Серию Dawn of War люблю еще с детства, но так вышло, что играл только в соревновательный режим, а сюжет как-то обошел стороной. Спустя годы решил наверстать, а заодно вспомнить что из себя представляет хорошая игра по вархаммеру. В целом, это достаточно хорошая ртс, которая не лишена некоторых проблем. Камера в игре находится слишком уж близко к земле, а из-за этого в кадре не всегда даже помещается вся ваша армия. А еще очень сильно раздражает то, что юниты иногда не дают друг другу пройти, в итоге все ваши боевые единицы застревают. В остальном, это прям показательная стратегия. Графика передает атмосферу и дух вселенной вархаммер, сочные анимации позволяют прочувствовать всю мощь местного оружия. Учитывая дефицит игр данного жанра на современном рынке, то в такую игру не стыдно и вернуться. Что касается сюжета, ради которого я решил все проходить, он неплох, но история максимально простая. Следить за событиями было интересно, но вот разнообразие миссий немного разочаровывает. Почти все сводится к тому, что нам нужно построить базу и уничтожить всех противников. Иногда это разбавляют дополнительными задачами, но чаще это все.

Disclaimer: I have only played this game with the Soulstorm expansion.
Is a great rts with a focus on territory control rather than resource gathering. Every faction is unique and is really fun to see your favorite 40k units walking and shooting around the map. Now, Soulstorm added a couple of units and one of them are aerial units. They are bad and boring, more of a nuisance to use and deal with them than anything else.
The campaign tho is fun but I feel that the infiltration units kinda ruined it, since the cpu starts with them. Don't buy it on Steam if you plan to play Ultimate Apocalypse .

This is definitely one of the best RTS campaigns I’ve ever played. Everything is added in the right places and as someone who played this as a warhammer newcomer it all made sense and wasn’t convoluted at all.

The only true issue is by itself the game is a bit barebones outside of the campaign? I mean it’s got skirmish but it only has the Eldar, the Orkz, and Chaos. With Chaos being kind of a space marine reskin if anything but this isn’t a bit critique because the games expansions add way more factions.

What is the predominant feeling upon seeing the words: "mission complete" at the end of a videogame level? Take a moment to ask yourself what those words would look like, how they morph with different genres, picture them in all their multitude forms and shapes.

Does it look like this? Like this perhaps? I imagine most of you thought of, if not those specific examples, similarly triumphant ones.

Every mission in Dawn of War begins with the Space Marines, humanity's most elite forces, devising a new plan to stop the enemies of the Imperium of Man. That is, everyone besides the Imperium itself; whether those be ferocious space orks, the devious Eldar, or the Great Enemy, the forces of Chaos. Each time, the plan inevitably involves the slaughter of enemy forces, asking the player to walk the delicate balance of any good RTS: resource managing, base building, micro.

Every mission in Dawn of War ends on the same note: the space marines win, the enemy is routed, at least from that particular theatre of war. Yet something is amiss. Your actions endanger huge swathes of civilian populations, cause the destruction of gigantic cities and settlements, see the fate of entire worlds being sealed. Words of doubt are cast by powerful and paranoid inquisitors over your actions, the dire warnings spoken by knowledgeable Eldar farseers go unheeded, the schemes of Chaos sorcerers endlessly unfold. All while your own plans reveal their faults when it is too late to remedy.

Every mission is punctuated by a fade to black, the music reduced to whisper and quickly to silence. Two words bleakly manifest themselves onto the screen: "Mission Success". A taste of ashes in your mouth, a feeling of having made a terrible mistake once again.

Are we the baddies?

If you have any knowledge of the nerd space (and you're on a videogame logging site so you're way more invested in games than you might care to admit), you've probably seen a Warhammer Space Marine. If you've never looked into the series, they always look like the heroes of the setting. Imposing armour and weapons, a honourable facade, serious, (mostly) white male faces. Stereotypical 7th gen videogame heroes. In Dawn of War, they are the stars of the singleplayer campaign, the only faction you're allowed to control in the base game outside of free battles. But if you've read so far (boobies!, ha!, got your attention sucker) you might have realised there's something more sinister under their "perfect" image that the series' iconography seems to be obsessed with.

There is an adage stated by players of Warhammer 40.000's original tabletop game: a child walks into a store, sees a game being played, asks: "Who are the good guys?". The players stifle a laugh: "There are none. 'In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war'". In a sense, they'd be right, the game is (sometimes) written and thought of as a wargame first, where the major concern is: "how does every faction get into a fight with every other faction, itself included?". Writing each one with varying degrees of unreedimability is a great method to do so, as if nobody is overtly good, then us players can drop all pretenses of moral righteousness and just focus on having a good time with our overpriced plastic miniatures.

The player who then decides to dedicate more than two braincells to even just surface level aspects of the background can realise that, for example, space marines are essentially indoctrinated into an ultrafascist, fanatical ideology. How could they be the good guys?

Marketing baby, that's how, who-hoo!
Space marine miniatures are easy to paint, have an all-rounder gameplay style, look human (more recognisable to us, therefore more appealing) and are highly customizable. Ever since 1987 they have been the face of Warhammer. They grace videogame boxarts, books, shirts, fucking Panini sticker collections.

It is the far easier, lazier, marketable and profitable solution to paint the horrible space marines as actually heroic and noble. Many go this route, fans included. As much as I love the setting and its aesthetic, I am disgusted by certain parts of the fandom that blindly worship the Imperium of Man, a regime that gets a perfect 14/14 points in Umberto Eco's list of a fascist states's features. (some of the most reactionary, anti-SJW Internet figures often profess their love for Warhammer. Take a wild guess which faction they tend to love the most). It would be like a Fallout: New Vegas fan siding with the Legion because they believe IRL in what Caesar stands for ideologically.

This is why Dawn of War is great. Not just for being a solid as hell rts, which manages to take the strengths of its source material, creating something wholly new with it. Not just for having an amazing presentation that still puts 90% of other licensed titles to shame. Dawn of War GETS Warhammer 40.000. It realises it's both a dumb toy soldier game with space elves and mushroom orcs, while also being the stylized, depresssing picture of a world of obscurantism, a possible fate derived from our aggressive apathy.

The world is a beautiful place. Don't let the bastards make you lose hope. Fight.

I love RTS games but when they try to be too deep (i.e. Civilization) they can sometimes be either boring or too hard. Dawn of War tries to remedy this with a simple design. If you don’t know what Warhammer is then I wouldn’t be surprised. Warhammer is a board game where you buy and collect outrageously priced figurines too build your army(s) and battle with other people. The models come in plain die-cast metal so you can even paint them yourselves. Dawn of War does a perfect job of making that into an easy to access (and cheaper) form. The game has a great story with great voice acting as well and this is also a surprise.


You play as the Space Marines who are trying to stop the Chaos and Orks from destroying the world Tartarus and unleashing an ancient evil. Through the 11 campaign missions, you’ll play you’ll slowly unlock new things to use. Unlike most RTS games the squad cap is at 20 and the vehicle cap is at 17. Don’t think this is kiddied up at all. You can select each unit and “add soldiers” and even upgrade new weapons and abilities for them at your armory. Each “squad” can hold up to a certain amount of soldiers so choose wisely. You have four different powerful squads which are the Scout Marines (the weakest yet the fastest), the Space Marines (your main squad you’ll be using), your Assault Marines (they have jetpacks and are more powerful), and your Terminators which are massive mechs that are practically unstoppable. You can’t unlock these until the last few missions. Your vehicles are the same you have tanks, powerful tanks, super powerful tanks, tanks that transport troops etc. To build all of these you do need resources, but unlike other RTS games, you don’t need a ton of different things. All you need is Requisition Resource and Power Resource.


You get PR by building power generators and you get RR by capturing Strategic Points throughout the maps. You then can build Listening Posts on these and upgrade them with turrets and armored housing. You also can’t get the better units until you upgrade your Stronghold (think: Eras in Age of Empires and Civilization). While there are only three different upgrades (remember they keep everything simple) you have to build certain structures before upgrading again. Most of the gameplay comes into play when you attack enemies. While you attack enemies you can use upgrades that you researched such as frag grenades, smite, rally etc. You can also attach your main characters to units to add attributes and you can even add commanders. While this is really fun and simple and easy the game has some flaws. First off the graphics look somewhat dated, especially up close. Second, you can’t kill units so if you accidentally created a Space Marine instead of an Assault Marine because you have to jetpack over a ravine you’re screwed. You can, however, rally the Space Marines to an Orbital Station and that they dropped over, but you need the third add on your Stronghold for this. Another pain is you can’t zoom out far enough. This makes finding squads tedious and annoying. The final thing is the cliffhanger ending. It leaves an opening for the expansion packs, but you aren’t satisfied at all.


There are also AI issues where units will pile on top of each other and get confused about where to go. This can make moving large amounts of units a pain since some will be further ahead than others. If you can overlook all of this Dawn of War is one of the best RTS games ever made. With its simple design and easy pickup and play mechanics, you’re going to have a blast with this game.