Battlesector’s campaign is straightforward. Imperial Blood Angels (the red armored chaps with big guns and even bigger pauldrons) go to a planet where xenomorph-like Tyranids live. A lot of exposition is delivered before and after each mission in strong, somber tones. It all comes off as a bit lore-dumpy without more focus on the characters. If you’re not familiar with this galactic saga, all you need to know is that the good guys shoot a lot of nasty bugs.
The player can assemble an army to their specs before each mission. There’s a ‘point value’ for each map and troop type. Intercessors are cheap, but they struggle against heavy targets and crumble against melee. There’s no lock-in if you make a bad call before battle and there’s no limit to how many troops you can have. Having the ability to experiment means you can start a new map with any army you want, and as long as the army’s point value doesn’t exceed the map’s limit (you can’t start a skirmish with 50 tanks, for example), you can mix and match.
The maps are also varied – sometimes the fight is in wide open spaces, sometimes it’s tense exchanges in narrow hallways and channels that troops have to navigate. It pays to wait and see sometimes, and it pays to go all out sometimes. It’s the variety in play that makes Battlesector stand out for me. It’s so much more than just using troops and responding to situations. Unlike too many tactics titles, this one constantly changes up things, so it’s great to see that effort put into it.
During battles, players can upgrade certain ‘hero’ units with points they earn, and the cool thing is these heroes not only have options like increasing their health or trading up for better guns, but they also act as skill trees for their units. While Warhamer 40,000: Battlesector may not bring radical innovation to the turn-based tactics genre, it’s a treat to spend time with a game that has a mastery of the fundamentals and executes on them while also correctly applying an IP that has traditionally struggled to deliver positive experiences. There’s definitely a lot of content left to tap in the 40K license, so if the developers add new campaigns as DLC, I’ll keep playing this all year.
