Reviews - Leeching

I would rate this higher, but i believe this is just the beginning of what we can do for this wonderful game! The infantry balance changes may need to be tweaked a bit, but overall this is exactly the mod I wanted, with all the features I wanted. I feel very spoiled indeed.

I try not to be overly dramatic with my reviews, and in the spirit of Dorn himself, I'll keep this short, practical, and punchy. This mod created by Team Thundermizer is a tour de force, utilizing truly unique faction mechanics that fit perfectly with the lore of the force they represent, everything from the art to the gameplay exudes a sense of purpose and high quality. You can really tell that this work represents a strong alliance of assets and cooperative people working across this modding scene to give us something we never really knew we needed. By the way, don't let the audio-work on voice acting, or Dawn of War's tendency to drown it out in other noises, or have units cut one anothers lines off. The Voice acting in this mod is some top notch stuff. Second only to the Castlevania impressions the Blood Angels mod pulls off, and my personal gold standard: the excellent Black Templars mod.

But, enough fluff. The Emperor's Fist loves construction, so why not some constructive criticism; after all, this isnt a 10/10. In no particular order:
-The whirlwind art asset bothers me somewhat, particularly its turret.
-The fists are probably a little too good, and you'll need some other equally beefy race like the Emperor's Children to really kill them once they get going.
-Paradoxically, one of their serious weaknesses is artillery, as the Fists lack much in the way of truly long range siege weaponry, preferring instead to utilize closer range options, which are not quite as reliable depending on the map and your foe.
-This goes with above statements about Fists becoming terrifying as the game goes on, but their capacity to field three 'super heavy' vehicles at once can easily bring enemies to their knees, and they are excellent at replacing casualties provided they have a secured base.
-Probably an engine issue, but the wall sections they can build have rudimentary destruction/damage art, and seem to lack shadows, which make them stick out next to gorgeous other defensive installations.
-The fist on the 'Fist of Dorn' barracks structure could probably use a better texture.

All that sounded quite nit-picky didn't it? It's because it was; this is a really fun modification to play, an absolute blast for both aggressive and defensive minded space marine players, and a flavor all its own. I applaud team Thudo, Kekoulis, and anyone else who made this possible.

Excellent graphics, tight frenetic and fun gameplay, and truly wonderful displays of power, violence, and glorious explosions are all waiting for you in this mod. Make sure to read all documentation as I ought to have, but if you do need help, the moderation team on the discord is professional, quick, and answered all questions providing prompt solutions to my issues. I would have deducted a point for the limited map pool, but thanks to support from the mod's team in discord, that is no longer a concern whatsoever. This is one of the best mods released for one of the best RTS games of all time, and if you are reading this and still aren't sure, allow me to reiterate: download this, play it, rate it, and track it. Can't wait for more.

The little mod that could!

In a day and age where we are blessed to have many space marine races on offer for Dawn of War Soulstorm, it can be hard to stand out and make an impact. I'm more than happy to say that the Thirteenth Company mod does so in spades- by daring to be different in the face of other mods with bigger teams, this one has a great charm and really achieves its goal of making you feel like the ultimate space wolf badass when you actually pull off a genuine win.

How does it play?
The 13th company is, lorewise, a small elite group of space wolves who have had to adapt to overcome. In this mod you'll be leading them to cheese your opponent into death. 'Cheese?' you might say- but cheese is indeed what this mod is built for, and its beautiful. The space wolves are an almighty glass cannon that exist purely for the purposes of griefing the enemy every chance they have, as soon and as often as possible.

You start the game with a stolen hijacked chaos gate and a techmarine. This techmarine is a highly effective early game combatant that should supplement your forces in the field, deploying alongside either the terminator or wolf lord, a choice you should make immediately; you're only allowed one, and which you pick determines how your late game looks. Pick the terminator lord for a conventional terminator/armor push late game. Pick the wolf lord for a sizable midgame melee advantage and the ability to give chaos a taste of its own posessed medicine.

Either way, your lord deploys early and is meant to beat up and kill enemy early game commanders/do as much melee fighting as possible.

Grey slayers are your tac-marine equivalents that boast basic anti infantry weaponry and are essentially a cheaper, better, tactical marine squad with fewer members. They can lay traps (more on these soon) and use frag, melta, and SMOKE grenades. I'm emphasizing smoke grenades, because due to them having these, good micro will mean you will win most honest ranged fire fights against your early game adversaries, maybe even against the tau if cover is on your side.

As the game rolls on you'll get stormclaws (terminators and assault marines), long-fangs (ELITE devastators) and wulfen/wolves depending on your lord choice. Wulfen are basically posessed- even down to having the same model barring a few tweaks, and wolves are unique in that they gain strength when grouped and mobbed, possibly useful for swarm races. In general however, early game grey marine and long fangs will determine whether you'll get to enjoy most of these other units.

Immediately as you begin the match, deploy a chapter barracks to get your troops out, pick a lord, then get your second builder. From here, you need to fight smart and fast. Deploy quickly with the intent on taking territory and killing enemy troops. Once your done building 1 or 2 barracks, send the builders forward with the first wave. The builder's job is to lay mines when resources allow to annoy the enemy and soften them up, while also providing fire support to combat units. Ideally, you'll have a lord deployed early to counter enemy commanders and earl game melee specialists. If properly done, you'll have properly bullied the enemy into a submissive stance, allowing you to cap the field and occasionally deal with enemy task forces as you build up. Bear in mind, that your economy runs off of base structures, specifically barracks, HQ's, and armories- which is GREAT for you, as you needn't worry about map control at all save for denying it to the enemy.

Teching up will allow you to deal with enemy threats as he attempts to tech-race to stop you. Because of how straight forward you are, there are plenty of opportunities to grief and raid the enemy as you lay endless stretches of barbed wire and mines around the battlefield, perhaps even including a forward barracks. At any time, you can reinforce your units by using your chaos gate HQ to deep strike almost any aquad wherever you can see.

Naturally, if you lose this map control dance, if the enemy catches you unawares, gains the initiative, or kills your army, theres a very good chance you'll immediately lose. The 13th company is an all-in all or nothing faction, though late game research can make actually finding all your bases exceedingly annoying, as they'll be able to be stealthed by tier 2/3. Did I mention you can more or less build your stuff wherever you want? Because you can.

This is a mod designed to reward micro, cheese, rushes and aggression. It's bloody fun to play, and a difficult faction to master. Sadly, its a little light on units, and graphically its slightly inferior to some other mod releases- but given that this is release one, patches can smooth this over a great deal.

If you are a space wolf fan, play this mod. If you want to play a weird and different kind of space marine faction, play this mod. If you just want something different, play this mod.

Rating likely to rise with updates and new content.

The perfect example of a mod that falls short of its inherent potential, New Horizons is an admirable and ambitious project to believably expand every RA2:YR faction, making the experience of play deeper and more interesting as each side deploys dozens and dozens of new troops.

But you've no doubt seen the rating, so why so low?

The mod's unpolished, in so many words. The installation is clunky as the files are distributed uncompressed and wild, permanently marking up an entire install folder of RA2- meaning its best to copy the entire game folder to play. Running the mod is awkward as it required some RA know-how to ensure it ran on my system, but the mod did have some documentation to this. It lacks the slick CNC-net derived menu ui of other mods for the original, classic menu, in its low res, somewhat slow glory.

Graphically, while there are hundreds of new units, most range from mediocre voxel or shp work (often sourced from places like YR:Argentina, or PPM)to outright ugly- as with the BMD units, and the Abrams and Bradley. There is some quality unit graphics on display, but little is clean or consistent of any kind of style or unified theme. Some Allied units sport dark yuri-esque camo greens while others rock classic allied baby blue and an unfortunate few are in ghastly shades of tan. Much the same is true for the soviets. In testing, some units seemed to outright not fire their weapons correctly, showing incorrect firing frames for (some) infantry, audio glitches for certain units weapon sounds, and a over-use of the IFV's missile graphic for projectiles.

Gameplay wise, there is something worthwhile here, buried beneath the awkward presentation. Having so many units is inherently enjoyable, and theres a lot more strategy in what you can pull off as a commander now. Any sort of airborne ability in this mod is borderline insane and completely overpowered. Some units have clever multiple weapon systems and perform extremely well. Others feel like vestigial remains of the original faction tacked on, or are outright useless, like most of the radar vehicles present in the mod. Special mention goes to the effort done to spice up buildings and defending in general, some of the new options reminded me of making for fun 'sim city' bases back in the day. More fun buildings like that would be welcome. As a personal note, the infantry selection for the allies felt ham-fistedly tied to chrono technology, resulting in redundant-feeling units like the chrono GI or the deployable chrono 'blocker'. By comparison, the soviets had some pretty cool infantry options.

All this sounds pretty grim, so why isnt the score lower? Well, the mod functions and runs as advertised, though it suffers from some classic RA quirks. Its also so off the wall nuts that it has an endearing quality to it. A huge positive is that the author went to the trouble of ensuring the original campaign of both yuris revenge and the original game are in the mod and playable- which is a real treat and absolutely a selling point of the mod.

This score could improve SUBSTANTIALLY if the following things are addressed:
-Unit voxel graphics, especially of certain god-awful allied units like the apache, bradley, abrams, prism-soldier, and soviet units like the depleted uranium tank, BMD, halftrack, etc.
-Polished weapon projectiles, sounds, etc.
-Slight balance patch to address outstanding OP units and abilities; the paradrops for instance, or certain tesla units
-Unified faction aesthetics for the big three factions, so that at a glance a player can tell what faction a unit belongs to.
-Further expand on what makes the mod special, and add even more unit variety.

I hope this review does not discourage the author or other players. It's still worth checking out, especially if your a soviet player like myself. Allied players, I sympathize with half your core units looking terrible; I'll crush them with an armada of T72's and Armata tanks quickly, to wash away the shame of such an ugly force!

Final War has a lot of polish and promise! It's being actively developed by a (i think?) one person team, who seems well aware of their limitations and has created a great stepping stone into more updates. I ask anyone reading this to bear in mind the date in which it was written. FW's development cycle is quick and exciting,and as a result much of what is written here is subject to change.

First, on story: There is one! And it seems interesting. Based off of RA lore, with a mind toward RA1 especially, this game is a sort of re-imagining of RA 2 if the timeline did not involve a sudden soviet resurrection, but a long term buildup and rise to power by a group of post-soviet oligarchs looking to build a new totalitarian super-state over the ashes of the soviet republics. This state, the Eastern Empire, is the soviet representative, while the Allies have confederated together in Europe, with America only loosely affiliated with the goings on of the world. Think RA2 at a sort of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare tech level. Yuri exists, or existed, and his followers remain in the shadows after his schemes were thwarted off camera as the 'remnant legion' - which is Yuri but without the mind control and an emphasis on pyrotechnics and toxins. Overall, the concept is different enough to give the factions a fun flavor, and allows a lot of creative license to try new things, which I hope the author pursues. We don't have campaign missions quite yet, but SP 'challenge' missions exist, so for now you'll kind of have to narrate your own tales in the world via challenge or skirmish games. Will the Eastern Empire become a world superpower, taking vengeance on the allies? Will Europe again smash eastern aggression? Will the Remnant Legion build the utopia/dystopia their leader wished? You can decide for yourself! [Its also very, VERY easy to assume this game happens a decade or two after the allied campaign of Yuri's Revenge, so you can play this mod that way too]

Second, the factions: Currently FW is unique among mods in that you choose one of three primary factions, then choose subfactions ingame from the defense menu. There are exclusive and non exclusive subfactions which will be define below:

Remnant Legion has no subfaction.
The Allies have ATOMOS, a research/tech oriented faction based around teleportation and hover tech
-The Crusaders, currently the arguably strongest airborne faction with some straight forward ground units to support.

The empire has:
-The People's Militia, a vehicle and mobility based subfaction entirely based around use of mechanized infantry via their 'combat crawlers' which combined with their other vehicles become a dangerous threat.
-Okhrana, which is a 'experimental' tech faction with solid heavy armor options and an exceptionally good helicopter that can dominate the land, sea, and air.

Finally, all factions can elect to choose one of two generic subfactions, the American corporate Acheron-Tech, or Mercenary Warlords subfactions, both of which offer a variety of fun strategies to mix and match wit existing factions. This will be improved in an upcoming release that will expand the sub-factions into full faction lists, allowing ATOMOS to have Acheron access, etc.

Gameplay: Finalwar's gameplay style is similar to RA2's, but it does enough to differentiate itself that its endearing and a little less derivative than other mods. Aside from cool new units and sides, the gameplay offers several substantial improvements over the base RA 2 experience: secondary economy is implemented for all factions via refinery upgrades, allowing slower more defensive play styles if those are desired, while still rewarding map control and aggression. Players are encouraged to build secondary bases and fortresses by using expansion vehicles ala cnc3 and RA3, and a strong focus on 'VTOL' style air units that hover in the air and do not need to land makes aerial combat and play much more fun and immediately engaging, fully realizing that spectrum of combat. Its quite possible to run full aerial army builds with any faction, and is fun to play to boot. These are the main points that won this mod's high score!

Final words: Final war is a mod that could use some diversity in its army lists. Additional sub-factions, unit variation, new units in general, and story elements will help this mod grow and prosper, but for those not interested in waiting, the mod -today- stands on its own as a breakaway hit for the RA2 modding scene, and a great choice for new and old players alike. Be sure to thank the author and rate this mod yourselves, we can reward active dev's like him. In a scene with the likes of red resurrection and mental omega, its heartwarming to see new works of love break the mold, try something different, and survive. If you are dying waiting for Allies Revenge- look no more, Finalwar is not simply the next best thing its- dare I say it- even better.