Yeah, I'm about 5 or 6 missions in now, and I have to say it's fairly disappointing.
The removal of general cover completely alters the feel of the game.
The hard cover mechanic is horrible, IMO.
- It needs to be captured to be used, which takes some time.
- Units within the shield bubble that goes up once captured are invulnerable to ranged damage until it is destroyed. This takes a while.
- Melee units can enter the bubble and do normal damage once engaged.
Almost all units now have a special ability. This means to properly use all units requires a LOT of micromanagement. On the surface this sounds like it would require more micro-management skills than StarCraft 2. But that's not the case as in SC2 you have to micro abilities, unit placement, and unit movement (on an individual basis at times). Unit (units are squad based) movement in DOW is clunky. So you rarely micro squad movement to the degree that exists in SC2.
In previous DOW games the rather clunky squad based movement (you control the movement of the squad and not the individual units in the squad) is compensated by the existence of cover. But with no cover, combat becomes more clunky with imprecise squad movement combined with virtually every unit having an ability. This is then compounded by there being no key rebinding or anything in game to tell you what the hotkeys are. IE - I still don't know if there is a hotkey to switch which unit is "highlighted" within a control group to use the skills of that unit without deselecting the control group. This then makes trying to make effective use of squad abilities in combat very clunky.
All of this is further exacerbated by there not being comprehensive unit controls. In an effort to reduce some of the micromanagement, they've attempted to make the units operate more intelligently. In some ways this works. Attack moving will have units prioritizing targets they are most effective against, for example. However, on the flip side there is no "hold your ground" unit stance that prevents them from moving out of position. So they'll happily move out of position to engage something that is slightly out of range, but then move back to their original position after a relatively short distance (short lease range).
For casual players or players that don't want to micromanage this is something that might be good. As it prevents a unit from not retaliating against something that is just slightly out of range. But for experienced players this is easy to exploit and take advantage of by baiting a unit or two out of position to slaughter while the rest of the units just stand there. This can be especially infuriating if you are trying to position a squad of mobile units in front of a squad of relatively immobile units (units that require a short setup time before they can fire). Again this was something that wasn't a bad thing when there was general cover as units would stick to cover. So having this sort of fuzzy logic didn't hurt much in previous games. But without the cover mechanic, it falls apart.
In some ways it feels like they were trying to make DOW3 console friendly, but with no console version announced, it leaves me scratching my head about how this is a step backwards in so many ways from DOW 1 and 2.
As to whether the single player can save it? So far, the campaign is underwhelming. Maps are up to this point relatively small. AI on normal difficulty is pretty stupid. The story comes across as somewhat disjointed as every mission progression goes Human -> Orc -> Eldar, repeat. I can see how they are trying to keep the storyline cohesive as events are happening in a similar timeframe. But it feels disjointed as you go from the Human storyline to the Orc side of it, then the Eldar side of it. Meh, maybe it gets better further in.
For anyone interested in the Warhammer universe, I'd say hold off until it's on sale.
This is the first Relic RTS where I've felt a bit disappointed. It makes me wonder what is going on over at Relic and if things have changed drastically there under SEGA ownership.
Regards,
SB
