I don't know what to think about this game. I don't think the game is bad by any means, but the name "Dawn of War" is placing a huge burden on it, since it is a completely different concept from the previous and beloved installments of the series.

I don't like that the single player content of the game is reduced to a campaign in which you can only control six different kind of units, nine if you count the terminator variants of the main squads, which admittedly behave quite differently to their base counterparts. In any case, the comparison in variety with even vanilla DoW1, which in theory had a similar amount of content, is terrible. The campaign gameplay is repetitive and many missions feel the same. The loot system and RPG elements are a nice addition, but don't provide enough variety and sometimes it's a hassle to manage them. I want to play as the Eldar, I want to have a Predator in my army.

I think the cover system and the ways the player is more involved in comparison to a game with a bigger scale like the previous ones is quite good. The game feels great to play and when it works, it works really well. But once you're like 15 missions in it feels a bit braindead to go through the same maps fighting the same enemies in the same way.

Overall, it's like an appetizer for a delicious meal you don't get to eat.

I love RTS games and Warhammer is one of the best out there. Forget the overpriced board game stuff the RTS game is where it’s really at. The first Warhammer was amazing and used the entire Warhammer universe in a unique symbiosis of RTS gameplay that was slick, powerful, and very addictive. Of course with Warhammer two coming out everyone couldn’t wait to get there hands on new units, new strategies, another great story…but wait it’s gone. Yeah, Relic took the S out of RTS in this sequel and now it’s just an RTG (Real Time Game).

Instead of building units and sending them across maps you just get to command key squad members around a map and enjoy dying and struggling through mission after mission. The game really isn’t any fun thanks to the high difficulty and the fact that this game should be an RTS, not an RPG/RTS mash-up. I don’t mind the RPG elements, but they should have made it just that. Each member can have up to three members of their squad so you get a handful of guys taking on an entire map. You can give each guy some accessories like health packs, grenades, shields, demo charges and tons of other things, but you’re limited and most of the time it never really works when you want it to.


If you think it sounds bad it’s at least worth a shot. You can select each individual squad group and command them to do certain things. Each one has unique abilities and you will use them all when taking on bosses and huge missions. You can pick up weapons and armor in the battlefield at random when dropping enemies then, later on, you can equip them. Some items have stat bonuses and some just add firepower. After each mission you can level up your guys in the fields they specialize in and this is crucial to beating missions.

The game just feels like a big mess really. You have to jump between three different worlds and while completing story missions there are side missions going on with timed “days” you get to complete them and if you let the Tyranid infest an area to long it drops your campaign score. I find this frustrating since you can only do one mission at a time, and if you fail it lapses a day and you can really miss a crucial mission. If they weren’t so damned hard it would be a lot easier. Some missions had me running back and forth to a satellite drop point (you can get more troops this way) or a relic site that fully heals your squad. Running back and forth from the boss over and over to heal, and chopping down a bosses health is something you do in an RPG, not an RTS. I feel Relic had the wrong idea in this game, and I bought it thinking it was like the first game, but I feel I wasted my money.


The game just has so much back and forth, the objectives feel tedious and sometimes you can’t complete a mission because you’re not strong enough so you have to try another, and sometimes another, and another then go back around and try to beat them all again until you can finally beat that story mission. It’s exhausting, not fun, and most of the time boring. While the game isn’t terrible its just that I wanted an RTS, not a crappy mash-up. Sure you can get a Dreadnought later on, or more powerful accessories like an orbital strike, and a drop pod, but you only get one during the mission and it just never seems like enough.

With all that out of the way, the story is decent, and it follows the original. The Blood Ravens are trying to rid of the Tyranid infestation, and are trying to come up with something that can weaken the hive. The voice acting is solid, and the story is interesting enough, but it’s also missing those cool cut scenes from the original game, and it just feels half-baked. The visuals are decent, but not much better than the original, so Dawn of War II isn’t really Dawn of War it’s something else. Go ahead and pick this game up if you are a true hardcore fan, but you will be very disappointed. You can play co-op with someone to lighten the difficulty, but without the RTS elements, you won’t really care.

I haven't returned to this in well over a decade, and oh my god, I see why. It is OUTRAGEOUSLY monotonous. They seemed deeply insecure in a lot of aspects of this game as they moved on from the traditional RTS of its predecessor to a radically different Company of Heroes with RPG elements style. And it really, really shows.

First is the horrible inventory management, that I can only compare to the modern Destiny style of loot where your inventory is clogged with dozens of items that are all .3% stronger against a specific enemy type. My brain is not wired to enjoy looting when I only ever actually upgraded my gear maybe 3-4 times per character, despite picking up numerous amounts of trash.

Then the length. The game has too little mission variety, too few possible character builds (again, see the lame itemization), and too repetitive enemy types to be over 10 hours long. Maybe they felt too embarrassed to release a 5 hour game after the hype Relic came off of with Dark Crusade, but Jesus. They should have just bit the bullet.

And the final entrant for the messy mechanics that betray low confidence or general indecisiveness in what the game should be is the deployment and Tyranid infestation system. Why are days a thing, exactly? Why not just fail the mission if you die instead of miraculously being saved each time and have a day pass? The only penalty for missing out on days is optional missions, and goddamn do you not wanna do those anyway after the first 30. Tyranid infestation also feels useless. Apparently it affects how many tyranids you see on missions on the planet, but frankly, who cares? Is it worth spending hours on side quests to see a few less squads of termagaunts?

But maybe the worst thing they did was have the protagonist be a silent self-insert. The fun banter is reserved only for the four squad members, and Force Commander is just a presence they will mention to dissipate any inner-circle spats. I don't know why they moved on from the fun banter of Dark Crusade, but it was a terrible mistake they never rectified until the final entry, which was far too late.

It is a fun game despite my complaints, but it's not a game I would have finished if not for sunk cost fallacy. I desperately wanted to not launch it anymore, but I was close enough to the end that I couldn't just leave it as is. Angel Gate is the real cinematic battle of the game, and then... It just keeps going for 5+ more missions? At a certain point, enough is enough.

The game is going through a major identity crisis. It is not clear whether it is a cRPG or an RTS. It tries to be both at the same time and fails at both. It didn't bother me at all that the game is not a pure RTS. But it would have been better if it was a pure RPG and the RTS mechanics were completely removed from the game, or vice versa. As it is, it's caught between two game genres and it's pretty mediocre. Relic Entertaintment, on the other hand, has become one of the worst game developers I've ever seen, because the terrible gameplay mechanics that they've persistently maintained since the first game in the series, with no interest in fixing or changing them, are still there in the second game. The unit controls are pretty horrible. I mean, has nobody in the development team ever played a game from the Age of Empires series in their life? Units never follow your orders as they should, and they never move where you direct them on the map without getting stuck. And they still won't let you change the controls of the game! I've played hundreds of games in my life and this is the first time I've ever seen a game series where I can't change the controls. Everything else about the game, including the default controls, has been terrible since the first game. They tried to add RPG mechanics to the game, but we need an active pause to be able to use the units' special abilities without missing the timing, but they can't even add that because they have no idea what they're doing. They don't know how to make an RTS or a cRPG game. Games Workshop probably regrets now that they didn't give Blizzard the rights to develop the Warhammer games at the time, because not only did they make Blizzard a bigger company than they could have been, but they also failed to make the Warhammer games as successful and popular as they should have been. At least they could take Blizzard's example in making these games, but they can't even do that. Arrogance is unfortunately such a harmful thing. At least thanks to them, the Warcraft game series was created.

They certainly did a change up after the previous games. This time instead of massive C&C like base invasions, now you are given a squad to attack with. This is more tactical and you can't just re-build people to make it less of a concern when your main character dies. Instead they fall incapacitated, but can be revived, though you have to get someone to get back their men for those in squads. I had a lot of fun with this and it felt closer to Warhammer 40K than the previous games and you could be tactical by taking up buildings or hiding behind cover for protection. Definitely worth a buy.