Despite its turn based tactical action being centred on strong contenders for the most charmless offshoot of the Space Marines, Chaosgate manages to squeeze some real character out of its cast of pious paperweights. I’d long pictured the Grey Knights as squeaky clean choir boys on creatine-infused communion wafers, but these grizzled bastards look like they might try to sell you a knock off North Face jacket in a Wetherspoons beer garden. All the better for caring about their fates, honestly. 

With it’s cover shield icons and action economy, 2012’s XCOM revival is an evident baseline here, although your knights are far sturdier than that game’s average rookie. Still, a few missions was all it took to invest me in getting these giant idiots through each sortie alive. 

They’re also oddly perfect for this setup. Small, elite squads dispatched on dangerous but vital ops from your Inquisitor-commandeered flagship, the Baleful Edict. Psychic abilities and wargear you can spec each Knight into makes for a host of toys to play with right out of the tutorial. 

The Great Corruptor Nurgle, is your main antagonist here with mindless plague zombies filling the role of melee chaff, and cultists, marines, and eventually sorcerers and daemons filling out the roster. You too have access to more variety than might be immediately apparent, with armor classes, heavy weapons, and skills allowing for some tailored Knight builds.

Nurgle’s lesser minions fill their role well here as a tide of ripe spots, nasty to look at but satisfying to burst. The early missions give a false sense of security, but the game soon shows the potential to throw a dozen or more targets your way at once. It’s here the action economy really shines, elevating combat from a crouch-and-flank-fest to an involved balancing act of squeezing as much mileage as possible out of each action point. 

Your radar will tip you off to the general locations of an enemy squad in the fog of war. When you do reveal them, your Knights will replenish their actions, letting you react immediately. Those actions also replenish when combat ends. It adds up to a nice timesaver in a game that, at its worst, is susceptible to plodding missions. The inability to switch to another squad member before the previous command’s animations play out doesn’t help. 

You’ll want to keep your momentum up, anyway. To balance your mobility, Nurgle’s Bloom worsens each turn. When it hits 100, something irritating will happen. More armour for your foes. A plague for you. A gang of zombies. I’d have loved to see things go full BG3’s wild magic and get even weirder here - digital games offer the opportunity to bring back some of that lovely roleplaying weirdness from the Rogue Trader era we’ve sadly lost to time. Still, it helps keep missions dynamic and your nigh-invincible Knights on their toes. There are also plenty of environmental toys to play with, in case you decide you’d rather toss a manhole cover at a plague zombie than use your storm bolter. 

Between missions, you’ll return to your flagship, the Baleful Edict. Here, you can promote Knights, research and upgrade your ship, and talk to your crew. Scripted story events are well acted, and random dilemmas deliver snatches of worldbuilding while throwing more maluses into the mix. The game never necessarily makes you feel like you’re on the backfoot, but it does do a fine impression of a giggling chimp with a sack of spanners. Occasionally, it throws you a less intended curveball in the form of a soft crash or dialogue that refuses to progress, though thankfully it’s mainly smooth cruising. 

Despite the occasional slowness and smatterings of technical jank, Chaosgate is an excellent pick for console players who want all the depth of a typically PC-centric genre, with smart and intuitive gamepad controls and a snackable, mission based structure. It’s also equally just worth it for anyone who wants to hear a Nurgle Sorcerer bellow “Embrace the taint!” at you.

Developer: Complex Games
Publisher: Frontier Developments

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 6 (August '24)

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