Return to the battlefield (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC))

Member Name: LastLine

Product:	Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (PC)
Date:	06/06/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Persistent troops, fun story.

Disadvantages: Repetitive game play, no base building

Dawn of War 2 is, as the name suggests, the sequel to the hit game Dawn of War.

The original Dawn of War was a typcial Real Time Strategy game. Build a base, build troops, harvest resources, repeat until you've got a huge army and charge headlong to the enemy and wipe them off the face of the planet. The game had several expansion packs adding in new races from the Warhammer 40,000 universe until the full sequel was announced.

Now the sequel, Dawn of War 2, has taken a lot of that original game and thrown it out of the window. For what it's worth it feels a lot more like a new game rather than a sequel and that's kind of a shame. Campaigns are obviously a big part of a single player experience and DoW2's campaign tries to be epic, but sadly comes out as repetitive instead. The aim is to fight off Orks, Eldar and Tyranids from a series of planets, making sure whilst you protect one planet that the other doesn't become overwhelmed. Each territory gives you new wargear (special upgrades that give your troops new abilities or improved statistics) and in some cases gives you special abilities such as an orbital bombardment or extra troop reinforcements.

Now the downside to this is that eventually the maps feel very repetitive, you play on the same maps over and over again sadly and this means that when you're getting calls to defend territories it feels a bit like lather, rinse, repeat.

In game mechanics are again drastically changed from Dawn of War. Instead of constructing a base you get a range of troops 'drop pod' in from the start of the mission and these are the troops that you run with. They are usually experienced from several battles as you carry the same troops throughout the campaign. What is interesting from a tabletop gamers perspective is that the troops come in squads of four which doesn't make sense from a gaming perspective where Marines are deployed in squads of at least five, but that's a minor digression. As these squads lose members in combat you obviously lose strength, but it is possible to recover unit members through capturing relay beacons on the maps who come in equipped as those who previously died.

Ultimately the campaign has a reasonable story but unfortunately the gameplay feels repetitive.

The multiplayer is again similar. You can build as many squads as you want within a population cap. This is done by holding certain objectives that give resources to build with. These troops don't gain experience here but if they survive long enough they can gain levels and become a little tougher. Essentially they become take and hold style games whilst you concentrate on defeating your opponents at the same time, it makes for an interesting mixture that is actually quite addictive. This mode also allows you to use vehicles which is something you don't get a lot of experience with from the campaign so that's a bonus.

Summary: A good game in it's own sense, but I don't think it'll be the hit that the original was.