longer have to go around per mission conquering and defending strategic assets (the factories, shrines, and communication arrays). To get more of the items that would let you deploy more of those items such as the artillery strike, ability to deploy tarantula turrets, you specifically have to pick up the strategic supply boxes.
The level cap for Chaos Rising has been raised to level 30 versus level 20 for DoW2. This makes your characters much more powerful but it can also be a hindrance especially when you reach the last mission, which is the 15th mission. Whereas in the original DoW2 you could just keep farming randomly generated missions to keep getting better war gear, since you no longer control strategic assets and because of how they made the storyline in this campaign, you no longer have to deal with these missions, which kind of screws you over when you get to the last mission because it’s LONG and HARD and (to me) ANNOYING.
I played the campaign game once so far, taking the path of keeping my space marines pure and still worshiping the Emperor rather than those Chaos freaks, and of course, playing it at the max difficulty (Primarch). When I finally beat the last mission, it was on my 2nd retry. Some of the war gear I picked up on my first attempt helped a bunch especially since it made my scout a little bit more resilient.
Strategy Guide for last level of Chaos Rising campaign:
This mission is really annoying. This guide was written under the max difficulty setting only. Some stuff might not apply under the easier modes.
The first part of the mission consists of taking an anti-vehicle tank and an anti-infantry tank (Predator tanks) and fighting your way to one of the Chaos summoning buildings and leveling it. If you go along the left path, it will be much harder. It’s easier to just fight to the right path/building instead as it has less resistance. No matter what, as soon as you kill that building, you will have limited control of the tanks for a while, and your 4 squads will deploy along with about 25-50 other space marines and dreadnoughts.
Now you’re supposed to escort them and fight your way to the other point, except now you have all these cannon fodder, WHOOPS, I mean Brothers in Battle to help you. The game says you’re not supposed to let them die but they die every time because the morons will keep patrolling and running into ENDLESS Chaos tanks, Dreadnoughts, troops, demons, etc. Basically, ignore them as soon as you blow up the last big building to the left side and fight your way back with the cannon fodder to the middle.
Once you’re at the middle, just go towards the blue circle and fight the Chaos mini-boss. The strategy here is just keep hitting him. Kill his pet summons once they arise and blow up all buildings he summons ASAP. The later buildings fire some homing bullshit Chaos plasma things that will rape you unless you take them out ASAP. Once those buildings are taken out, the mini-boss won’t have much health left and just wipe him out.
Once that’s gone go up right and blow away all the soldiers, 1-2 tanks, 1-2 dreadnoughts, and building there and cap the point which reinforces you. This point is sort of useful but not entirely.
The fat bastard boss is now at the topmost point of the map. He will randomly summon buddies to help him, in the form of rarely a tank, sometimes dreadnoughts, and usually some heavy infantry. His attacks are doing a Mortal Kombat Scorpion (sort of like the Licter Tyrannid in DoW2) get-over-here sometimes instakill attack or smashing stuff around him like a melee-build dreadnought or thowing up in a cone attack in a specific direction. He also sometimes picks up your guys or impales them with his sword and then either throws them in the direction he’s facing or half the time in a random direction.
It took me about 2 hours to beat the last level finally. What is really important to know is that he heals back over time. Try NOT to use the resurrection point unless you’re down to one man and everybody else is down and you don’t think you can res your healer in time. Not only does the fat bastard heal over time but he will heal much more and much faster if your men die around him. You basically have to spam the living hell out of healing (use the scout and hopefully you kept him pure so using the healing uses energy only, not supplies or you’re dead). The longer you take, more the bastard will heal. The less DPS you do, the longer it will take you to beat him too.
Initially, I went for my force commander and dreadnought combo attack but since the fat bastard does so much damage around him only the force commander has the resilience (and even then spam heal) to the near the bastard. I made all my other guys ranged combat (Avitus and Tarkus). Tarkus is particularly useful because he can interrupt (sometimes) the fat bastard’s specials with one of his abilities (hopefully you build him that way) by doing that power which stuns enemy troops with fear.
Since the fat bastard’s attacks can kill your guys and heal him, keep your guys at a relatively safe distance always drilling him, and if you put in the time, he will eventually drop, ending the campaign.
Back to the review… The Last Stand
For this game mode they added the Tyrannid Hive Tyrant and Chaos Sorceror.
The Tyrannid is basically like godzilla, with you being able to summon pets (if you make it have that build). He walks pretty slow and you can make him have either killer melee or ranged skills.
The Chaos Sorceror is basically a spell caster that shoots enemies and can replicate (and sacrifice) Chaos versions of almost any enemies you are fighting.
Both the new heroes are pretty fun, although you do have to level them up again to unlock all their items, much like the original game.
Multiplayer mode:
Chaos is now a playable race for the multiplayer mode. I’ve played around with it a bit, having fought Chaos as an enemy in this mode and I’ve seen one of the Chaos leaders cast like an enhanced fog of war on areas of the map capping my things behind my back and I have seen some enemies permanently have stealth on the map.
Value:
On Steam, they sell DoW2 Gold which has the original game and expansion for $40. The link to the Steam sale is the following. If you were like me and already owned DoW2 then for $30 Steam sells the expansion here.
If you never played DoW2, for $40 both the original and expansion for that price is an amazing value because that’s like a month or more worth of gaming right there, easily. $30 for just the expansion is a bit more steep but if you’re a fan of DoW2 and/or Warhammer40k then you will probably buy it anyways.
Music:
Much like the original game the music for Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising is very militant, dark, and inspiring war music. Great stuff!
If you enjoy the music from Dawn of War 2 then you can download the Dawn of War 2 OST from this link.
Conclusion:
I enjoy the carnage of the DoW games and the epic battle and violence they bring. I have enjoyed this expansion, just wished they could have included another campaign in it. Some parts were annoying like when my dreadnought gets stuck behind a tank or terrain or my terminator armor guys (this is still a problem that DoW2 had). Otherwise, the game is pretty enjoyable and challenging.
Visits: 1419
