Dawn of War 2 -- A Review

Posted by Ranillon on 7. March 2009 01:31

DoW2 has been out for a few weeks now and I’ve played when I’ve found the time.  Here are my thoughts on the game.

The Good

The game looks great and does a fine job mimicking the feel of 40K in a real-time format.  This isn’t just your usual RTS game.  If you are expecting just to build, charge, and repeat think again.  It’s not about recruiting a horde – these are Space Marines, the elites.  You get at most four (by 40K standards under strength) squads to command at one time, each fundamentally different.  One is your commander, but after that you have many potential options including tactical marines and dreadnoughts.  Each unit can also bring a wide range of weaponry and wargear.  That gives you a lot of possible ways for mixing and matching.

In battle you need to control the squads individually, although they will of course fight any enemy that comes into range.  To get the best results, however, you can’t just rush your troops forward.  You can take position behind cover, pull out a grenade to disrupt the enemy’s formation, or concentrate fire on a particular target -- among other things.  Whatever combination you decide upon it’ll need to be clever more often than you may think.  The AI of the game is usually smart enough to give you a real challenge, at least most of the time.

As for what you’ll face your possibilities include two old favorites – the Eldar and the Orks – and one new DoW race, namely the Tyranids.  This last group is especially nasty, but they are all what you would expect.  The Eldar are varied, the Orks brutal, and the Tyranids in great abundance (The bugs were the biggest shock for me, at least at first.  I learned the hard way that you can’t get impatient when dealing with them.  Be methodical or be swamped.). The typical mission includes fighting your way through various bastions of the enemy before you take on the boss for that level.  No matter how well you do against the peons the boss is almost always difficult.  More than once I’ve come close to blowing the whole thing thanks to this final obstacle.

The campaign game is easily the best thing about DoW2.  It’s huge, with plenty of scenarios.  Even better it’s not just a linear march toward victory.  You can jump around between different planets with each planet having a range of missions.  As you complete one set more arise.  Which ones depend on the order you finished the earlier missions.  You only have a limited amount of time (days within the game) to get things done.  Victory means beating back the alien invaders.

The Bad

As great as the campaign game may be the vanilla skirmishes are disappointing.  The number of available maps can be counted on your fingers while their designs are ho-hum.  The game’s very structure makes skirmish games less enjoyable than those of its predecessor, at least given the way I prefer to play.  The old RTS standby of build and rush works better when you just want to kill things.

I haven’t tried the multiplayer options, but they are certainly extensive.  It is clear that DoW2 was designed with Internet play in mind so if that is your thing I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be pleased.

The Ugly

But, it’s the multiplayer that brings about the one thing I hate about the new Dawn of War.  It’s supported through the use of a program called Steam and I’m learning to hate it.  It’s a resource hog and you can’t run DoW without it.  That means that you can’t even start the game unless you have an active Internet connection.  Most aggravating of all, however, is that Steam will pop up on a regular basis with advertisements – I mean, “notifications” – for other games.  I didn’t pay $50 for the privilege of having spam thrown in my face!

Still, the price is worth it – Dawn of War 2 is a great game.  It’s a must-buy for anyone interested in a great Real-Time Strategy challenge and/or Warhammer 40K on your computer.