Warhammer 40k: Lost Crusade is Heresy 

"I love everything about Warhammer. Except for Games Workshop." Hits deep, brother.

"The Codex Astartes should be the book you get your missions from." As a Black Templars player I started slamming my desk and screaming because of the implication that I should read the Codex Astartes.

"You are only distracting me with numbers and sparkles!! I'm not an ork!" As an ork myself I feel offended good sir. I only get distracted by loot and dakka.

You’re lucky you only played for a day. I got past all of this. Two weeks in, I’m guild master, highest level in my guild, slowly building a fun and caring community… annnd one ship, one enemy force, wipes out not just me, but everyone in my guild. The entire community collapses and I’m left with about three players without enough resources to rebuild. I filed a complaint with the staff on google play, and their response… and I quote… “This is not a design flaw, but a FEATURE to promote competitive gameplay”. Any game that actively promotes picking on weaker factions for resources which, by the way, are infinitely less than what you need to upgrade at that point, is absolute trash. The entire experience left me with hate. I f%#@ing hate this game.

"Design the problem, sell the solution." The philosophy for all mobile F2P games and it's disgusting.

"... as telling an Eldar player they'll be getting new models any day now" - ok, that more than anything showed me that you're a true 40k fan.

40k fans: "The Codex Astartes does not support making crappy mobile games." Games Workshop: "WELL I CAN'T READ!!"

The fact that it is more expensive to assemble a decent army in this mobile game than when you buy actual models from GW has me in shock. On some level that feels like it should be impossible

"About as accurate as telling an Eldar player they'll get new models any day now." I cannot express how happy I am that this joke aged like milk.

“The Codex Astartes does not support this” has never rung more true. GW easily could have made a killing simply by making an Imperial Knights version of Steel Battalion or BattleTech.

If you could've been a Necron, would you have been Josh Strife Flays?

I don't know what are these "Three Kingdoms" gameplay genre called, but all of iterations where "army slowly march to enemy in a base building game" and the player doesn't even see the battles... are all : Time and Money Sink Overwhelmingly Complex Time Boost Rampant and worst of all Duplicate Gambling-gated Fan Service/Horny Content If you wondering why it designed like this, I'll give you a story. I played an anime version of this time gated game which has the initial of a capital Z and filled with girls. Same mechanics, probably more slutty. This game generated the most money when the Koreans, Chinese, and the EN Whales attack over misunderstandings. When they attack each other, everyone spammed Soldier Time Boosts and Healing Time Boosts. In 3 Guilds involved, estimated 10 players cumulatively burned 30000 USD in a single night. I lost sleep as I was involved in the guild and quitted the game right away. Before I quit, I just see how dragged out the game becomes, and how pointless the game becomes. You just see animations moving from point A to B and everyone involved have to see through HOURS of boredom to make sure their number don't go down. The first guy who fallen asleep lost their entire army because the other guy spams time skips Premium Currency. It was just a single night, full of people spamming time skippers. The game has been live for 3 months, and it has multiple dozens of servers. I imagine this kind of All Out War happens daily somewhere within their other 30ish servers. The rankings and time skips are so predatory but it works because these people are horny and childish. They know nothing about the value of money, all they knew is the numbers on the screen and the Waifu/Fan Service they see. After I quit, I did some research on Idle Games and somewhere along the "Three Kingdoms" type of infinite Number Racing Game in a system known as "Battle Rating" in League of Angels. The conclusion is alarming. They essentialy copy pasted the same Code and UI for at least dozens of games by multiple developers. The shop is the same, the prices are the same, the gacha using this inhumanely predatory "Duplicates Fragments" system, VIP System, and the system always needs to make you wait to sell time skips. These game makes estimated average 30000 USD per day, and that money is spent on essentially nothing of value as the next people will delete your character by numbers alone. It has low development cost and might as well underpaid the developers so badly as they just delivers the same game with SAME KEYWORDS EVEN (keywords : Levy, Escorts, Sultan, Goddess, League, Throne, Kingdom, Waifu, Girls, Anime, Fan Service, Redeem, VIP, Recharge, and many more). Don't get me started on the stolen assets Advertisements as this rabbit hole involves blackmailing other company and threatening them with politics should they deny "business deals". These are not games. Nothing of these speaks games. But they are in Play Store. Stay away from these nowhere pitiful excuse of "games". These are the Dystopian Sink.

My experience was thoroughly enjoying this game for about two weeks, getting into a decent clan and building up my base/army pretty quickly. I had gotten ~3 champs to level 70+, had 4 fleet queues, 3 build queues, could take down level 22+ anomalies and participate in events with my peers. Then all of a sudden I wake up one morning with my power rating dropping from I think ~10 million to about 2 million (As much as my base was worth) as I was attacked by someone with 3 level 100 (maxed) legendary champions and the battle reports basically showed how I lost 90% of my forces and the attacker lost '0'. Literally 0 losses from the attacker. The game provides a system of getting your lost forces back over the course of a few days then this attack was repeated by another player with a similar setup, 3 level 100 legendary champions. Your left in a state of being punched down by players whom paid for the most valued champions/shards and you can't keep up with farming your typical anomalies and resources as you're effectively being reset every few days. I quit after being farmed for 6 more days realizing I didn't have a chance to sustain my base and my clan all felt the same. Everyone got bashed, we couldn't protect ourselves and we just didn't understand how to compete. I'm hoping I had missed a big detail but gave up as so many folks in my clan openly quit and I didn't feel like moving. I dislike most Games Workshop video games, the developers whom acquired the titles are just terrible at making lasting games.

"It gets good once you are a week in" not it becomes grindy as fuck and you get constantly raided by whales with no chance to defend against someone 27 times your powerlevel. The alliance system (guild/clan what ever you want to call it) reduces the grind a tiny bit, but not enough to make this game worth it. STAY CLEAR and hope the Inquisition dispatches this filth in the near future.

"it is not worst mobile game I played" Anything now is not worst You played isekai demon waifu

How to design a modern mobile game: ask the people to pay for the "privilege" of paying more. So kind, those robb-- I mean, developers.

For those who never been a gamesworkshop store before, everything he says is absolutely true. And then when they sniff an entry level hobbyist they convince you to buy useless crap by telling you you absolutely need them to enjoy the hobby.

"The Codex Astartes does not support this decision(action)" That's too damn good, Josh is a true man of many cultures.

The thing that baffles me most is that there's millions and millions of players who DO engage in these types of games. Like... I know they're designed to be exploitative, but that's not a secret. It's kind of a common knowledge by this point yet ppl still fall for them time and time again. Hell.. the revenue for mobile part of the market is off the charts.

Now I'm not suggesting that you should illegitimately 3D SLA print your own models to no longer feed the corporate horror that is GW, just saying that totally unrelated SpaceMace 50000 models are also looking quite neat.

Oh man, I played this game for about 3-4 months, the first month being completely sucked into it (and purchasing the $5 second build queue BS,) and then eventually treating it like a daily 20 minute chore until the end where I realized I didn't log in for a week and didn't care. What kept me going that long was the Alliance that I randomly joined, which just happened to be the second strongest on our new-ish server. That was the best aspect of this game, honestly. But, these types of games are made exactly the same as they have been for over a decade and the whales pretty much blew all competition out of the water, bullying the smaller Alliances, and basically dominating the sector. My Alliance held out, offering what miniscule competition we could. Then there came a point about 3 months in where it seemed like an all out war was about to break loose. A shadow council of abused Alliances versus the oppressor. Our leader messaged us early one the morning telling us to prepare for imminent war. That was the first bit of excitement I felt in this game, queuing up hundreds of troops, stocking up on combat items, researching all the military tech. And then the time came. And nothing. Apparently, the top brass of the different Alliances in play got together, forged an agreement, and now my Alliance was basically the top dogs' lap dog. They forced a Discord merger so they could keep tabs on us. They sent one of their members to join our Alliance so they had an eye on us. And our leaders just went along with it to "preserve the peace in the sector." So disappointing, which is exactly how I would label this game. All that time and effort and it all just turned into a sad old neckbeard's recreation of high school lunchroom politics.

I wish GW would stop letting people make junk like this with the 40k name, but then it is Game Workshop...

These games are literally designed using psychological science to get you to spend money and not much else.

23:29 Also note that even though you no longer have enough crystals to buy that particular upgrade, the button in the pop-up window isn't greyed out - I assume because clicking on it will automatically direct you to the shop to buy more.

The sheer amount of shade (both subtle and overt) being thrown in this video had me grinning ear to ear the whole time. Well done.

This is why I love this channel, Josh is objective and thoughtful so his criticism always has weight. He is the type of person who when he speaks about games, I listen.

I'm watching this one after the lord of the rings one and it's unbelievable how similar the UI looks right out the gate

This is what I call the Evony model, so many games are like this bit with a twist.

This video is why I subscribed to you. I want to see more from you over mobile games. F2p games for a long time were an addiction to me. I made my way out and it's no longer an issue for me. I would love to see more on the mobile genre because as predatory normal release games can be mobile games take the cake

7:22 this is a really good point, as this allows for a lot of creative freedom both officially and homebrew. The specified times for events allows players to choose specific themes and events for their stories, but the lull in time between these events allows for literally anything to happen so long as it’s something that doesn’t affect the entire Galaxy (such as in the case of TTRPG games in the settings having players twart like a demon prince being born or insurgence of a traitor Primarch)

The instant upgrades at the start are because your vip level gives you a certain amount of time where you can speed up upgrades for free. At the start if there's 5 minutes left then you can finish the build.

The emperor protects! Also love how the battle barg swings up and down, because there is clearly tides and waves in the void of... oh goddammit!

Calling a cash-milk interface a game is an heresy in itself! *flamer starts hissing*

Wait - 9:53 - 300 cristals is 0.89, which would make 100×0.89=89.00 for 30000, but the package for 30000 is actually 89.99 or _a pound more._ But, you see, I do not own a smartphone, I do not know about the inner workings of this world. I _did_ watch the South Park episode on mobile games, though.

The proper lost crusade experience would be manually browsing through a word-heavy codex and trying to apply the advice with your limited resources without the game telling you what is "right" or "wrong"

"With so many upgrade systems even the adeptus mechanicus would call this excessive"

I had the second most powerful clan on the game in our server, and i made it while being free to play, managing with diplomacy and the outstanding effort of the team, it took 3 whales and one lie from the 4th clan to fuck up everything, and the 1st clan to destroy the competition conveniently ignored the rules we all agreed on "server wide" the survivors merged with the 3rd best clan and we waged a mass crusade against the server that felt like the Horus heresy all over again crippling everything and letting it rot... The MFs paid their way out of the grave and restored most of the clans... And basically putting baby clans that are all allied with each other... So the server is a vegetable in a coma

The bit that broke me when I tried the game out was when I spent all that time building my army up then the pvp protection 'potion' wore off and I logged back in one day and to my surprise my whole base was utterly devastated. Oh well *uninstalled*

The fact that I got an ad for this while watching the video was icing.

You sir get a like just for the line "I love everything about Warhammer, EXCEPT Games Workshop." Truer words have never been spoken.

I always cry over Game Workshop's handling of Intellectual Property. While the 'carve it up and shot-gun it out' approach has some benefits, those are quickly lost if one does it over and over and over and over again. Game Workshop long past the point of too much a few years ago, in my opinion, and it has failed to capitalize on the successes that could have carried the company into the digital world. All of us here can picture at least one 'done right' computer series that quickly came to a sudden end because Game Workshop had no intention of follow through. But what do you expect when they constantly hide behind the defense of 'we just make models?'

There was a pay to win guy on the server I was in that was at least 20 battle barge levels higher than the entire server and my alliance (3 separate alliances) could do nothing but watch him destroy whoever he wanted

The more rewards they give you at the start The bigger paywall at the end

Probably the biggest paywall I ever ran into was the time I tried Marvel Strike Force. At one point I needed to take on about five waves of enemies for a level, but not even my best heroes with the highest possible level gear could handle even three before being wiped. I tried for almost a week of casual, no real world purchases play and couldn't do it. No grind could help, so I gave up and tried Future Fight instead. A much better experience if I say so myself. Not something I would consider spending money on, but still actually kinda fun. Even still, Strike Force is the worst example of a paywall I've seen in a mobile game myself. At least in what should be a high quality mobile game.

Love the fact that I’ve been binging your other channel and had no idea you had this one then I find out the man’s a wh40k fan! Your a legend sir! For the Emperor!

Can you believe 2:11 didn't age well, new Eldar models incoming, I'm still surprised by this.

I would love to see someone sue the ever living shit out of some of these manipulative mobile cash shop games and win the court case so soundly that other prominent mobile games tremble in fear.

"I personally like your channel a lot and hope you use bluestacks again, when you play a mobile Game again. It is not as bad as the game you might play with it" Even Bluestacks knows.

There seems to be a wave of games with the same mechanics, but different skins. I played a game about ants with the same components

11.10 I played the game for a few weeks this genuinely is spot on, I had to move location so many times that I eventually gave up as did my chapter (guild) we had made

I actually wanted to play it. I had no choice at that time, only Ultramarines. Then it turned out you have to use Primaris instead of True Marines. Needless to say, didn't keep it even for meme

....I'm so glad I discovered Josh after the loss of Totalbiscuit.....a void mostly filled.....

19:00 Those are rookie numbers. In Raid Shadow Legends if you want a full collection it literally costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Even before you get into the endless Cash Shop items, the core gameplay/story doesn't make any sense: The Ultra-Smurfs are on crusade (despite having an entire galactic sector to manage), the Ultra-Smurfs losing horribly to Failbaddon the Harmless (despite the Ultra-Smurfs being the chapter that Games Workshop routinely claims to be far more competent/OP than they should be), a ship lost in the warp doesn't have to maintain any Geller Fields or constantly fight off any demonic hordes, the Ultra-Smurfs are able to controllably Space-Hulk their fleet into massive carriers with huge amounts of dead weight (despite the Imperium being 10 millenia behind with their technological expertise/training), Black Templars being nowhere near any Crusading Fleet, and, worst of all, Primaris Marines being listed as an unavoidable """upgrade""" (rather than systematically genocided like the heretical abominations they truly are).

Been playing this game since it started, it's not very good but depending on what server you get put in, your experience can be very pleasant! The top clan gets to govern some things and grant certain buffs to people, as well as having the Grand Protector, basically the topdog who actively smites people who grief, ie attacking lower leveled players It's pretty neat, but it's honestly a 4/10 in the end still lol

Games Workshop - leading the way with micro-transactions and pay to win strategies since the 1980s.

20:20 "within only 5 hours, it's given me more systems than Cadia have guardsmen." lmao

At one point they had a poll on wether or not we wanted to paint our heroes

Just play the 40K overhaul for Grim Dawn better experience

I briefly played this game. It feels like two different teams worked on it, the team that made the game, and then a separate team that came in and monetised the game.

Speaking of crystal pack prices, do also note that *the smallest pack is the best value* (ignoring the first buy bonuses). That's *weird*.

Considering the amount of bad press they get, I'm genuinely surprised GW would want their name and IP attached to this kind of falsely advertised filth. It sometimes seem that the people who love 40k the most are Games-Workshop themselves.

hey did you ever get around to doing the "was it any good" for Dawn of War? also wanted to say that I love your content, you take an extremely professional approach to your work and it is a genuinely refreshing take. most RU-vidrs (and this is not intended to be disrespectful in any way) take the comedic route and tend to play games or give reviews based off of jokes and memes or they will harp on at a game or a publisher over tiny gameplay elements, however, your videos are unfailingly professional and I wanted to say that I wholeheartedly appreciate it. keep up the great work friend :)

That intro, a sister of battle taking on a Chaos marine? Yeah-nah. Total heresy.

16:00 Is that a ring of Tardis-es around that aquila cannon emplancement ? So lore acurate...

I agree. As the one who actually played this, it is indeed a epitome of techno-heresy, a result of Tzeenchian work

First thing to do is build a barracks "But sir the rest of the ship is on fire"

New eldar models Josh, ANY DAY IS NOW

At first I subbed because i liked your videos about Asmongold. Now I'm watching because I too am very very disappointed with GW. Hey, at least they gave us Cadians a new sprue for our infrantry teams. Hurray and so on, and so forth.

It upsets me that such good art pieces were used on this game. The character dialogue avatars are great too.

What's funny is that this video came out before the crystal debt thing. It's the game store accidentally released a pay pack for like £40 for 1.5M crystals (100 times what the thing was meant to be). And then put everyone who brought it into crystal debt several days after, and dozens of whales have refunded their game, dozens of thousands gone from that fuck up.

Blizzard: Do you guys not have phones? GW: Do you guys not have wallets?

hay josh i kinda wanna recomand a game for the worse mmo ever serise called 4story (its owend by gameforge btw)

The white scars need to have a speed increase mechanic. their primarch likes to go fast.

Honestly, if I played it They would have lost me at "you can pick your Space marine Chapter, but only from a list of less than half, and not even including Salamanders."

Love the analogies in this 😂

07:00 it even sounds like jangling keys!

This is just state of survival. Toxic ass game zz

I would like to point out that when you got those multiple rewards for the growth system and similar, it was actually the system unlocking and you retroactively getting your rewards you have unlocked on the way.

"i've not been this disappointed since dawn of war 3" me too brother, me too...

"In the grim darkness of the far future , there is only DISAPPOINTMENT!

This is a Top Wars reskin btw.

Just a though: The reason they devalue their stuff by spamming you with it is so you don't realize how much you're wasting. Once the showering stops, you need to buy microtransactions. It's a very insidious way to hook vulnerable people.

I'm so glad someone did that. In the add they said noobs don't research new technology. MY BROTHER IN THE EMPORERER OF MANKIND WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?

2:11 as a eldar player, i feel this

These types of games always have a "sicarius pack" a hero who starts at just under a us dollar. however you can only get fragments of that hero from other packs, that increase in price as you buy them.

I played "State of Survival: The Zombie Apocalypse" for a few months: the EXACT same system was in place in that game and I'm talking the build queue, heroes, troop training, upgrade paths, boring real time attack group walking to fight random level enemies... even the real money store had the exact same packs for sale and I don't just mean 'second build queue slot' pack; even the colours and layout. They made a monetization system first and then slop whatever theme they can get their hands on to try to sell it.

This game is the equivalent of shooting the preist then saying a prayer for them

You know, I keep looking at this. Then I'm looking at my phone, playing State of Survival. And now Deja vu is playing in my mind.

Your comedy on this one was so fucking spot on. Bravo 👏

So there I was in a ship in flames around me and crashing so I muttered a bunch of bs at the computer and pressed a load of random buttons like I am somehow helpful.

it's actually a good thing that the stuff is so expensive; it is to make it very expensive for the pay 2 win people, because you can get most everything for free. the more active you are the more you get. and it is nice that much of it is time dependant, because during waiting times you can do other stuff. and you can play it, while in the loo, waiting for the train, during breaks and such.

When you've played one of these type of mobile games you've played them all. They're all identical.

I bestow this video with the highest Honor I know how to bestow. This review has got TotalBiscuit energy.

You are doing The Emperor's Work here; Blessings of Holy Terra be upon you, Sir

There is no Dawn of War review on the second channel. I feel deceived. Josh is a minion of Tzeentch, confirmed.

Raise the gellar fields. It's not going to get easier, and like the warp, heaven only knows where, when and how you'll come out.

That Eldar Joke aged like a fine milk

Good video . I went into GW once in a grumpy mood and the guy asked me for the third time what army i had and i just said " oh fuck off will you " and he did . Years later that just became my entire attitude to GW . Great universe and i like the games still , i just play the old versions with the huge amount of figures i bought ' in the old days' .

Where is this mythical Dawn of War review? I subscribed to Josh Strife Plays and everything! Wait, is this meta? Do I not have enough crystals???