In its ever-shifting madness, the Warp threatens to consume everything. The expanding influence of the Chaos Gods is only countered by tremendous effort and sacrifice on the part of not only the Imperium but other factions as well. Yet, what if we did the bidding of the Great Enemy for once? That’s precisely what the Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Chaos Campaign Expansion sets off to explore.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Chaos Campaign Expansion follows a similar structure to the other campaigns from the base game. A fairly sedate intro –by Warhammer 40,000 standards– eases you into controlling the faction’s lighter ships after which you’re unleashed onto a steadily increasing number of sectors on the star map. You can, essentially, choose your own path to conquest; however, the urgency meter constantly pushes you on, raising other factions’ threat if you linger too much away from the main objectives.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Chaos Campaign Expansion’s main missions offer some outright awe-inspiring moments, filled with Warhammer 40,000 awesomeness and grandeur, like stealing a Space Marine Grand Cruiser close to the start of the campaign. Simultaneously, it’s also host to a number of rather annoying developments like surprise fleets crashing the party you almost thought finished.

In between main missions you’ll occupy most of your time with regular battles and Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Chaos Campaign Expansion’s planet management. The management framework remains the same, for the most part, providing a lighter take on controlling an “empire”. However, the Chaos Campaign does add a number of things that give it some specific flavor. Corruption replaces Renown as the main resource, although it behaves identically. Chaos Gifts can be earned by completing specific objectives or offering freshly conquered planets to a Chaos God of your choosing. Offering a planet gives you a certain amount of Chaos Gifts to use while increasing upgrade costs by 50%.

Chaos Gifts are used to recruit marked fleets, which are slightly more special fleets belonging to dedicated legions like the World Eaters or Thousand Sons that also come with unique abilities, but they also let you manipulate the campaign map in some rather cool ways. There’s one power for each Chaos God. Khorne’s Anger pushes enemy fleets to launch an attack on a linked system, while Nurgle’s Rot decimates enemy fleets tearing down a portion of their Hull Points. Using Slaneesh’s Lies demoralizes opponents, making them flee to an allied system, while Tzeentch’s Shifting gives you the opportunity of generating invasions towards a system of your choosing.

Even if Chaos Gifts don’t vastly change the way in which the Chaos Campaign Expansion plays, they add a welcome amount of flavor that’s appropriate for the faction. Having all four Chaos Gods present, rather than just Khorne and Nurgle, is also fairly cool, especially given how you play a member of the Word Bearers. Sending an invasion to weaken a distant fleet before I arrived in its system or calling down Nurgle’s Rot and making a strong enemy fleet lose its sheer advantage over mine all felt fairly satisfying if a tiny bit hands-off.

The Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Chaos Campaign Expansion also nails the tone of both voice acting and writing, crafting a story about epic conquest and despoliation, and which falls nicely into the mold expected of a Warhammer 40,000 narrative. While not particularly deep, each dialogue exchange makes you realize that you’re indeed working alongside some fairly unsavory types whose unorthodox definition of fun and games has more to do with slaughter and ruin.

On the flipside, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Chaos Campaign Expansion is anything but adventurous. While the faction boasts a roster that’s among the most fleshed out, jumping into the campaign felt a little too familiar. As gorgeous as battles look and as satisfying as commanding a fleet of massive spaceships is, the strings of fights in between main objectives did remind me of the rather grindy nature of the main game’s campaigns.

And yet, that’s about the only thing I can fault Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 - Chaos Campaign Expansion for. It’s as straightforward as expansions get, offering exactly what it says on the tin. You take the campaign framework of the main game, slap the Chaos ship roster, a few new campaign map mechanics, some expectedly ominous dialogue and you’re good to go. It has its great moments; it has its frustrating ones. And even if it won’t exactly blow minds, on the whole, bringing system after system to its knees and sacrificing it to the Tzeentch & co. offers a good degree of satisfaction, provided you’re still invested in the base game.

Bogdan Robert, NoobFeed
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