Dawn of War II

[TinCow]

I'm surprised I haven't seen any threads on this game since it's recent release, given the popularity of the first. My wife bought it a few days ago and started playing. While reading up on it, I discovered that the entire single-player campaign could be played cooperatively; this was enough of a reason for me to shell out another $50 for a second copy. We had heavy snow yesterday and my wife and I both used that as an excuse to stay at home and DoW2 all day. Even though we're still just working through the single-player campaign and haven't even touched the regular multiplayer stuff, my conclusion is that it was worth the $100 expenditure.

First, while it seems obvious that the game includes the usual DoW style construction system, so far the single-player campaign has had absolutely none of that. It's a strange mix of the old RTS system with RPG-style character building aspects. You get a set number of specific units (up to 6 eventually, I think) but you can only take 4 on any particular mission. This means you end up swapping units in and out, depending on which abilities are better suited to the task. The units operate like typical DoW units inside the game, but they also earn experience and pick up 'loot.' As you level up, you select which skills your units develop, which makes them better as time goes on. The 'loot' takes the form of better weapons, armor, and accessories, all of which have a direct and significant impact on the performance of the units.

My wife and I both started playing the single player campaign solo to get a feel for it before playing cooperatively. That was fun, but with so many different special abilities to use, I was definitely not getting the most out of my units. Four units are a surprisingly large number to take care of at once when micromanagement of their special abilities makes a significant impact on the game. However, this difficulty when playing solo transformed into great entertainment when playing the campaign together.

When playing coop, each player gets 2 units to control (you can select who gets what before each mission). This allows for superb control over the units, and with good communication with your partner, your tactical moves and attacks become things of beauty. My wife and I have our computers in the same room, and I simply cannot tell you how much fun it is to play through this (very long) campaign with another person the entire time. We split our units up so that my wife took the main ranged units, and I took the main melee units. We have our own specialties in combat and after a couple hours of play, we react perfectly to any scenario.

Well, almost perfectly. There's still plenty of dying... or pseudo-dying. You don't actually lose any units. Each unit is led by a commander, who gets all the special abilities and most of the great loot (though some does affect his lesser minions as well). When all other members of the unit are killed and the commander is reduced to 0 health, he gets incapacitated. He can be revived by other units that are still alive in many ways, but most of these take time or require limited resources. It can be hard, but it's entirely possible to have 3 of your 4 units go down, but save the day with the 4th unit, who then is able to revive and eventually restore all the others. If all 4 units go down at once, you lose the mission and have to refight it. There is no saving in the middle of a battle, which I actually like. This was a surprise to me, as I usually HATE check-point save systems. However, in the DoW2 campaign, it works well. It encourages caution and good tactics, and none of the missions take so long to complete that re-fighting them becomes a chore.

The graphics and sound are very good. The animations are better than the stuff in DoW1, though you rarely get to see them in any detail because you're zoomed out managing your units. The terrain looks great, and is highly destructible. The covering terrain is varied, and there are always numerous buildings to occupy for better defense and whatnot. The games DOES require Steam and multiplayer requires a Windows Live! account. This is horribly annoying when it isn't working right, but if everything works properly it is tolerable and doesn't impact the game too much.

As noted above, I am still working through the single-player campaign. This means I haven't played any faction except the Space Marines, and I haven't experienced the construction system or any of the mechanized units except for the Dreadnought. However, based exclusively on the coop single-player campaign, I am already ranking DoW2 as one of the most entertaining games I've ever played. If you know someone that you could play this game with coop through the entire campaign, I highly recommend that you buy it.