Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000

A kind of Panzer General on a squad-like scale, Final Liberation has been a lost gem of Warhammer 40k universe. Although the visuals might seem outdated and lacking the charm typical for other SSI titles, the gameplay and genuine atmosphere of planetary conflict are well worth of your time. Reminiscent of a tabletop game, you are participating in turn-based onslaught between infantry, tank, artillery and gigantic robot units, taking advantage of the generated cover and terrain. Leading your Space Marines in ferocious battle against green Ork tide, you follow the storyline through FMV clips between missions, most of them looking as absurd as those from Command and Conquer franchise. The story is forgetful, but somehow manages to stay in your memory long after you finish the game. Probably because of the aforementioned clips. If you are a senior gamer, chances are you will gladly revisit this title, and once again purge the Imperial soil from green monsters. If being of younger age, you should know that this game is a distinctive part of gaming culture's collective memory, especially to those in love with strategy and WH40k universe. The only drawback, besides story, is lack of more races. But that aside, you are still in for hours of WAAAGH-waging combat.

Final Liberation is pretty faithful adaptation of Epic 40,000, and unfortunately this gives it most of its bad points as well as good. On the good, it gets both the scale and feel of 40K in a way few, if any, other games have managed. This is not your standard 40K skirmish with a few supermen fighting aliens, you're the lowly Imperial Guard throwing whole regiments at the Orkish hordes, supported by artillery, tanks, airstrikes, and the only time titans have really been seen in a video game. Epic is a setting that's been neglected by GW on tabletop, and has had even less love on computers, so this is one of the few chances you'll have to see it. The down side is that such a faithful adherence to the tabletop game very clearly shows why tabletop is played almost entirely in single battles between friends and not in long linear campaigns. The problem comes down to randomness - in an isolated battle, getting some lucky or unlucky rolls might win or lose the game, but then it's done and you can laugh about it after. In a campaign with persistent units and very limited resources, a single unlucky roll can leave you utterly screwed for the rest of the campaign even if you win the battle. This is especailly true early on, when the cheapest units cost 3 or 4 turns worth of resources, leaving you crippled if you lose even a single one. It's a nice idea, but in practice it just gets extremely frustrating. Of course, this all applies to the single player campaign. If you're more interested in multiplayer - which includes hotseat play at the same PC - this won't be an issue. Skirmish against AI is also an option, but will have limited replay value. As for the rest, gameplay is fairly standard turn-based strategy. Graphics are seriously dated, but they do the job and this isn't a genre where it's important. Interface shows its age, but isn't too hard to get the hang of. Music and cinematics are simply awesome.

Final Liberation is a unique yet specific game that some people will find boring and mundane as it's a turn based strategy game where the tactical maps are hex based. There's no customization of squads as people are used to from Relic games, as all you get is tons of different units which can be mixed into various regiments. And who are you in this game? A Commissar of the Empire of man fighting to regain a planet from the hands of orks that took over it. If you ever played the tabletop figurine game, you'll feel at home here. The game is dark, you always have that feeling that you are indeed struggling and are the last hope of mankind on this world, and you get to deploy and play with Titans - I mean, who doesn't want to command a giant robot to charge on a squad of orks, right? For me, the best game in the W40k universe - a must have for all who call themselves Warhammer 40k fans, especially for the price asked. I mean, don't buy soap this month and get this instead! 10/10, recommend it with both thumbs up.

If you like Warhammer 40.000, you will LOVE this game. A magnificient tactical game based on the 40k universe and very replayable. In the campaign you can choose which regions to attack, different regions have different resources, so a early bad choice would compromise your entire campaign. The armys are amazing, both Imperial and Orks are quite well represented, with units from "common" Space Marines to Leviathans, land speeders, rhinos, predators... you can build your armies like in the table game, taking care how to use the points available for different scenarios. In some battles you'll need a quite strong tank battleforce, in others many quick units, taking a well compensed army not always means victory.. I have to say this game has a very good learning curve, the beginnings are easy, but later on there are very HARD and challeging battles and you'll cry for your units. Graphics are quite nice nowadays, the 2D perspective and animations still so enjoyable 20 years later after release. With some fancy FMVs and good sound effects. The OST is awesome!!! Codex is quite good as well. I had few problems to run the game on Windows 10 64 bits even in a virtual machine with Windows Xp 32 bits. Fortunately the support here on gog is good and tried few solutions until was completely stable. (Had to disable FMV intros renaming them).