Dawn of War II

[TinCow]

Wikipedia agrees with you on the base building. It also says that the main complaints are the small scale of the combat. That I can comment on at least. In the single player campaign, while you do manage a small number of units (max 4 units, with maximum manpower of 11 if you take the largest units), the combat is very fun. It is definitely designed towards small scale, fast paced tactical combat. Use of cover and special abilities is critical. If you simply do move-attacks like in other games, you will die quickly. DoW2 is all about keeping your units alive and in utilizing them as a group to accomplish limited goals, before pushing on to new ones.

In the SP campaign at least, the combat is also massive. Your fight against hordes of enemies, particularly when battling the Tyrannids, and it's not unusual to have to cut through literally hundreds of individual enemies before you complete a mission. This keeps the game interesting, as the sheer size of the enemy force and the power of the 'boss' creatures are such that a few mistakes here and there can result in a lost mission. (For the record, I am playing on Captain difficulty, which is one above the 'normal' setting.) As your units get more powerful through experience and 'loot', you can unleash some truly devastating moves, and it's very satisfying to unleash a well-coordinated assault on a large enemy force.

I can see how people who were looking for a larger scale version of DoW1 would be disappointed. This is not Starcraft, it is far more like Brothers in Arms than Company of Heroes. Your units are not disposable and they need to work together as a group to accomplish their goals. I can't fault Relic for this decision though. Starcraft 2 is also coming out this year, and it will likely dominate all other base-building games. DoW2 will probably be able to remain popular once that King of all RTS is out, simply because it's a different kind of gameplay.

[pevergreen]

Theres a good chance of that, yes.

I started off the Beta as a SM player, but switched to 'Nids, as an early game rush with 'Nids will win. T'Gaunts under synapse of Warrior Broods with Barbed Stranglers. 100% Knock down from 16 gaunts combined with two supression guns. Easy win.

As long as you get supression going, you will win. It took me a few days to adjust to the small scale. It was fun at times, but also got a bit boring. Quite often its whoever can get a dreadnaught first.

I'd consider buying the game for the SP campaign, but the attraction of DoW will always be MP for me. Maybe because the first clan I was ever in was a DoW clan.

[Meneldil]

DoW1 was a decent RTS, mostly because it offered huge battles based on W40K setting.

DoW2 is a watered-down CoH with boring combat, a pseudo-hero customization and a half-arsed gameplay (yay for runing around the map taking strategic points that you can't even defend with your 3 squads). Oh, and no unit variety, a lack of W40K ambiance, unbalanced factions and heroes and what not. The list goes on.

Hope the game will be a flop, so Relic goes back at making real STR. If you want to make a tactical game, it should have neither base nor unit building, and should be turn-based, period. In the beta stage, DoW2 was even more of a clickfest than Starcraft.

[Papewaio]

Have one of the many versions of collectors edition. I would have preferred that there was one version not like thirty. I'm not sure if the MP map exists outside of Australian EB Collectors Edition... as I don't play MP.

The campaign is strong and the characters have persistent leveling up, which in IMDHO makes it a lot better then DOW1 where your units started out all over again (yes the commander could get loot, but it was far more limited and that was the only form of persistence).

Before playing online the game suggests playing against bots. In there you will find that there is no base building, hence one very valid tactic of turtling is gone. It does add momentum, which are special global abilities that you unlock as you destroy enemy units. In essence these games are focused on tactical skirmishes not IKEA base building. Makes for relatively short games.

Back to the campaign.

The campaign has a feel very similar to Total War. You have the strategic turn where unfortunately you get minimal choices of where to attack. I was hoping to see an entire world with garbled intelligence coming in. Not two at most provinces that need attention. It is very much a linear storyline... much like the first two sets of DOW1... something rectified with the Necrons.

As for the squad size... it is perfect for gameplay, makes the Space Marines very much like they are in the books, and makes each Sgt. and Commander valuable. Also for those who haven't tweaked yet, the entire team is the same size of a table top squad with IC attached. There are 10 Space Marines plus Force Commander (9 SMs if the Tactical marines are left out).

Very enjoyable, would be nicer to have a more open ended campaign. Some more persistent base building would be nice, as would semi-permanent destruction of buildings on the map.

[Major Robert Dump]

I bought the day it was released and didn't post anything because I was so pissed off.

The box i bought said it came with free gear and extra maps, but apparently that was for the first 10000 people to register, so people who lived farther west were screwed. I don't really care about the gear so much as the extra SP campaign stuff, but the fact is the box said it was "included" not that it was limited availability. Not only that, but apparently there was a way for a single purchase to be used 5x over to get the different sets, so thats shaves the 10000 number down significantly.

Then the game not only requires steam, but windows live. So I gotta be running two applications just to play the game. Sigh. I got people sending me steam pms and windows pms and my head is about to explode.

MP: streamlined. HQ builds everything, except the power stations you put on conduits. And engineer classes can build turrets.

The units are also streamlined as far as number of vehicle variety, etc, which I also think is an improvement.

There is a max squad limit and an overall population limit, which means usually about 6/7 max squads out if you are mixing infantry with vehicles. No more zerging shoota boys by the 100s.

Bosses can level up to 10, at which point they are fairly uber, and units can level up to 4. The retreat button comes in hella handy here as u can have 1 unit left in a squad, send him back, reinforce him cheaply, and save the time and money of having to buy a fresh level 0 unit. Also, retreating units run faster.

I also like how allied bosses can revive each other for free.


SP: Campaign is way cool, as the characters and their stat/level up abilities kind of reminds me of the old XCOM standard. The level cap is 20, so mid-maxxing seems the way to go.

I'm not too thrilled at the thought of MP co-op because I hihgly doubt I'm going to find someone to play out a full campaign with me in multiple settings, and that being said, I don't want others leveling my dudes. I can see it now, my friend stops playing and I want to continue, I log on to find out that he's been making a melee scout and a heavy weapons crew that uses flamers. Oh boy.

I may enlist someone to help me towards the end, when the templates are set, but to me the best part of the campaign is specializing the teams and swapping gear around as needed. I have 6 squads to choose from, one of them I hardly ever use, and my commander and HW squad are level 20. I still have to fight the farseer and locate the big hive, so not sure how close I am to the end.


HINT: If you want to get your squads some levels then on the campaign maps where you have to destroy multiple troop making bases of the enemies, then set up a defensive near your drop pod and go afk. The hordes will come and come and come. I recommend Tyrnaid maps because they don't throw grenades.

I did this on accident on caldaris where I had to take out 4 or 5 hives, left all my units by the pod while I went to take a shower and thought I paused the game. I came back 20 mins later to find loot all over the place and my ranged units all went up 2-3 levels. If anyone died, they would just respawn at the pod.

another note about the campaign: aborting a mission counts towards a deployment, u keep your experience and loot. So if you get off to a bad start and you were shooting for a high mission score, you might as well fight it out and try to get to the boss before starting over. You can actually kill the boss, get the loot, and start the mission over.

Also, if you have extra deployments saved up from uber mission scores, you can go in, claim a strategic asses, abort mission, come back and claim the other strategic asset. I found this out on accident, too, but didn't use this method because I don't really like the stategic asset powers and would rather use other gear in those slots.

I've played lots of MP coop vs AI but havent played any vs people. The one thing that irritates me about the control points is that a unit taking a point can be under attack and the capture won't be interrupted, which makes the tyranids and the eldar swarms of little fast troops really irritating to play against. You will literally take a point, walk away, and 30 seconds later its gone even though you parked a tank there to defend it. yay.

[Meneldil]

Oh yeah, I might perfectly try out the campaign. My brother is also a W40K hardcore fan, so we might actually enjoy the game, but then, the whole point of DoW1 was its multiplayer, and DoW2 MP doesn't seem attractive at all.

[Monk]

Here's a question for all you DoW2 players. I played with the MP beta and hated it, i just didn't like the smaller scale in an MP fashion, however all I am hearing is that the small scale works quite well for SP.

Is this the case? Would you recommend a buy for the sole intention of playing the campaign?

[drone]

Then the game not only requires steam, but windows live. So I gotta be running two applications just to play the game. Sigh. I got people sending me steam pms and windows pms and my head is about to explode.

Even to play single player? Egads. Hopefully they patch that out, like they did the CD check with the original.

[TinCow]

Even to play single player? Egads. Hopefully they patch that out, like they did the CD check with the original.

If you are just doing single player, you can put Steam in offline mode. This allows you to play without any internet access and it avoids all annoying notices.