Ngl I’m generally really fucking shocked that I adore this game as much as I do, as a relatively new 40k fan and someone who isn’t the best at rts im utterly amazed by just how much love and care was put into this game back in 2004, including the expansions you get 9 whole factions to play with representing every major faction in the universe at the time (except tryanids) and it’s actually kinda sad knowing both dow 2 and 3 wouldn’t even come close to the number of factions this game had. Gameplay wise the game has a simple but addicting gameplay loop with a mix of base and army building with some additional mechanics depending on the faction. (the orks WAAAGH! meter for example) , the unit path finding is a little dumb but can be ignored after a while. All of the base factions all work off each over really well and have their own strengths and weaknesses. Space marines are the most standard faction with no game changing mechanics though they do get some pretty rad units and buildings farther up the tech tree. Orks are my favourite faction (both in the game and in the verse in general) and are easily the funnest race to play, the orks themselves are quite weak compared to your average astartes but make up for it in sheer numbers with you being able to amass tons of orky squads all ready to krump some humies. Admittedly I actually haven’t gotten to playing the other races yet but I’ll definitely give them all a shot at one point and update the review with my thoughts on them. Overall though this game surprised me when I gave it a go a few days ago, I had gave another relic rts game a shot a while back (coh 1) and didn’t really care for it so seeing this game casually become one of my favourite games of all time (I’m serious) and make me buy the expansions only a few days after buying the game itself really gave me a new view on rts games as a whole.