Product Description

Dawn of War II ushers in a new chapter in the acclaimed RTS series - taking players to the brutal frontlines of war to lead an elite strike force on a mission to save the galaxy.

It's the 41st Millennium in the Sub-Sector Aurelia - a cluster of worlds on the edge of the Galaxy - where a battle of epic proportions is about to commence. Ancient races will clash across the planets that dot this section of space, battling for the greatest of stakes - not only the claim to the land and its bounty - but the fate of each race.

With a focus on fast-action RTS gameplay, Dawn of War II brings to life the science fiction universe of Warhammer 40,000 like never before. Experience the intimate brutality of battle as you play through your chosen race's epic campaign. Clash with enemies on battlefields ablaze with visceral melee and ranged combat. Lead and develop your squads from raw recruits into the most battle hardened veterans in the Galaxy.

• Brutal Frontline Action & Tactics: Get straight into the action and experience intense melee and devastating ranged combat. Use vicious melee sync-kills to obliterate your enemies. Outsmart your opponents using dynamic and destructible environments to suppress, flank and destroy your foes.
• Non-Linear Single Player Campaign: Command an elite strike force, choosing from a variety of playable races and play through that race's unique storyline, developing the skills and abilities of your squads and commander as you progress through the game.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: Play through the entire single-player campaign cooperatively with a friend, at any point in the game, anytime.
• Next Generation RTS Engine: Utilising Relic's proprietary Essence Engine 2.0 to deliver cinematic visuals, detailed graphics and special effects.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #726 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: THQ
• Released on: 2009-02-20
• Platform: Windows XP
• Format: DVD-ROM

Manufacturer's Description
Dawn is about to break on a whole new style of wargame, as you coach a team of hardened Space Marines through gaming's toughest Sci-Fi universe. Although this is still a real-time strategy game, the story campaign is now focused on controlling smaller squads of highly specialised units, instead of just anonymous hordes of cannon fodder soldiers.

Watch your squad grow from inexperienced rookies to veteran warriors

The human Space Marines take on their mortal enemies the Orks

Encounter the evil Tryanids for the first time in a Dawn Of War game

Each faction has its own totally unique vehicles and equipment

There's no base-building or resource management, as you dictate the tactics on the ground at the speed of an action game. Each character and vehicle can be upgraded with weapons and items left by defeated enemies, adding in new role-playing elements as well.

For those looking for a more traditional approach, the multiplayer and skirmish modes add all the old features back in - giving you the best of both worlds. With stunning graphics and an authentic Warhammer 40,000 storyline this revolutionises the idea of PC strategy games for both new players and old.

Key Features

• Chimeric strategy: New story campaign blurs the line between strategy, action and role-playing games with faster action and all new tactical control.
• Action tactics: Faster paced action includes a new emphasis on cover, the special abilities of your force commanders and even arcade game style boss battles.
• Pincer movement: Play the story campaign on your own or with a friend online, as you both experience the exciting storyline featuring the Space Marines faction.
• Old school: Combative multiplayer has all the new features of the campaign mode, plus more traditional real-time strategy features such as base building.
• Race relations: Play as one of four authentic Warhammer 40,000 races: the human Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and, for the first time ever in a Dawn of War game, the monstrous Tyranids.

About the Developer: Relic Entertainment
Specialising in real-time strategy games this Canadian company first rose to fame with outer space strategy classic Homeworld. Although a third game is rumoured most of their recent games have been part of either WWII series Company of Heroes or Warhammer 40,000 license Dawn of War.

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Customer Reviews

First impressions
My rant:

Before I go into whats good and bad about the game I just want to get this said.

Its really frustrating that the trend seems to be that games are being made unfinished, this game is no exception there is a patch already out. I would prefer to wait and buy a complete game.

Also this game ties in steam and windows live, which for me is annoying as setting the game up takes ages AND ESPECIALLY as you have to register the game before you can even play it.
I have a big problem with this, because if the game sucks then you cannot take it back to the shop, nor sell it on easily (unless you give up you steam account)....... in my opinion if there worried about people selling games on, they should focus more on making the game good rather than thinking of how to introduce more security measures.

The game itself ...

The good points:

Campaign mode = (so far) this has been very good, with the added bonus of going through with a mate online its great fun. I also approve of the extra wargear which can be unlocked with various codes wizzing round the internet.

A possible gripe for some could be that the units you control do not increase when you play it in co-op, instead you divvy up the units that are available. - its also looking like there will just be a space marine single player campaign (although I could be wrong).

The best thing with campaign mode (for me) is the wargear and experience your marines recieve. When they level up you get to choose how they level up, so you can shape them to match you gaming style.

The Bad points:

Multiplayer in general - - - which is kinda annoying because thats why I got the game!!

First and foremost - the LAN is a real mess, I have been doing Lans for ages and this is the first game where my mates and I had to all connect to the internet before the Lan would work. -- - - This completely defies the point of a LAN, instead of 100gbit connection, the three of us had to share a 2.2mb connection just to get going. - - Steam and Windows live also kick up a fuss if you try and play and your not connected to the internet (but it does allow it)

Multiplayer specifics:

Firstly after reading Amazon I was looking forward to "old skool mode", which was said to be more like the original DOW with its base building...... this mode is no where to be seen. All you have is annihilate and victory point control, with the only building being your main base (that upgrades twice).

Maps - - where are they?? I think there are about 7 total !!, thats no where near enough, also there are only 2 and 6 player maps, apparently 4 player maps are too complex to make!

Units - Checking the manual I was pleased with the amount of units listed, however that does not mean you can build them, some e.g. Terminators, have to be dropped in using a global resource based on experience, so you only ever going to get one squad at a time (if your lucky). That said I do like games that have a global experience based resource which allows extra in-game variety, not used like this though.

Modes - There are also a lack of basic options for these e.g. Victory point control, that does not let you specify the amount of victory points, the only option is 500 which means the game is over quickly. The gaming also feels quite slow in places.

Wrap up:

When this game came out I liked the idea of more tactics, seeing as I love company of heroes. I was looking forward to having an elite set of units that I care about, rather than sending wave after wave churned out of my base.

I am sure some of the above points will be addressed with another patch (e.g. more maps), its just that this game felt rather rushed (with its lack of basic menu options) and incomplete, with the patch on day of release.

In many ways I hope another patch does materialise but until then I think I will stick to online co-op mode, which is enjoyable.

An OK game wrapped in a fiasco of irritation
As a game to play, it's not too bad (the odd crash here and there). For tactics, I quite enjoy the approach that's been applied this time round (limited squads, so you can keep track of what they're up to).
A real departure from the previous games (I breathed a sigh of relief at the lack of a 'player swarm' as a solution to almost everything) in style.
The storyline is pretty straightforward, with not a huge amount of twisting and captivation. The graphics aren't too bad, and on the whole the gameplay's reasonably fun.

However, the install can be a nightmare. Tying this in to steam for the sole purpose of preventing the resale/gifting of played games is, to put it bluntly, an insult. I used to pass on my used games to friends of mine that can't afford to buy copies. It cut down on 'piracy', and everyone was happy. Now I can't do that, and nor can you if you buy this.
Inside the manual is a CD key. About usual these days. Except when you start the game (with steam, that takes ages to load up for this!), it generates a NEW key that you have to write down and re-enter if you sign up for the multiplayer (and you probably will. If you choose a 'local profile', i.e. don't use Windows Live, it nags you every time about 'all the things you'll be missing out on'. Not once, but EVERY TIME you start the game).
It brings up the overlay for Windows Live every time you start the game as well.
I do not want windows live, I do not want to play online (if I do, I'll go to the multiplayer section, and go through the motions there).
It's the most irritating coercion I've yet encountered in any game.
For fun once you're in it, it's reasonable (not outstanding, in my opinion). Just the sheer irritation of playing the single player campaign and having to endure the ceaseless nagging to do something I don't want to turns this into a lemon for me.

Essence Engine - yes! Company of Heroes 40k - no!
What people seem to get wrong is that the use of the Essence Engine in Dawn of War II makes it Company of Heroes set in the Warhammer 40k universe. This is simply not true.

Dawn of War II is really different from Company of Heroes, but so it is from Dawn of War I. And this is what must be perfectly clear to everybody who played Dawn of War I and want to dive into Dawn of War II.

So what's different? First of all, the number of units in the roster and on the field was strongly reduced.
For example, a Tactical Space Marine squad is one of the 8 Space Marine unit types, comes with three members and may be equipped with a Sergeant after reaching Tier 2, which makes a total of 4.
Orks on the other hand have Slugga Boyz squads of five (again plus a Nob after Tier 2) and are much cheaper, which makes it roughly 4 Marines vs. 12 Orcs.

Now, the point is that this is actually a really good gameplay decision: You need to care about your units, because the death of a single Space Marine has a much greater impact than it had in DoW I, since you had 8 Marines and could reinforce in the field instead of having to retreat to your base (another change in DoW II).
Apart from that, Space Marines are finally what they ought to be: super warriors. You buy them for a lot of ressources and they are really tough, but you must take care not to lose them.

The new standard mode is 3vs3 and maps are much smaller. There are Requisition Points, Victory Points and Power Points on the map. Instead of building generators in your base, you capture a Power Point and pay Requisition to upgrade it with power plants.

Before the game, each player must choose one of the three heroes per race. This hero will be available troughout the match and may not really die, but is incapaciated as soon as his health hits 0. Now the player must either pay Requisition to make him respawn at the base (the longer you wait the less Requisition you have to pay) or a teamate's hero comes along to help him up.
The heroes are very stong units and have special abilities that clearly sets them apart from each other: The Force Commander is strong in close combat, can equip a thunderhammer or a power fist, or get terminator armour, while the Apothecary can heal himself and teamates in the field.
All units gather experience and get stats boost as they rank up in levels.

Games are really fast, because you need not build up your base, but dive directly into combat. Requisition rate may be rather slow, but this is what the game is all about: If you keep your units and retreat them in time, you have to pay about half the cost to reinforce them, compared to rebuilding the squad from scratch AND you're going to keep the squad's experience. The other guys reviewing the beta of this game seem not to have realized that after 4-6 hours of playing.
Since you alway have a rather small amount of forces, you must make clever decisions in order to hold most strategic points on the map. If you blob your forces, the opponent may travel around the map and decap your points, if you divide them up, your opponent may hit unsupported forces with a superior army!

There are a lot of other things new to Dawn of War: Suppression fire, reworked unit abilities (like infiltration), knockback, and great implementation of jumping for assault troops. Every unit on the field is easy to kill if the right counter is at hand. So the rule is combination.

If you have any expectations this game to be like DoW I, you will fail. If you want to see CoH in it, you will succeed. This is what drives a lot of people away. Instead, free your mind and enjoy the game as it is: Different!

And last but not least: There are still some issues with gameplay, NAT negotiation (I am not big fan of Games for Windows Live either, but it has some good features, too), game crashes etc. But this is a beta and this is what betas are for. I am pretty sure, Relic will handle all this. The game is great overall, but it does not quite reach it's potential. On the other hand, there are lots of possibilities to improve that.

We will see how that works out. I'm really eager to see customized armies fighting each other in fast, small scale battles in the fields, once the game is out and the army painter is free to use. This is sure going to be fun, and Relic has since I know them done a really good job to do all they can do to improve game experience, and I am quite confident, they will manage Dawn of War II also.