What Would Matt Do

You know what I like most about Dawn of War II? The fact that it’s not a sequel with a few new features and maybe a race or two. This is a true sequel. Which is both a good and bad thing. We’ll worst to best, because I always prefer the bad news first.

The Bad News (single player)

The single player is poop. Yep, I said it. You’ll see lots of other places that say the single player is awesome and it has RPG elements and it’s made of pure gold shat out by golden geese raised by unicorns. I whole heartedly agree with the previous statement, if you remove all of the parts except it having RPG elements.

You see, the single player game consists of this in 90% of the missions. First, you watch some really boring and drab report (The entire thing is VERY skippable) about which mission(s) are available and why. Then you watch the again boring and drab report on the specific mission. Ok, boring pre mission shit out of the way. Next, you launch the mission, and this exact process over and over.

• Move your unites up to AI units. Engage, put suppresson fire on the whole group. Win.
• When you run out of groups to win against, you then go the Boss fight. You follow whatever dumb mechanic the developer came up with (explosives, suppression, etc) for beating the Boss.
• Mission complete.

That’s mostly it. Sometimes you get swarmed, yoiu retreat and regen for free, then start again. Very rarely you take on defensive only missions (which can choose to skip, but you shouldn’t if you like turtling and experience gain). They are extremely easy though. The guys run at you, you cut them down. Sometimes you have to reposition your units.

So that’s it. The entire single player experience in a nutshell. Don’t look for good AI (there isn’t really any). Try not to think of the incredibly boring and silly Boss fights. The boss fights break the cardinal rule of any game. They break all fo the rules the game established up to this point. Much like in Marvel Ultimates, the end guys can’t be knocked down, they have massive health and none of your super/special powers work on them…except the one the developer decided to make work. Completely useless.

The Good News (multiplayer)

Here’s the good news, the multiplayer is a MESS of fun. It’s chaotic and crazy and strategic and fun. There isn’t any buildings other than your base to be built (unless your Hero can build stuff with their special abilities). You have a Hero (who you can upgrade), and you can buy new units from your main base. That’s it. The true beauty of the system is that you don’t miss it after a few games.

You’re going to be so wrapped up in not getting your guys killed by suppression fire, or telling your Orks to frenzy, that you wouldn’t want anything else to do. The Micromanagement in this game is extreme. Which is why you won’t miss base building. Almost every single one of your guys has something they you need you to specifically setup. From the direction they are facing, to the cover, to the grenades ready to be thrown, the powerup,etc, etc, etc. And if you don’t pay attention to those things, you will lose, guaranteed. This isn’t a game for someone that wants to select a mass of units and throw them at the other guy. At most you’ll be controlling 3-6 different squads. Each of them needing to be caressed just right or they will get slaughtered in seconds.

You see, tactics and strategy is the name of the game…at least on the multiplayer side. You need to position each guy just right, know when to retreat (like Company of Heroes, you guys can run away to replenish, at a cost, and fight again another day), and when to change the front of the battle. You only have two resources, cash and gas (basically). As you level up your base, you can build new guys, most of which require more and more gas. Speaking of leveling up, everything guy in the game can level up. Your guys get levels for combat, obviously, as does your Hero. It makes protecting units and retreating before they die very important, even more so than just the cost of regening a unit being less than buying a new one.

Small Things

I do have a few complaints about the whole system overall. The UI is confusing and not too helpful. The units on the field don’t call out when they get attacked, but only when the first guy in the squad dies. Especially in lighter armored squads, that’s often too late. By the time you click to them, they are surrounded or just to close to be able to retreat in time. The balance is still questionable at best. The Tyrniads are win machines at this point, even with recent downgrades. And Relic has a REALLY bad history of patching their games. We shall see longer term. They did do better with Company of Heroes than the first Dawn of War.

The other thing that may become more than a small thing in the future is the lack of maps. For each mode (1vs1 and 3vs3), we only have four maps. That’s really not that much…and we either have two tilesets, or they don’t stand out well. I can’t really decide on that now. Right now, I’m playing DoWII daily, even though I was in the MP beta too.

The Verdict

That’s a tought call. For me, it’s definitely worth the purchase. But only because the mutliplayer is so good. If multiplayer isn’t really your thing, then you may want to pass on this one, or wait on a Steam sale. It will most definitely come at some point. Unless, you’re real big into previous single player portions of RTS games. I don’t like most of them. I think the last RTS I beat in single player was Kohan II, and probably Starcraft and Red Alert before that. Mostly, they just bore me to no end. But if you like them, then this may be for you. It does have RPG elements (such as experience bars like ME and gray, green and blue items that you can assign to different squads). and it is fun to just destroy the shit out of things…

If you like playing multiplayer RTS games, this game is definitely for you. If not, you may want to pass (unless your of the breed noted above who has liked single player RTS games in the past).

Oh, and I marked this review as to be continued because Relic promises they have a huge plan for more downloadable content. If they do, and it improves or lessens the game, I’ll add a follow up review.

What Would Matt Do: I’d buy it. The multiplayer is that good.