Review

In Warhammer 40,000: Battle Sister you play as a member of the Adepta Sororitas, an all-female battalion of warriors, fighting an endless war against Heresy and those who follow in its chaos. I myself am a casual Warhammer fan and while I do think this game is aimed at and enhanced by being a fan of the IP, I don't think it is necessary to still enjoy the game. (the plot if explained fairly well in the game that I don't think anyone should be confused)

The game is a linear shooter taking you through various themed corridors to shoot Chaos cultists, chaos marines, Demons and more.

In total the game took me about 4.4 hours to complete the campaign.

I played the game on the following hardware:

Intel I7 7700k

GTX 1080 Ti

HP Reverb G2

Graphics & Presentation

As a Warhammer fan, the game's presentation is great. It perfectly captures the atmosphere I always imagine for Warhammer and being able to experience that in VR is something else.

The graphics specifically are a bit of a mixed bag as the game was originally designed to run on an Oculus Quest and it really shows at times. Small environments and details look good but visuals take a noticeable hit in larger open locations where a lot more needs to be displayed in the game, and often at times large wall textures show as low res and clutter geometry looking exceedingly basic.

That's not to uncut the good though for most of the game it really looks very good. Weapon details and lighting are on point, and character models also look very good with the exception being their hair on one model looking off.

A number of particle effects also really looked bad, the flamers fire looking notably just horrible.

Being a quest port there are no graphics options in-game, which is expected but not even having the basic AA, AF and supersampling options feels a bit annoying.

On the flip side being a quest port means the game's performance was excellent, and I was able to increase the SteamVR resolution a lot while playing.

Sound FX & Music

Voice acting in the game is all quite good, though maybe a bit hammy at times but exactly what you want in a Warhammer game.

Music is also very good fitting with the themes of the game but used maybe a bit too sparsely throughout.

Gameplay & Immersion

The gameplay is kind of basic with nothing revolutionary for VR maybe but meeting the standards of what you expect in a shooter. Go through corridors and hallways shooting enemies solving the most basic of puzzles and fighting a few boss enemies. All quite simple but effective at making fun gameplay. The locations and enemies vary enough for me to not find it repetitive.

In parts of the campaign, you will also have two allies to fight alongside you, which in my experience I found quite uncommon in VR games which mostly limit allies to a voice in your ear. These allies were fun and a great change from the norm.

One annoying thing is ammo and weapon types. There are four ammo types, and a number of guns like the bolter pistol and rifle use the same ammo. At the start of a level the game will often give you both weapons, which is useless cause if you use all the ammo neither gun can be used.

There is a decent variety of weapons, from blaster bolters to lazerguns, Chainsaws and Flamers (and more). They all controlled well and had two grab points which were good for some of those long-range shots. Melee was serviceable but not amazing, the swords are physics-driven but if you swing hard enough will go through geometry which is supposed to simulate cutting off limbs however I found more often than not I wouldn't cut anything off and would get my sword caught in the armpit of a demon.

Reloading is done by pressing a button to drop your mag then putting your gun near your belt to reload. You could manually remove your mag and put in a new one yourself however gameplay really did not allow for this slower pace.

Controls

At the time of writing this, the game is still receiving updates and may improve, but as it is now after a few patches it controls really well.

The game's bindings worked out of the box for me, and the game has a number of configurations, Smooth vs teleport or hybrid, left-handed options, toggle grip, vignette, all good stuff.

In-game the game also allows for physical ladder climbing, manual item pickup and chest opening which is all very immersive and nice to see.

Value & Replayability

At $22 local currency I think this game is a great value. It's not the longest campaign but it's polished and fun to play. It also features characters from Warhammer lore that I don't often see.

The game also has a Horde/wave shooter mode, (marked in-game as early access). It's not personally my thing but I tried it and it's well implemented in that you get money from kills and unlock more weapons as you fight more waves. Good stuff for replayability.

Final Thoughts

While its quest limitations show themselves often in graphics the actual gameplay remains fun and the universe enjoyable to explore in. I highly recommend this to Warhammer fans and even people who are unfamiliar with the universe (maybe not a recommend though if you hate Warhammer).

• Decent enemy and weapon variety.
• Visuals look good most of the time.
• A.I. allies in-game.
• Gunplay is fun.
• Polished controls both in-game and in settings.

• Lack of any graphical settings.
• When visuals look bad they look very bad
• Level design (enemy spawns and ammo drops) could be improved.

Reviewed by Griffin on 13th March 2022 on Windows Mixed Reality

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Warhammer 40,000: Battle Sister
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