3/5 ★ – sirvalkyerie's review of Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War.

I've got an idea. What if you made a 4x game but with only 1 x? Welcome to Warhammer 40,000: Gladius where as always in the 41st (42nd now I guess) millennia there is only war. There's an interesting quirk here in the end. 40k is all about war, it's a wargaming tabletop miniature game and its setting is pretty much always gory violent bloody splatterfest. Space Marines tearing xenos in twain and tyranids gobbling up humans and giant pus-filled nurglings vomiting shit onto sexy masturbating Drukharis. Just is what it is. It's over the top and violent and crazy. So there's no room for diplomacy and turtling and science victories. Nope. You've got a 4x game that's hex-based with cities and buildings and wonders and strategic resources centered entirely around warfare. Pumping out unit after unit with buff after buff and bits of equipment designed to keep feeding the never ending war engine until you obliterate every other worthless xeno scum on the planet Gladius (or you're gross and you're playing *as* the xenos. Blech!) And you get something odd but not at all surprising. The most in depth and tactically engaging warfare in any 4x game I've ever played. Something that absolutely torches Civ. But there's nothing in the way of interest for the other Xs of the 4x genre. Sure there's some things on the map and interestingly procedurally generated terrains and topographies to make fights deeper. But this is just producing military units to fight wars. It's thematically fantastic. But gameplay wise it kinda doesn't deliver. This feels like a bad format for what's essentially a Total War style game. There just feels like better ways to make this. Something in the frame of Star Wars Empire at War could be better. But a game that materially functions a lot like Civ only to end up working like any other turn based war game. It's just square pegs and round holes. Does it work? Sure. Kind of. It's different, and it's interesting. But it is a bit like watching a great movie on your TV instead of in the theater. Sure it's still good but this just isn't the best venue. There's better ways to make a combat focused game like this. Total War, XCom, Starcraft. There's just other tried and true formulas for this sort of thing. I can appreciate the desire to do things different but at some point this feels like being different for the sake of being different.