Dawn of War II

[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?

[Papewaio]

SP rocks enough for the price of the ticket.

I think MP needs more maps, and styles.
I would love to see a defend vs horde without numbers map.
Also a persistent version of MP based on the SP campaign could be pure gold (particularly if they took a look at Necromunda and used the experience system from that... ie an Uber army fighting noob would get a win + minimal xp, the nood would probably loose but get an xp bonus).

[TinCow]

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

If you like RTS games, yes. The character-building aspects and wargear (guns, armor, etc.) make the SP campaign very entertaining. It's paced well so that there's always some new piece of loot that you're excited to use or a unit that has gotten a new special ability to try out. The SP campaign is also pretty long; it seems longer than most of the SP campaigns I can think of in other RTSs. There are lots of 'optional' missions, but I've been doing all of them and so far I think I've completed about 30 missions and I'm guessing there are at about 10-15 more. Some are a bit repetitive, but I haven't gotten bored with them yet.

[Major Robert Dump]

i would recommend the game for the campaign, especially considering the level cap means there will be lots of skills/tactics you never use, which will add to replayability down the road if you choose to up the difficulty.

started on normal setting for a few missions, realized it was too easy, and currently working through on Captain. Think I'm near the end. I have Force commander, tactical marines (my faves), scouts (second faves), heavy weapons, assault marines and a dreadnought.

Once the scout gets the ability to use accessories from stealth it is on, baby. I use stun grenades + detonator charges, and fill my third slot with either remote detonators or grenades. And once the scout learns to resuscitate instantly from stealth you don't have to worry about losing to any bosses ever again.

I also tend to make my heavy weapons crew my medic, since they are usually in the middle of my formation, move the least and have hte fewest active offensive skills to use. I use my commander as my tank, so making him the medic (he does have rally, tho) can be disastrous since he's the most likely to go down first.

I'm curious how well a ranged heavy bolter/artillery force commander would work, which would mean I'd need a new tank for early game. I'll probably make a ranged FC on replay

[Papewaio]

Playing Captain level as well.

From the abilities, Tactical Squad can go Bolt Pistol and Chainsword with their first melee skill (~lvl 3) add that to the Assault Squad and you could have two hand to hand squads, Devastators and a Heavy Bolter FC.

[TinCow]

In my campaign (also on Captain) I've found the Assault Marines to be the all-stars. I focused them entirely on melee, and while the Force Commander could dish out more damage in hand-to-hand, the assault jumps are a game winner by themselves. Once you get the low level assault jump improvement skills, landing in the middle of an enemy group does significant damage to them, throws them all to the ground, and suppresses them. Anyone that survives the impact (which can often be surprisingly few) is easily finished off with a bit of shooting while they are out of cover and suppressed. The skill that makes the Assault Marines temporarily invulnerable after a jump is just icing on the cake. I would guess that my Assault Marines are responsible for 40-50% of my kills. I've completely avoided using the scouts, and found the Assault Marines were a good substitute for structure killers. I gave them the demolition packs and it's very effective to have them jump in, toss a pack at the target, then run out (or run in, and jump out, as per the demands of the situation).

The situation changes a bit when you get Terminator armor for them. This massively increases their survivability, but it removes the assault jump ability in favor of a teleport. The teleport does not do any of the damage, stunning, or knockback of the assault jump. For this reason, I eschewed it for a while and considered taking the Terminator armor off of them. Then I discovered that the teleport recharges MUCH faster than the assault jump, and it's also near instantaneous. Once I realized this, my Terminator Assault Marines became pure death machines. They're only level 17-18, but with their armor and the hammer/shield weapon thing, they dish out upwards of 700 damage per second in melee and have about 100 armor. Since they can teleport right into the middle of any enemy formation, they simply don't get hit by ranged fire and nothing but bosses pose a challenge for them. They alone can keep 4-5 enemy groups engaged while the ranged units pound them down, with most of the kills still going to the Assault Marines.

I highly recommend them.

[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.

[drone]

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.

For Steam, I would assume that would work, but what about Windoze Live?

[TinCow]

You still have to have an 'account', but there's an offline account as well. I'm not sure whether that's built into the game or is run as a second program, but I haven't noticed any performance issues due to Steam or Windows Live. I do find it immensely annoying to have to use it, but once its set up properly, you can pretty much ignore it. It seems to be increasingly common these days due to the popularity of 'achievements.'

[Papewaio]

I played Chaos Gate and in that I had a strategy of leveling up the worst troops as tactical marines, my best leaders as sgts, my best shooters as heavy weapons and the worst shots as tactical bolter marines... my better ones (bar the Sgt/Heavy) were in reserve, so even if I lost the bolter marines, I had better replacements. Once I got access to Terminators, I did the same format, Best Sgt with Crux got the Squad Sgt role, then the best shot Terminator got the Assault Cannon, and the worst shots were Storm Bolters... again my better ones (bar the Sgt/Heavy) were in reserve, so even if I lost them, I had better replacements.

So I follow a similar strategy with this in keeping everyone leveled up. Although for the last couple of missions I went all out to get to the Terminator Crux... then found out that only gives access to Terminator Armour that you have found, not to an armory with it (which fluff wise is a bit dubious, given that the TA is treated like holy relics, much like the holy hand grenade of Antioch).

I treat my Tactical Marines as my command squad and all rounders. They are also my tanks so they have gone all out endurance at present. They are a mainstay and go on every mission. I swap out all the rest and have found that of the rest the Devastators are very much my next all rounders in that they do a lot of damage to everyone once they are setup (Tactical using taunt, and Scout using suppression often give the time needed for this to occur). I didn't think much of my scouts until I saw how effect the sniper rifles were against tyranid big 'uns... the special shot from that kills a Carnifex in one shot. I like Assault Marines and they are fantastic against shooty Eldar, but as I have focused purely on Melee, they don't quite have the energy to hit and run... and I don't yet have the micromanagement skills for them.

I don't get much time to play. The home PC runs the game wonderfully well... but it is my wife's work PC first and foremost. So I have only got to level 6 so far. Really want to see how flamers work.