Dawn of War II

[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.

[Major Robert Dump]

Never leveled my assault marines, they are still level 9 while everyone else pushes 20. They were very weak early on and it made me mad, plus I was having too much fun playing ninja-killa with my scouts. Unfortunately, scout assasination methods ruin the speed score on mission complete.

the explosive rounds for sniper rifle are incredible, for shotgun they are okay but if you are in a situation where you are using your scouts for general ranged damage than I suggest you bring another unit. Shotgun doesn't really trump suppression with a good bolter, unless you can get an uber shotty with some good +kill and +AOE effects.

Nice to see various strategies here, good inidcation the SP aspect is a winner.

[Spino]

The Assault Marines and their landing AOE dmg and knockback are ridiculously overpowered. Combine them with a melee spec'ed commander sporting a teleporter and it's pure OP pwnage. Seriously, all you need to do is get just within range of a group of baddies, initiate a jump jet assault then port in the commander. The commander typically arrives first, aggros everything (initiate Warcry if necessary) and then the Assault squad lands to flatten the rest. Rush in the other squads to assist; Avitus on Focus Fire, Tarkus for general fire support and the occasional 'nade. Wash, rinse, repeat. This is particularly effective against the Tyranids since it immediately negates the effectiveness of their swarm style units. I have to force myself to use Cyrus and his scout team against the Eldar and Orks just to spice things up.

I have mixed feelings about the SP game.

I love the way the story and mission progression is structured. Even though the writing is lacking and stilted I'm still sucked in by the whole affair. I love having to put out fires and stem the Tyranid tide on each of the planets. I also love the rpg aspect to leveling & kitting my squad. The gorgeous graphics, spectacular effects & animation and the overall excellent presentation help a great deal.

The maps get old... quick. How many times do I need to fight over the same ground? At least in DoW: Dark Crusade & SoulStorm even if you fought over the same ground the traditional RTS build & battle design meant each battle was never the same. In DoW2 each time you're forced to fight for the same region the enemies are found in the same exact areas. Eventually you find yourself following a pattern which ultimately becomes boring the nth time you've done it.

I hate the boss battles... BOSS BATTLES?!? What is this, a PS1 game? I outgrew boss battles back in the late 90s. I hate them. I hate having to run around like a ninny and wear down an uber enemy with a ridiculous amount of health. I hate having to figure out the special strategy and then do it over and over. Shoot the generators and when the boss breaks into song kick him in the family jewels! It's tired, dull and it smacks of lack of imagination. Enough already. What's worse is DoW2's boss battles are pretty much the same regardless of the type of boss you fight. Quickly clearing out the same map for the umpteenth time and saving the boss battle for last just so I can max out the XP rewards and gain an additional deployment pretty much sucks the immersion out of the game for me.

MP & Skirmish modes

I'm not an uber-micro skill RTS player so I avoid the pain and anguish that accompanies playing MP games vs. kids & geeky teens on sugar highs. In fact I'd go so far as to say that despite the smaller scale DoW2 requires far more uber-micro skills than CoH & DoW combined! Just to give you an idea of my likes/dislike the Total War games are about the only kind of RTS MP I enjoy playing.

The skirmish AI blows, it's worse than Company of Heroes and alot worse than DoW:SS. That alone kills this game's long term place on my hard drive. Annihilation mode was a blast in DoW and CoH but it doesn't cut it anymore in DoW2, it's clear the gameplay and maps simply aren't geared towards that mode anymore. I don't like Take & Hold style games because I find the notion of holding onto x number of nodes for x period of time too artificial, gamey and seriously un-warlike.

Where is the war in WARHAMMER? This feels more like SpecOpshammer 40K than Warhammer 40K. I love small unit actions as much as the next guy but there is a glaring lack of 'epic' in this game, much moreso than Company of Heroes which already scaled back the 'epic' in contrast to the original Dawn of War games. I can deal with the small scale action in the SP game but I really want to fight giant battles in skirmishes vs. the AI.

Oh, and the music? Well, it's... there. I have every DoW & CoH track on my mp3 player and I rarely tire of listening to them. Inon Zur did a great job scoring those games! But with DoW2 most of the music sounds like it's sole purpose is just to provide some background noise while you kill everything. I can't believe this stuff was composed by Jeremy Soule, it sounds like he just 'mailed in' the entire soundtrack so he could get a new addition to his house.

Despite my larger list of dislikes I do like the game... but it just doesn't have enough meat to keep me coming back for more like the original DoW did. Once I clear the SP game I do not see myself loading it up for repeated skirmish games vs. the AI. I'll take a heavily modded DoW campaign or skirmishes battle anyday (DoWXP and Skirmish AI = pure joy). Company of Heroes didn't offer the same challenge or longevity as DoW and sadly it appears DoW2 is simply more of the same.

Overall I think DoW2 ranks below DoW & CoH. I think Relic needs to go back to basics the winning formula that made DoW & CoH such huge successes. Keep DoW2's rpg aspect and random campaign missions and ditch the rest.

[Meneldil]

As much as I agree with you (from my beta experience, I think I'll try the campaign just for the heck of it), it's true that releasing a basic RTS would have been suicidal with Starcraft 2 coming soon.

We all know SC2 will rock the house and pretty much destroy any concurrent. I don't really know how, as I don't think SC1 was awesome, but it will anyway.