Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

I´m going to start off by being completely honest with you. Growing up I was a huge RTS fan but in my more adult years I really can´t remember a single RTS title that I´ve actually played through start to finish. RTS is a hard genre to make these days. Its extremely easy to fall into mechanics that just feels boring in this day and age. Its also very hard to create a story and a universe that feels compelling enough for you to actually stay at your PC instead of jumping on the couch and playing the latest AAA title on your gaming console instead.
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II succeeds! Its the first RTS that´s had me in a deathgrip from start to finish for a very very long time. I also played all of the sidemissions and really enjoyed it presentation wise.
Dawn of War 2 is a great pleasant surprise and the perfect game to pick up right now.

Dawn of War II kinda takes me back to one of my favorite strategygames ever made, Warhammer: Dark Omen. Dark Omen sucked away many hours of my childhood with pretty much the same concept. Equip your squads, chose which squads to take to the battlefield, deploy them and guide them to capture strategic points on the map (or destroy key structurs or enemies). The basic setup for DoW 2 is the same. You can take 4 squads with you to a map, they will gain experience during the stage and they will pick up World of Warcraft colored loot from boss enemies. All wrapped in a classic RTS packaging.
DoW 2 is an RPG/RTS hybrid with unit control and mission setup like an RTS mission. But the game dosent give you basebuilding and it dishes out XP to your selected squads.
The formula feels very fresh and it stays more true to the actual boardgame of Warhammer 40.000 compared to the first game. In between mission you get to assign skillpoints and equip gear on all of your squads aswell as chose from a galactic map where to go next.
The campaign goes from this galactic map. You have 3 planets divided into main objectives, side objectives and strategic defence. Side missions often give you a loot and XP reward while strategic defence missions lets you defend one of the objectives you´ve captured on the planets.
Keeping more strategic objectives on the planets nets you bigger rewards so defending these is always a smart thing to do.

Actually on the planet you control units like a normal RTS with some major exceptions. For one you can take cover and

you´ll really need to take cover. Hovering your mouse over objects in the environment will show dots that, if you click the right mousebutton on, will place your selected units in cover at the dots. They´ll run in there and get down much like an isometric Gears of War. Looks great and works really great. Buildings can also be occupied an unloaded at will and units will often automatically move to cover if you move them into an area. Its a big twist on normal gameplay for the genre that gives the gameplay a big tactical edge that never feels frustrating and only feels cool.
Every squad and your super strong hero unit the "Force Commander" have special moves that can be clicked on much like a game of DOTA (or WarCraft 3). A map often ends with a big boss batle with a hero unit of an opposite faction. These adds yet another element to the RTS mix. Boss battles require alot of navigation. You will see where they´re going to attack a few seconds in advance and you´ll have to use that time to navigate your units around these devastationg blows. Making good use of special abilities and retreating to regroup are also important factors to draining these often huge (and very cool looking/cool sounding) units of their equally huge health bars.
When they go down they like to drop loot and if you´re lucky they drop rare loot.

The game has 4 races (Space Marines, Orks, Eldar & Tyrranids) and 1 campaign. Dawn of War 2 takes the StarCraft 2 route and gives you 1 very long and story heavy campaign that really lets you identify with the important persons in the story aswell as building up your squads with epix gear and big levels. The campaign follows you as the force commander on the quest to save the main Space Marine recruiting worlds from a huge threat in form of a large, planet devouring Tyrranid invasion. Of course the other races have their role to play in this big invasion and it feels very interesting to play through.
Voice acting is superb both when it comes to unit respones and story dialogue and they dive deep into the Warhammer pool to draw references that any fan of Warhammer should be glad to hear.

Wrapped around this hybrid is a top notch presentation. The game looks superb with fantastic texture clarity and really neat looking weather effects (check out the details of individual raindrops when you´ve cranked up the grahpics!). One of the big bulletpoints for the first game was the animation of the combat. The combat in this sequel animates even more excessively than any other RTS. Units engaged in combat hacks and slashes in very cool ways and special attacks often have a unit totally rip an enemy apart. (i.e smashing it with a big hammer then jumpin on top of it to crush its head while its already on the ground.).
This is a game were you often zoom in to see the heat of the action up close. The units are very thick and heavy and you really feel that they can pack a punch when they go at it.
Really, the graphical design is spot on. Most of the praise here should be put on how the universe of Warhammer 40.000 actually looks. Units have really cool designs here, its such a great well to drink from.
The same really goes for the story and the universe around the game. The Warhammer universe has so much lore, backstory, history and details to dive into that it totally immerses you. Planets, cities, old generals, feuds, races and much much more. The only equally awesome universes I can think of for a game like this right now are the Blizzard ones. The story and the backstory you are fed feels very much on the same level of love and polish as StarCraft or WarCraft 3.

When you´re finished with the campaign (and feel satisfied with the gear on your squads whcih you will never be) you can jump into Skirmish or Online with any of the 4 races to start mastering their individual strenghts and weaknesses on the battlefield.
Every race is really a work of love in Warhammer 40k. Theres so much to love put into the races here. Their distinct graphical designs, their histories and the way you play them. Relic really managed to hit the spot with the races.
Multiplayer strips awat the Xp ad the loot and plays on the RTS strenghts. This is really the only right way to do competetive multiplayer in a game like this. Start adding some kind of loot and XP system and you might end up making it feel contrived.

Relic has really raised the bar here. They manage to catch players out for the loot and the WoW grinding aswell as old school Blizzard RTS fans. The game seamlessly blends gameplay elements and in the end they deliver a product that is well programmed and well designed. The game has this extra layer of polish that makes it stand out both when it comes to stuff like optimisation and memory management aswell as nailing it on a gameplay level.
The Warhammer 40k universe is such a great universe to create a game from and Relic really shows respect to the source material by designing story, characters and units with extreme love and care.

Dawn of War 2 has this extra feeling of thickness to the gameplay that can really best be compared to Gears of War.

I guess it has something to do with Space Marines in big armor with chainsaws but hey, its really badass to play.
The campaign will really sink its claws into you with great mission structure and cool cinematics and jumping into the Skirmish to start messing with other races will give this game legs that will probably stretch over my entire summer.
Not since the old Blizzard RTS games and the old Dark Omen have I been so naturally caught up by an RTS.
As someone who still tries hard to like the genre I salute Relic for this game and I can recommend it to people of both the World of Warcraft camp and the WarCraft 3 camp.

And yes, I continued to name this game in the same league as Blizzard game throughout this review because frankly, thats the praise they deserve for the work they´ve done on this game.

Waaaagh !