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Could've Been Great

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: March 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

My rig isn't on steroids, so I expected the same if not identical gaming experience I had with Dawn of War Series. I have the recommended requirements well above the recommended requirements, and yet, the game runs choppy, sloppy and the load times are unacceptable compared to Relic's last stand alone expansion, Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. The units are more aggressive in the single player campaigns making troop build up difficult and sometimes impossible. The Dark Eldar have no perimeter defense that I can see, and their pop cap is low, so it's hard to build a formidable army. Not to mention the pathing problems. I enjoyed the whole DOW series, but the newest installment in the DOW series has heavy load times, poor pathing and general bugs that make the game a loser.

weak effort

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 22
Date: March 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

the opening cut scene's short length and cheesy graphics told the tale of the game to come. remember dow's opening scene, the immersion that commenced? yeah, you're not gonna get anything like that experience in this game. two new factions, both really have zero impact on the future of the warhammer 40k universe. i'd wait a few months, the price'll drop, and pay $20 for this just for new maps.

Expansion From Hell

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: April 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a terrible expansion online wise. There are so many known bugs and glitches, yet no one from Relic has taken the time to fix them or release a patch. You know you bought a bad game when it says "This is stand in news, replace with real news" for over a month after the game is released. All this game offers is two new races, one which is bugged. The game offers horrible connectivity to other players and most games joined are severely unbalanced and stacked with premade teams. It is plagued with slow load times etc. This is coming from someone with a dual core and 2GB of ram. This game is not worth buying unless the price drops severely, personally I feel scammed, I had much more fun playing DOW: Dark Crusade over this garbage.

Feels like a rush job

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 24 / 28
Date: March 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

While Soulstorm keeps the key gameplay elements that have kept me playing the DoW series for 4 years after it came out, this game mostly just offers more of the same, without too much that is new. The two new races are pretty cool, but with 9 races now, it almost feels like there is too much in the game, and not enough to distinguish the different races. The Sisters of Battle play to me like a compromise between the Imp. Guard and the Space Marines. I have also encountered a number of graphical glitches and crashes that I never saw in the previous installments of the game, which suggest to me that this game was rushed out a bit. The insane load times mentioned by another reviewer are a bit of a drag. Not a bad game, by any means, but for $40, we deserved more.

Dissapointed

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: March 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'm a huge fan of DoW, and in no small part against having two new races to play until Relic gives us the sequel. Unlike lots, I didn't scream and cry that the Tyranids aren't in Soulstorm, and I'm perfectly happy with DE and Sisters.

The gameplay itself is still superb, the type of RTS you'd expect from Relic by now. Aside from a bit more slowdown in the actual gameplay than in previous DoW titles, it's everything that DC was, plus the two new races.

What's disappointing is that this was clearly a rushed job. There are huge issues with the game engine itself, resulting in massively absurd load times and unexplainable slowdown. I consider myself more patient than most, willing to wait 20ish seconds for something that should really only take two to three. Unfortunately, twenty seconds would be a blessing as far as Soulstorm is concerned.

On a system that loads a Dark Crusade map in just over five seconds, and runs the largest DC maps on maxed settings with no apparent slowdown or freezing, the wait is over a minute for your average Soulstorm map to load. Medium sized maps produce the random jerky motion when more than eight or ten squads are fielded at the same time. Fourty-five seconds is the wait which I counted while twiddling my thumbs after clicking on the "Campaign" button from the main menu before the DC-style Campaign interface began to load.

The most irritating thing about this all is that there are so many re-used aspects of the game. From interfaces, to sounds, and textures (expect to see and hear high imperial guard influence in SoB), you can tell that the engine is beginning to meet it's limits. That's fine too, but the game itself shouldn't suffer the way it does right now. The campaign interface is just a slightly retextured version of DC's, which loaded in the blink of an eye, so why does the Soulstorm one take nearly a minute? I wasn't expecting anything ground-breakingly new this late into the DoW series, but it just doesn't justify the load times.

It's really too bad that the game is in it's current condition. It's nothing a patch or two won't fix, but for now I may just put the game down until a patch is released to speed up this clunky engine.

Must Rebuild Everytime

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: March 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

While I like the game and don't have a problem with the little extra time it takes to load, I don't like the fact that I have to rebuild everything.

In the other DoW games, once you put buildings in place they stay when you have to defend against attacks, so that you can get resources and power quickly. Not so with Soulstorm, when you defend against an attack you start from the beginning with one building and the reinforcements that you place in that territory. You have to re- build everything, from listening posts to barracks, as if they never existed.

This to me is a waste of resources and power, but I can learn to live with it, because it isn't going to change.

kinda cool, but

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 26, 2008
Author: Amazon User

First of all the graphics are pretty cool, the races are true to the tabletop, missing my favorite race the Tyranids. Some of the battle are a little ridiculous, I understand the fog of war is to increase realism but, it makes some of the battles a little more ridiculous. Just like in Warcraft 3 you'll spend 3 hours looking on giant maps for one little worker running around. If they wanted to make it more like the tabletop game they wouldn't have the fog of war. I never played warhammer where we pretended where the characters where, unless they that an ability that made it so.

The load time is worse than any other game I've played. I like playing the game, it's quite sad, I'm so use to the long load I end up reading a book while I wait for it to load. Or go make something to eat, eat it and come back. Reminds me of the old playstation games. Maybe my computer just sucks I don't know.

Mixed bag

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 18, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is the fourth DoW game so far (original, and 3 addons). While the gameplay did not change (it's still enormously fun and fast-paced), this installment left me with the feeling that it was completely unnecessary. So far each of the new installments gave something new. New fractions, new units, new storyline. The air-units are a great -that's sure- but not really revolutionary. The two new fractions... well, they look and feel more like some third-party mods, than official races. (The Inquisitor mod is much better than any of the new races in the game, by the way.) The choice is unfortunate -dark eldar being a renegade race, suited for guerrilla-warfare. Not exactly the base-building type; and the design... well, it doesn't look really good. (Skulls, spikes, and angry facial features.) The Sisters of Battle were completely unnecessary. They are not essential part of the Warhammer universe, and they look kind of a cheap ripoff of the Catholic Church's symbolism. They are not very original. I know, it's easy to be the critic, but these were my impressions. Tyranids, for example, would have been a much better choice -not to mention, some real good opportunity for a completely different take on the gameplay: the same way as the Eldar can't be played the same way as the Space Marines.
I wasn't really fan of the "Risk"-type gameplay of Dark Crusade; too bad they brought it back. The Warhammer universe is always interesting because of the stories; the first to installment at least made an honest effort to give an interesting storyline. (The original was a disappointment because of the short single player campaign.) There's the chance to give each of the races their own, yet intermingling campaigns, about the war raging on the moons and planets. It would have been awesome to follow an ork's rise to be a warboss, the Necrons' awakening, and so on - and getting a lot of background info on the races in the meanwhile, just to keep it interesting. What motivates a Chaos space marine? How does an eldar farsinger think? Instead, the creators of the games went with the fast way -and turned the game into an endless attack-conquer-defend meatgrinder, where only the terrain changes, and not the gameplay. (I know, real war is half as interesting as the fictional ones.)
I started playing the game, but honestly, it became boring after a while -the same old, same old from Dark Crusade.
In short, the game seems more like a last effort to some more income on the DoW franchise before DoW2 comes out, than an honest standalone. If you played all three games before, and the thought of conquering dozens of territories appeal to you, it's the game for you. If you want to play multiplayer with the new races, you'll also need this game; otherwise it's better to replay DC. If you don't know the series, get the platinum pack instead -the first three games have everything you need. You might wait a while until another pack comes out with this game included. But either way, sadly, you won't miss out much if you miss this game.

Same game with a couple of new twists.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: April 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I can't get enough Warhammer products. I first played Rogue Trader on my neighbor's ping pong table in 1988 with lead figures purchased in GB pounds. Against my better judgment, I continue to buy Black Library novels well into my middle age. There is something so thrillingly atavistic about the game's values. Very few contempory institutions openly celebrate willful ignorance, blind faith, intolerance and martyrdom. Warhammer allows me to indulge my inner stormtrooper in a safe and secure environment.

But even I have to admit that this expansion adds very little to the gameplay of Dark Crusade. Again, gameplay occurs at two levels: strategic map and the tactical battlefield. Soulstorm's strategic map is slightly larger, with several moons and planets, and a limited number of connections between territories. This means that capturing stategic hubs is much more important and it further reinforces the first-mover advantages of Dark Crusade. Start winning and you'll keep winning. Start losing and you're cooked. I like this, because it seems to me to mirror a crucial aspect of actual warfare (and, unfortunately, life). Even more challenging is the "lumpy" nature of the rewards and incentives the designers have created. Armies are unequal in strength, territories unequal in value, making for some interesting emergent strategic challenges.

Bottom line is that it's tons of fun, but it's also the logical conclusion of this incarnation of the game. Rumor is that it's the last expansion pack for DoW 1, and that the next thing coming down the pipe is DoW II. This is probably a good thing.

The End?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After playing this expansion for awhile I simply decided to review it. Honestly, I feel that 'Dark Crusade' was much better than 'Soulstorm' for many reasons. The main thing that really bothers me about the main campaign of 'Soulstorm' is all the (take and hold) levels of the game. If you are a low level character you have to really level up and by doing that you risk your enemies leveling up also and take the risk of losing power and then it makes the game so much harder.

'Dark Crusade' had a few of these levels through the campaign also but not as many. For some reason I just find it irritating and can't really get past it. I also agree that the main opening movie has very low standard graphics for this series and last but not least the 'Sisters of Battle' are quite weak. They are similar to the 'Imperial Guard' but without the heavy firepower (ie..Basilisks, Leman Russ tanks etc). I think in this area a full army of 'Witch hunters' would have evened this army out alot better. The Sisters just lack any real firepower and rely on flame based weapons (which they are known for) but if there is any heavy support against you the Sister fall pretty easily.

Its sad really because I really like the Sisters but they are just so weak its sad.

In the end, it is an overpriced expansion that does feel rushed and now that they are pouring all of their manpower into 'Dawn of War II' I feel this is the last part of the original 'Dawn of War' series. If you really like the challenge and are a Warhammer 40K fanatic like me you'll go ahead and get this anyway. But, for those happy with the first three games and don't care about the 'Sisters of Battle' or the 'Dark Eldar' waiting for 'Dawn of War II' should be well worth the wait!

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