Warhammer 40,000: Chronicles

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> In the grim darkness of worlds, there is only Chaos.
>
> Tagline

**Warhammer 40,000: Chronicles** is a science-fiction 2.5D fighting game developed by 50A Studios in-conjunction with Games Workshop, the franchise's progenitor. It is released on the 9th of December, 2019 and released for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A mobile tie-in game also exists with modified gameplay, similar to how the *Injustice* games received their mobile ports. The game is rated M for blood and gore, fantasy violence, language, suggestive themes, and use of drugs. It is the first game in 50A Studios' portfolio to utilize its own engine, the D4 Shatteray.

The game's story is an alternative interpretation to the events of Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade, set before the Destruction of Cadia but in an entirely new universe of its own. It features the aforementioned character as its main antagonist and features a wide array of stages, characters, and features that make homage to the wide universe that is *Warhammer 40K*.

## Synopsis

The galaxy is once again thrown into turmoil. The Warmaster of Chaos, Abaddon, has launched his latest and most destructive Black Crusade. The Imperium has long battered through the Ruinous Power's assaults, but only time will tell of what comes next in this bloody tale. As daemons and heretics encroach the Imperium from all sides, not only does the Emperor's Chosen must fight for their existence, but so does the whole galaxy.

## Gameplay

### Base

#### Combat

*Warhammer 40K: Chronicles* is a 2.5D game like most of its predecessors. It shares some familiar features such as special moves, super moves, throws, combos and combo breakers, enhanced moves, power meter (five bars), character traits, clashes, and stage interactions. Borrowing the Critical Strike feature from *Injustice: Evil Among Us*, now every successful clashes done will result in a mini-Super Move performed by the victor. The original Critical Strike makes no return due to its redundancy, however.

Every character has differing stats to one another, some having high vitality/hit points while others have low health but insanely high speed. Character traits are now also divided into active and passive ones. Not everyone possesses a passive trait, however, but that doesn't mean one character has an advantage over another.

Instead of being divided into Power and Gadget users, characters are now classified into **Types** that serve to indicate the player what manner of play-style suits them the most. These types are:

* **Brawler**: The most basic type which consists of characters who prefer to dish out punishment within melee range. Brawlers don't have many ranged options, but they hit hard at close range and some have exceptionally good movement or attack speed. Their health isn't the largest, but they make up for being more versatile than other melee oriented-classes.
* **Blaster**: The keep-away and zoning characters who are much more comfortable at range dealing death from afar before their enemies can reach them. Their health is on the lower end of the spectrum but their damage potential is insanely high as long as they're not in melee range. Every Blasters have varying speeds of attack, but they all are devastating.
* **Bruiser**: Bruisers beat back the enemy with overwhelming strength and high vitality, but as expected, they're mostly slow fighters who take the bulk of damage with their bodies. Some aren't as slow as one would expect, and some are surprisingly adept at breaking apart the enemy at range.
* **Generalist**: The balanced characters who are just as good in scrapping the enemy with their fists as devastating their health bar from a good distance away. Some Generalists may have their own unique features which ultimately differentiate them even from the standard 'balanced' archetype.
* **Assassins**: Fast attackers with the second greatest damage potential next to the Blasters, provided they're not rent apart the first time. They can quickly reach their targets within moments and put their health down to 0% without leaving them a chance to react.

#### Customization

Each character has their own customization options similar to how *Mortal Kombat 11* handles its character modification. By playing through the game and leveling up characters (this does not affect stats), players will gain newer appearances and objects to add more to their characters. Characters have their own pre-existing customization options specific to themselves. Players can alter their color schemes anytime they want in the customization screen without having to buy anything.

Speaking of buying, the game's shop itself has all the unlockable items available at the start, ready to be bought by the player. Players can grind their characters from level to level to receive their customization objects for free, or they can spend their **Credits** (gained from playing matches) buying them to skip the grind. The higher the level requirement for the object, the more expensive the item becomes. Luckily, Credits are the only form of currency in-game and they're easily gained in large sums. Players start the game with 40,000 Credits which they can choose to spend or save up for more items in the future.

Some customization options can be shared with other characters provided they are of the same type. There are also 'common' customization objects that can be applied to virtually everyone, but they have no distinct connection with the characters aside from being ordinary objects in the 40K universe. Aside from cosmetics, players can also purchase and get new intros and outros.

#### User Interface / Miscellaneous

From the menu screen, players are able to see magnificent artworks in the form of animations depicting the battles of characters from the setting. When they enter the character select screen, players will find the game's main roster displayed in a hall of heroes similar to the first *Marvel Ultimate Alliance* game, looking the way the player customized them the last time. DLC characters are displayed on their own pedestal, showing up as nothing but blank silhouettes before they're officially announced.

In-battle, all characters are capable of displaying their main introduction animations like in *Mortal Kombat 11*. When the player's character appears for the first time, the player's profile card will appear, proudly showing one's identity. The player's card consists of one's username, title, background card, most used character, and win-loss ratio. This player card shows up in all single player and multiplayer matches, but players have a choice to hide them.

### Game Modes

* **Tutorial**: The entry level for every new players of the game. This mode provides a quick overview and practice of the game's mechanics from the very basic. After completing the tutorial, players can either refine their skills in Training or jump straight to the major battles ahead.
* **Training**: A player chooses his character and opponent before going on to beat the latter up to increase his prowess in battle. If the player wishes to, he or she can undertake a training quest for a character to learn more advanced combos and combinations. Completing these training quests will unlock handsome rewards for the specified characters. The behavior of the bot can be set accordingly.
* **Campaign**: The game's story mode which is set in an alternate *Warhammer 40K* universe. Battle through the grim darkness of the far future against innumerable odds. Players play as an assortment of characters who each get to express their points of view of the ongoing events. From the Emperor's servants, the 'benevolent' T'au, to the undying Necrons, players are able to fight as at least one member of some of the major factions featured in *40K*.
* **Battle**: Your typical one-time, one-on-one match-up against bots with various difficulty settings. Choose your character and opponent and see how far your experience has taken you. It's not humiliating to get beat by a bot, but at least this mode gives the players a taste of the battles they will face when they get to multiplayer. The difficulty levels are as followed:
	+ **Imperial Guard**
	+ **Space Marine**
	+ **Imperial Knight**
	+ **Titan**
* **WAAAGH!**: The game's equivalent of an arcade mode where players go through a collection of ten enemies with harder difficulty as matches are won. Defeat the boss and receive the ending of the played character. Should certain requirements are met, players can face a hidden boss after beating the game's main antagonist. The boss will be playable once he has been defeated at least once *with an Ork*.
* **Salvation**: The game's endless survival mode which goes harder and harder as time moves on. Note that it's *time*, and not *waves* or *victories*. The longer the player takes his/her time in trying to defeat the enemy, the harder the AI enemy will be. While WAAAGH! and Battle have the same difficulty setting, Salvation's difficulty is fixed regardless and even the first match fought is rated **Space Marine**. It gets harder when the player lets the enemy alive for every ten seconds. There is no time limit to each match and if a player succeeds in lasting one-and-a-half hour in the mode, another secret character will be rewarded.
* **Black Library**: View character codices, concept arts, listen to theme songs, and track all your achievements and progress. You can also see the character endings you have unlocked. The Black Library encapsulates all that the player has received either from playing or from the store.
* **Forge World**: When the Black Library acts as, well, a library, the Forge World acts as a gigantic diorama. The Forge World details an exquisite piece of art in the form of a massive scene that encapsulates all of the main game's characters. When it is first visited, the diorama is filled with nothing but darkness. As the player plays through the game day by day, scoring achievements and progressing with their characters, players can see the Forge World slowly getting inhabited by the players' characters. When the player has collected all base game characters and unlocked every customization options, the Forge World diorama will be complete and available for the player's eyes to feast upon.
* **Crusade**: The regular Battle mode for Multiplayer. Fight against other players from different corners of the world to hoard more credits and put yourself higher in the world's leaderboard of players. Spectators can come in and enjoy the fights. Should the loser quits the match, a spectator can ask the winner if he/she can fight him/her.

## Characters

### Main Game

*Note: (\*) denotes secret characters.*

1. Ahzek Ahriman
2. Aun'shi
3. Cherubael
4. Commander Farsight
5. Darkstrider
6. Fabius Bile
7. Gabriel Angelos
8. Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter
9. Grimskull\*
10. Haarken Worldclaimer
11. Imotekh
12. Kaptin Bludflagg
13. Kardan Stronos
14. Kayvaan Shrike
15. Kor Phaeron
16. Kor'sarro Khan
17. Lelith Hesperax
18. Macha
19. Old Zogwort
20. Shas'O Kais
21. Skulltaker
22. Snikrot
23. Szeras
24. Titus
25. Vance Stubbs\*
26. Veridyan

#### Wave 1

1. Erasmus Tycho
2. Nemeroth
3. Nork Deddog
4. UR-025
5. Tychus Findlay^

## Stages

### Main Game

1. The Iron Cage
2. Armageddon
3. Ordinatus Gue'vesa'rio
4. Space Hulk
5. Daemonic Infestation
6. Runtherd Encampment
7. Mausoleum of Phaerons
8. Manufactorum Excelsior
9. Catachan Jungles
10. Paradise Reth
11. Taros
12. Labyrinth of Mars
13. Will of Eternity
14. Eye of Terror
15. The Black Library

## Reception

### Pre-Release

It's safe to say that not everyone expected 50A Studios to try their hand at the first *Warhammer* fighting game in history. The first trailer shown to the public at E3 2019 was an astonishing--if not polarizing--concept. The premise of seeing the unique and different characters of the tabletop franchise duke it out together is interesting, but the gigantic power gap between many of the setting's inhabitants makes it quite bewildering.

### Post-Release

*Chronicles* received mildly positive reviews upon release. Though some of the characters' moves are weak, it is praised for handling the characters and how beautifully rendered they and the stages are. Its soundtrack also garnered some praise for its accurate presentation to the setting which enticed many of its players. Its voice acting isn't sub-par, but it's not as strong as the likes of *Dawn of War*. The game's lack of micro-transactions or paid DLC, however, is considered perhaps the best feature in it. Players don't always enjoy the long grind, but the abundance of rewards and items always make it so that players will always return to play the game.

The game is criticized for its lack of gameplay innovations and convoluted story mode. Though the characters are handled well, they're not 100% accurate to their source material and some consider them of being downgraded and dumbed down from their complexities. Despite this, the sales figure of *Chronicles* and free DLC updates indicate that they're going far into the future, indeed.

## Trailers

Click here to see the trailers for this game.

## Trivia

* In the game's early stages, *Chronicles* was supposed to be a large crossover game between *40K*, *Age of Sigmar*, and *Fantasy Battles*. The game itself actually has data on Karl Franz and Balthasar Gelt as playable characters. This was soon changed into simply featuring *40K* due to the already-immense size of the grimdark universe.
	+ There was also an idea of a two-on-two mode where characters can perform unique intros and outros in certain combinations. They were also to be able to do special Super Moves together, similar to *Street Fighter X Tekken*. Due to the complexity of such, they're ultimately scrapped. The developers are rumored to be adding such features as post-launch content, however.