The single-player campaign is truly something epic, with multiple mission options that keep you coming back.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2  takes what I thought of the real-time strategy genre and transforms it.  This is definitely the good kind of transformation, it’s the Optimus Prime kind of transformation.  Dawn of War 2 is a lot of fun, and when I turned the game off I wanted to come back.

I’m breaking the review up into two parts, the single-player game and the multiplayer game.  The reason is fairly simple, the two modes are fairly different.  The multiplayer mode is more of your traditional fare for RTS’s while the single-player mixes in some roleplaying and tactical elements.

The other reason is fairly obvious, I just spent a good amount of time beating the single-player game and it was so engrossing I wanted to write about it right away.  It combines great story-telling elements with great gameplay elements and you can’t go wrong with that.Dawn of War 2 (DOW2) introduces you to the game in a way that’s fairly intuitive and weaves the entrance of characters into the introduction of gameplay.  You start out with the Force commander along with Tarkus and his squad of Blood Angels. The game mixes tutorial with action and allows you to click on bubbles to better inform yourself.  (This can definitely be good when learning about making sure your units have cover, because it allows them to deal damage while deftly protected.)

It transforms the traditional RTS mode, because you’re not going to build a base and manage resources in the single-player game.  Dawn of War 2 subtracts the town-building elements of the RTS genre and ramps up the warfare.

For the purposes of the campaign mode, you are the Force Commander.  He’s a hero unit akin to the kind you’d see in Warcraft 3, but with an added layer of depth because you choose the attributes you level up.  Each squad you have the option of deploying has a squad leader that you level up along with the Force Commander.  With the rare exception, you can only deploy 4 squads at a time from an eventual total of six squads.  You have to take your Force Commander, so it essentially leaves you with 3 spots for 5 groups.

You've got the option to choose which groups deploy and certain missions are definitely easier when you make the right choice.

The way you choose to equip your Force Commander should be balanced with how you choose to arm your group.  I chose to focus on the melee aspects, as you can see to the right, pouring points into my strength option.  There are four options that put simply determine your hit points, ranged damage, melee damage and energy (for using special abilities).  Because of my focus on melee, I was giving the Force Commander the very best melee weapon drops I was picking up.  Along with the swords, axes and rippers equipped, if it’s a one-handed weapon you can also equip a sidearm.  Generally, it’s not that used because the Force Commander gets sent into the midst of the action and is swinging with fury.

The first squad that’s paired with the Force Commander is led by Tarkus.  He leads a group of space marines that are definitely more than your standard grunt units. You can outfit them with almost any weapon (depending on which stats you build up).  I chose to go the traditional route and equipped them with ranged weapons and built up their ranged stats accordingly.  Tarkus, with points in the stamina tree, has the ability to taunt units into attacking him.  This is particularly useful in combination with another ability called Tactical Advance.  Tactical Advance reduces the ranged damage Tarkus and his space marines take.  Those two abilities combined can give your army the time it needs to reduce the enemy to ashes.

You also eventually get paired with a group of scouts led by Cyrus.  The scouts were probably my least utilized unit, but I could see them being particularly useful if I had cranked up the difficulty.  Cyrus and his scouts can utilize the infiltrate ability that allows them to slip behind enemy lines (cloaked) to plant a bomb and destroy a building.  With enough points in the energy tree, Cyrus can actually use abilities while cloaked and out of sight.  The kind of weapon the group equips actually determines a type of special attack Cyrus gets to use.  If armed with a sniper rifle, Cyrus can take a high-powered shot that devastates infantry units.

One of my favorites groups to deploy were the heavy weapons marines led by Avitus.  Big guns dealing big damage is how they live, but there are some strings attached.  Avitus and his marines wield heavy weapons that require setup time.  Once they get setup though, watch out.  With enough points in the ranged tree, the setup time is eliminated and Avitus can start firing immediately.

You can also call on Thaddeus to join your missions.  Thaddeus leads a group of assault marines who can jump into the action from quite a distance away, disrupting entrenched units.  Combined with a decent melee load-out, Thaddeus and his marines can do a good amount of damage while also allowing your ranged units to get into place so that they can start dishing out the damage.

The fifth and final member of the squad is pretty amazing.  It’s also a vital part of the story line of the game, so I won’t give away who it is.  The unit is the only vehicle that you will deploy during the campaign.  He’s placed inside of a Dreadnought (scroll down to see the description) and with the right equipment will become a key part of your deployments.

It seems wasteful to send down a droppod everytime you deploy on a mission, but these are Blood Marines and I don't really see them as being the environmentalist type.

As mentioned, you only get to take four groups down to the surface for most missions.  It’s important to equip your marines with the right kind of weapons for the enemies you’re going up against.  The mission description will let you know if the enemy has vehicles in the area, which would be a good indicator to toss Avitus a plasma cannon (effective against vehicles) and to bring along some explosives.  My favorite grouping wasn’t available until later in the game, when groups combined with weapon and armor drops created a tour de force.  Missions often could be completed in various ways, but I found the “guns-a-blazing” route was my favorite option.  Cyrus sat on the bench a lot.  The game warns you against leaving out one unit all the time though, because there will be a mission where the stealth options Cyrus offers are of greater benefit than the massive guns brought by Avitus.

You will get more weapon drops through the campaign than you will ever be able to equip.  It seems like the designers knew that was going to happen though, and you’re given the option of trading in items for experience.  I actually got myself in trouble a couple of times using it though, keeping only one key group of armaments and armor and trading away everything else.  There’s also the option of sharing load-outs between different groups, depending on the units that you send into battle.

Your army will always be outnumbered by the opposing force. It doesn't matter, the Blood Marines are dominant.

In battles, there will be times when your seemingly invincible Space Marines will get into a situation where they need to regroup (I’d say retreat, but it just doesn’t seem right).  This could be for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the death of some of your squad members.  Each squad has a certain number of units, but a shared number of hit points on the display.  Your squad leader is always the last one to die.  There are bonuses at mission’s end for keeping your squad leaders alive, so it is advantageous to turn and run if the battle isn’t looking good.  You can fallback to respawn points on the map.  The single-player part of the Dawn of War 2 doesn’t have the traditional base-building, resource-gathering type of home base.  Instead, there are various relay points around the map that you capture in order to call in reinforcements.  These points are usually defended, but any casualties of the fight are replenished when you capture the relay.  I don’t know if there’s a limit on the number of reinforcements you can get as I never ran into it, but your mileage may vary.

There are no medics in Dawn of War 2.  Your army, when not in battle, regenerates its health and energy.  You’ll usually have time in between fights to heal up.

If your squad leader, or Force Commander, falls they have to be revived by a fellow squad or restored using an equipped item.  Equipped accessories come in a variety of types.  There are pure stat boosters, limited-use items and replenishable items.  Stat-boosters are pretty self-explanatory, you get a better character by equipping them.  Limited-use items are things like turret drops and aerial strikes, the number of which are determined by points of interest you’ve captured on the planet.  Grenades and healing packs are examples of replenishable items.

There are three planets to deploy for missions: Calderis, Meridian and Typhon Primaris.  The environments are varied, from desert to jungle to cityscapes.  The environments are certainly pretty thanks to an impressive graphics engine.  And they are destructible, which means that building housing a force of Orks can be toppled with a well placed detonator.

The missions you’re given don’t have to be completed in a particular order.  You’ll have multiple mission options available and you can choose to do them in the order you wish.  There are missions which have a deadline.  They’ll give you three days to complete the mission, and you usually only have one deployment per day.  However, depending on your performance on some missions, you can actually earn more deployments on the same day, allowing you to get more done.  The determining factors are speed (did you finish fast), durability (did your men survive) and devastation (did you kill them all).  There is good variety to the mission types as well, and each mission you complete comes with a reward on top the items you pick up during the fighting.  Because you choose your missions, you have the option to defend a control point, assault a boss, or capture a certain strategic objective.

There are three strategic objectives: foundries, shrines and communications arrays.  Each has a different impact on your deployment.  The number of secured foundries on the planet determine the number of sentries you can drop on defense missions.  Similarly, the number of communication arrays determine the number of orbital strikes you’re given.  The maps are constant.  You will see the same strategic objects again, so if you chose to capture a shrine on one mission, on the next you can capture the foundry left behind.  There’s also a level of infestation on each planet that has an effect on each mission.  You’ll see more enemies if the infestation is higher.

Dawn of War 2’s single-player campaign is epic.  There’s so much to write about, I had to make three additions to the original post I forgot. The storyline draws you in, unit development adds diversity and choice, and there’s a heaping helping of action to keep you coming back.  As epic as the campaign is, it won’t fully prepare you for the multiplayer experience, which is another reason I broke up the review into two parts.

Everything you do in the campaign can also be done with a friend.  I didn’t have a chance to try out the co-op mode as my Steam friends were all busy, but it’s there should you want that single-player experience to be a little bit more friendly.

The single-player campaign introduces you to each race (the Orks, Space Marines, Eldar and Tyranid) but not all of the units you’ll encounter in multiplayer.  I’m looking forward to diving into the game even more.

One thing before the end, Dawn of War 2 is utilizes both Games for Windows Live and Steam.  When you install the game, it adds it to your Steam games list, meaning you can install it again as many times as you like.  I’ve an expanded friends list on Steam, which is nice but haven’t used a Games for Windows account much at all.  It’s what’s used for multiplayer matchmaking though, so I’m sure to get acquainted with it soon.

There’s a demo available if you’d like to give it a try.  You can find it here.

Questions, comments? Hit the section below.  Shoot me a note on Twitter or send me an email at matt(dot)schuler(at)woodtv(dot)com.