Again, it didn't take long to have a full supply, so it doesn't make resource management any more taxing to have these new powers in play. Torture Pits work similarly for collecting on the home front. This can be a little trickier, since you sometimes have to actually get your relatively fragile workers out onto the battlefield for collection purposes right after a firefight. Similarly, the Dark Eldar harvest power for their unique abilities by consuming the souls of their enemies. The cooldown on the abilities were long enough that I never ran out of Faith.
The Sisters of Battle draw on their buildings and certain units to generate Faith, which is used for some of their more destructive abilities. Vehicles and special powers are where the new races stand out more, and are balanced by somewhat weaker infantry overall. As such, the Dark Eldar play like a cross between the cruelty of the Chaos, and play styles of the Tau (pack hounds) and Space Marines (ranged and melee infantry). The Sisters play like a holier version of the Space Marines, perhaps a logical extension to better counteract the Marines' mortal nemeses, the Chaos Marines. By comparison, the play style of the Necrons and Tau introduced in the prior expansion felt more unique, the former being slow, lumbering undead machinery that could be rebuilt on the battlefield, and the latter giving you the option of going down two unique development paths, either toward higher-end war machines, or enlisting further aid of the vicious and feral Kroot. Each of the new races has their own distinct look, though they feel more like combinations of other pre-existing races than something entirely unique. Over two dozen new multiplayer maps are along for the ride, likely designed for the expanded Risk-inspired campaign mode.
If you want to know anything else about the new Sisters and Dark Eldar, there's a bit in the manual about them, or you could go to the local tabletop gaming shop and grab a WH 40K handbook.Īs is noted in four separate places on the packaging, Soulstorm is a standalone expansion, but can be integrated with any or all of the previous Dawn of War games to bring up to nine total races into the fold. That's all you get from the game in terms of a story line. The Sisters of Battle come to cleanse away the filth and heresy of the other races, the Dark Eldar want to feast on the souls of the fallen, the Tau simply want to kick out all the human races to prevent allowing disorder into their pristine civilization, and so on. Everyone sets out to conquer and subdue the territories and newfound power, with minor ulterior motives.
You get one intro movie explaining that a Warp Storm appeared near four planets in the same system, which caught the attention of every race in the game.
I didn't think they really needed to sell it that hard because the series already has a respectable following. The game's packaging reads like a constant sales pitch, with bulleted lists of new features here and breakdowns of how many races you'll have if only you buy all the other content (also available in a Gold Edition now grab it!).
There's certainly more than enough game here to keep you busy until that comes along, but it doesn't feel quite as compelling or imaginative as Dark Crusade did. However, with the recent announcement that Dawn of War 2 has begun development, it makes a little more sense. It's just that it doesn't do a whole lot to push the series forward this time. Don't get me wrong it's still as good as it ever was. However, something intangible is missing from Soulstorm that I can't quite put my finger on, and might be the result of this multi-studio development process. It was co-developed on some level by both Relic and now-defunct Iron Lore, both respected developers in their own right. It was an excellent expansion pack that re-envisioned the rock-solid gameplay brought to us in the original Dawn of War, but much the way Winter Assault seemed more like filler compared to Dark Crusade, so does Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - Soulstorm while we wait for a proper sequel. Relic takes the idea of an expansion to a whole new and utterly worthwhile level." That's what I said when Dark Crusade came out. "Finally, a series I don't mind seeing show up again on store shelves every year.