Dawn of War II review

Uh, wrong. It may not have served your expectations, but there’s no way it’s an afterthought.

I finished it for my review and found it absolutely delightful throughout. Yes, they do use the levels over but unless you are stopping to do sidequests repeatedly over and over again you are generally unlikely to use the same map more than two times and its they do leave open the option of using the do-over to grab an extra factory, shrine, etc which relieves a lot of the doldrum. That and half the extra missions are generally to defend a critical location and don’t require you to go anywhere, which in essence makes the need for a new map moot. Sure its an issue, but nothing all that huge.

Think it is? Compare this campaign to the meta-campaigns of the last two DoW expansions.

Any changes from the beta (more units? powerups?)? Are there any other options now besides 1v1 and 3v3 (hoping for 2v2 and 4v4)?

For PvP the only change is two new maps added.

Huh? What? $50 for just a pity few maps of 1v1/3v3 only? Virtually no tech tree, very little units, no base building, crappy single player.

Guess they forgot about how much content the original Dawn of War and Company of Heroes had? Very disappointing.

I personally found the campaign very enjoyable. Just finished it and the main storyline missions were pretty good in my opinion. The last level in particular was my favorite, along with the final boss fight.

That said, I’m a pretty big fan of WH40K, Space Marines, and unfliching heroes who charge into a legion of bugs with a massive warhammer screaming “SHOW ME WHAT PASSES FOR FURY FROM YOUR MISBEGOTTEN KIND!” Gets the adrenaline flowing I guess.

If you don’t like the no tech tree, small number of units, and no base building, clearly this is not the game for you. Personally, I think the multiplayer matches are pure awesomesauce. The only RTS I can think of that I’ve ever liked this much is CoH, and that was too fast for me to play online. I prefer the way DoW2 has eliminated base building and let me focus on my units.

As you can see from CSL and Vincent’s posts above and the non-TomChick reviews online a lot of people think the single player is great. It’s got an 87% on Metacritic so far.

These DOW2 threads are confusing the hell out of me. And it’s not just the hate-it-or-love-it response about the game itself, but the divisiveness over which game mode the critics enjoy least. Single-player, multi-player? 1v1, 3v3? About the only things I’ve found everyone decry are the boss battles and save system.

Contrast this with Soulstorm, which shipped with no less than 112 maps!

Yeah, but honestly an awful lot of the DoW1 maps just suck. There are 1v1 Dow1 maps that consist of two bases separated by a river with the two sides mirrored – nothing particularly interesting there, no interesting tactical possibilities at least as far as I could tell. In some cases the river is replaced by an impassable forest or a ruin. But basically they are just dull, dull, dull. I’d rather have fewer interesting maps than a lot of boring maps.

One way to look at it is that if you like the singleplayer, you may not like the multiplayer; if you like the multiplayer, you may not like the singleplayer. So go get it ;D

Yeah, I actually don’t understand the “playing the same map” and “it’s repetitive” complaints. Like, not at all. This game is not set up like a typical single-player RTS–the maps are not linear, scripted gauntlets that you mow through to progress the story. It’s not an exploration game–in fact, all the maps start out fully revealed. They are designed to represent strategic locations, and typically have a sprawling, open-ended design with various strategic objectives scattered all over. They are more akin to a map in Battlefield 1942 than to a map in a typical RTS campaign–did you complain about having to play Wake Island more than once? I actually like that the game gives you the sense of a war surging back and forth across the same territory.

And actually, the DoW2 campaign is better than something like BF1942, because while it does send you back to maps that you’ve visited before, you are generally going back with different objectives that often provide a sense of larger continuity to the game. For instance, you might capture the foundry on one map during a mission (holding foundries give you ongoing strategic bonuses in the campaign, even after you have completed the mission). Then, later, you might get intelligence that says that orcs are mustering for a raid on that foundry, and if you don’t go defend it, you’ll lose it. That will be an optional mission in which you can go back to that map, land at the foundry, and mount a defense against waves of orcs. Or you can elect to skip that mission and do another one instead, but if you do, you lose the foundry. And then later you might get a report that some badass Eldar hero was spotted in that region, so then you might go back to that map and hunt him down. Over time, you become more familiar with the terrain in the various maps, and this actually serves to make them tactically more interesting (much like becoming more familiar with a popular skirmish map) because you aren’t just flailing around in unknown territory, like you are in most RTS single-player missions.

And most of all, I like that this is a game in which you are allowed to FAIL missions and still move forward.

Don’t get me wrong–the single-player campaign has its flaws. Lackluster AI is a big one, at least on the default difficulty level. There are too many maps where the baddies just hang around at some location and wait for you to show up, like mobs in an MMO. Too many of the scenarios are asymmetric affairs, in which you sweep in with a small group of highly trained units and take on a large horde of enemies that are far more numerous but much dumber than you. That’s okay for some missions (like defense missions, where the challenge is avoiding attrition), but I think missions in general would be more interesting if you were fighting against comparable numbers of foes that employ smart tactics.

I also think that the relatively minute penalties for death are problematic. I was really excited for this game because I love (LUUUUUURVE!) the idea of bringing a finite number of units to a battle and being forced to make the best of what you have. That’s one of the things I generally dislike in RTSs–the “disposable units” dynamic, which takes a lot of emphasis off tactics and puts it on production. I know a lot of RTS players like that, but I prefer games that focus on the fighting (disclosure: Myth is my favorite RTS ever). So DoWII lets you bring four units onto each map, and there is no unit building, so that’s all you get.

But unfortunately, it’s almost trivially easy to revive fallen unit leaders. Your force commander starts the game with an item that heals all fallen leaders in a huge radius around him, and it has way too many charges per mission. So if you make a bad tactical play and half your force gets wiped out, you can often just hit that reset button, retreat all your units to a captured strategic point (which replenishes them with reinforcements), and then start over. So in practice, it works more like a unit cap, and is not much like games in which you actually have to accomplish goals with finite resources (like Myth, or the Creative Assembly games).

Additionally, I dislike the decision they made to not ever allow any of your units to permanently die. They always end up safe and sound aboard the Armageddon after a mission, even if you fail and let your whole force get wiped out. I think they missed an opportunity to set up a dynamic in which mission to mission unit preservation is a pressing concern, much like X-Com or Fantasy/Panzer General. As it stands, we’re back to disposable units again. Well, unkillable rather than disposable, but in gameplay terms, it amounts to the same thing.

So in short: the single-player game in DoW2 has some serious flaws, but the overall concept and mission repetition are not among them. I think it falls short of being as good as it could have been, which is disappointing. On balance, it’s better than the single-player games in most RTSs, though.

Fail and move forward? Ben, you failed a campaign mission in DoW II?

I kid.

Actually I have failed one thus far – and I didn’t move forward as much as I was forced to redo the mission over again but got to keep my XP from the previous fight. Or did you play a mission where you died and then played a new mission ala Panzer General? Because that would be cool.

I don’t mind the reused maps in the campaign and I like the RPG item stuff and the XP gathering and even the lack of base building and troop hiring but thus far, and I’m only on like “day 15”, I barely have to think at all to win. Throw my guys in the meat grinder and poof – victory. I lost that one mission because my Assault Marines went too far ahead into the next pre set bad guy group.

But Lackluster AI is an understatement. There hardly is any AI at all, and I’m not the kind of guy who needs a “hard” game to have fun, but I’d like to have to use more tactics than “go forward and use your abilities.” Cover? Who needs cover? My guys take a BEATING and just keep on ticking. Space Marines have swank armor but damn.

And I totally agree about the lack of death. The grunts don’t even matter and the commanders can never die…they are “safely extracted” which is a bit of a cop out imo.

I like DoW2 as a MP/skirmish game quite a bit, but all of the cool campaign trappings don’t matter if the enemy stays in its set piece location, you move into it, kill them, and move on each and every mission. And 15+ missions in, that’s what I’m seeing.

And don’t get me started on the silliness of the “boss” battles. That’s a bad design choice and is thematically stupid.

Embarrassingly, yes–I failed a mission. ;)

I suspect that you have to replay story missions if you fail them, but if you fail other mission types, you just move on. And yeah, the AI is crappy. “Lackluster” is maybe a bit of an understatement.

William, what level are you playing at? I hear Primarch is pretty challenging for almost everyone. I definitely lost a lot of guys when I started on Captain, and am still losing guys on Sergeant, although less frequently.

Isn’t what the enemy does here essentially the same as what they do in Diablo, or Titan Quest, or even Mass Effect? You enter an area and there’s a bunch of monsters there. If you get close enough you activate them and they do their thing. Once you wipe them all out you move on to the next room or next area. Every once in a while there’s some triggered scripting where they all do something special, like everyone on the map comes charging in at you ala DoW2 defensive missions. I think that’s the model here, and it works pretty well for Diablo, TQ, ME. I would be interested in seeing how it could be improved with a better AI though.

I suspect the reason why the Sergeants never die is that would ruin their storytelling.

It is, and that’s actually fine in an action RPG, but falls somewhat below my expectations in a strategy game. What I want is an enemy that has their own objectives and works towards them, much like enemies did in Myth and in the Creative Assembly games. Enemies that just sit around waiting for you to come and kill them–that’s pretty weak. The only time I’ve seen the AI do anything on its own initiative so far is in defense missions.

I agree. It works okay here as it does in Diablo, but a new model could be better, and it would really make the campaign mode a lot more special.

Innovation is an illusion, the removal of base building and production is simply a way to step closer to Close Combat. CoH already suggested something.

The problem with the AI isn’t just on the strategic level, but on the fact that the units don’t use their tools. That’s the game-breaking part. The unit are designed to use special skills and the AI doesn’t know how to use them.

I am enjoying DOW2 for the multiplayer. In the beta I mostly played against the AI, which as I have learned, was only good for figuring out how units work. Even the highest setting poses little challenge against someone who understands the basics and knows the maps a bit. But it does nothing to help you against other players.

To make matters worse, I chose to play Eldar. What a mistake. I have never won a retail match with the Eldar. The latest game I played was the worst. It was on the new 1v1 jungle map, and I built three guards to go with my FS. My plan was to avoid combat and rush around capping things until I could build a wraithlord. Simple, but it was a plan. But before I had even capped my first resource, I saw an Apothecary on my side of the map. He had a tac squad with him, and he grabbed some good cover and attacked. I thought to myself, this guy is crazy, I have three squads and my FS, I’m going to take that Tac marine out. Big mistake. Even with my guards in cover the Tac Marine killed one of my guards and sent my FS in retreat, and my other two guards were losing health. The Apothecary’s crazy heal was keeping the Tac in no danger. So, I ran.

I tried to run around and cap points, but I was down a squad, and pretty panicked at that point. I managed to lose track of another squad during a cap and lost a second. The Apothecary player then put 2 devestator squads in the buildings outside my base. I was trapped, and a long way from having the power for a wraithlord. I did finally get him out, but it was a joke by that point because the map control was 100% his for most of the game.

But, I like the fact that the 1v1 multiplayer games are short and action packed. I only get an hour or so to play per day, so it’s great to be able to get a couple of games in each night. And when I play the Ork warboss I can actually beat other terrible/noob RTS players. After a good match, I’ll actually spend more time watching a replay than the original game. That’s when I get to see and enjoy most of the graphic details in the battles. I think I’m sticking with the Greenskins from now on.

I doubt I’ll ever touch the single player game, but I plan to play the 1v1 game for a while. I’d like to play 3v3 but I don’t always have access to my mic, and I’m afraid the team game relies on it too much. If people are putting Qt3ers on friends list I’m rockpalmero on Live.

At first, I was all…huh?

And then I started to get the single player.

It ain’t remotely a strategy game. It’s got blue, green and gray loot, man! Deal with it!

Now if you’ll fucking excuse me, I’ve got some blues to farm.