In a galaxy of dodgy Warhammer 40,000 games, the Battlefleet games really stand out. When space squids clash with Imperial floating cathedrals, things get hectic. I was thankful for the pause button at points. It gets complicated when there are a lot of ships involved, and certain matchups can be very challenging. Most of the game is about picking targets and focusing them down with the right weapons.
Every ship has a sensible autopilot mode that does a lot of the manoeuvring.
The UI makes the game look a lot more complicated than it really is. I haven’t had chance to experiment with the Necrons yet, but the Imperial ships behave much as they did in the first game.
In addition to the Tyranid campaign, you can also play as the Imperium and the Necrons (near-immortal regenerating robots). The prologue mission is particularly heavy on spectacle, and overall the game does a great job of evoking the scale and pomp of the setting within the confines of the battlefields. The campaigns look like sandboxes, but there’s plenty of story packed into between-mission chats and the occasional cutscene.
