Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II Comments by Robert Purchese

Just a few more weeks!!!!!

can't wait, pre-ordered (for the Emporer)

Ditched my pre-order after playing the beta. Or trying to, thanks to Steam cocking up every 5 minutes. FAIL

I've cancelled mine as well. This game simply is NOT Dawn of War. Its nothing more than a watered down version of Company of Heroes in a DoW frock. A very shallow experience and that is a pity as I was SO looking forward to this. DoW 1 is still the king.

Getting a bit ahead of yourselves there considering there's still the SP game to play.

Not really. I dont play RTS games for linear campaigns. Its all about the multiplay for me and that is lacking big time.

There is a major game revewing mag in my country, that reviewed DoW2 in their February issue which was out at the beginning of the month. It reads that SP is basically a h&s endeavour with no challenge, difficulty curve, real strategical OR tactical depth due to you commanding a very limited in both size and unit types force.

I'm not going to write off the game just based on their opinion, a very early one at that. But from what I've seen in beta things don't really look so good. Tactical/strategical simplicity aside, there is just very little Warhammer40k feel to it, and that is a real bummer for me, not mentioning how important it is for SP campaign. Anyway, I'm very cautious about this one, I'll hold off with purchase decision till more reviews roll out.

This months PC gamer gave it 82% - which beggars belief. They complained about the boring campaign, lack of variety, how DoW 2 is nothing like the original, or even feels like DoW but still scored it 82%. I never believe what reviewers say because sites like IGN for example are good at assigning reviewers to games who are not fans of that genre they are reviewing - so score it low. Look at FM2009. IGN gave it 2/10 before having the review pulled.

Well IGN is whole light years away from being credible, seeing their high 9's for hyped games and completely unstable scoring policy for others. No single review is credible really, since it's just authors opinion, and it's really good to read into it rather than settle for interpreting the score at the bottom. I do believe statistics are a good measure though, the extreme views negate themselvese. Hence I wait for more reviews.

Still, the first signs aren't heartening really, seeing as even the PC gamer you quoted states pretty much the same issues that were brought up in the review I cited, and partly what people bring up on beta forums.

good game though suffers from lag online a lot at the moment and they seriously need more than the final 7 maps that will ship with it im already bored of the 3 3v3 maps that i have played loads off! in saying that the game is pretty fun and can be very competitive with 2 good teams.

im dithering between the pre-order and waiting for a few more maps 1st but as my m8s and me are part of a regular 3 man at the moment ill more than likely crack like an egg and get it :)

to get the most of the game you need to forget you ever played dow or coh and come in with no preconceived ideas of what the game is about. it is shallow at 1st play but as the game progresses you see there is more to it than you 1st though. id reccomend anyone to DL it free from steam and give it a few weeks trial to see if its there cup of tea.

The problem is , we liked DoW 1 for a reason. Relic have taken all the fun bits from that game and removed them! Its bizzare. Command & Conquer, despite lacking any kind of strategy has stuck to its original formula and that is why its successful.

DoW 2 is a completely new game and it insults the name DoW because it isnt nothing more then a shallow 'thing' of a game. I cant even call it an RTS.

"DoW 2 is a completely new game and it insults the name DoW because it isnt nothing more then a shallow 'thing' of a game. I cant even call it an RTS. "

Having spend countless hours in beta I would like to say that at first I was shocked that it was so different. Yes it is NOT DoW1 (which basically is an old school RTS) it is more squad based and smaller scale and now I really like it. Very different, very playable and rather tactical. I am all for developers trying to move the RTS in new directions.... also remember that DoW1 can still be played (what? shock!!) so you can have your cake and eat it too.Also DoW2 is based on the CoH engine and many considered that one of the best games ever.

A lot of the gameplay is a lot more deep and subtle than the classic "build and overpower" RTS gameplay.

The point is - Company of heroes has been done and Dawn of War is NOT company of heroes. Blimey, they have even cloned the units from CoH and slapped the Warhammer outfits over them. YAWN. Relics forums are littered with unhappy people.

Yes, developers should be praised for moving things forward but this is not the case here. As I said, DoW 1 ticked all the right boxes and thats why it was so successful. Those who havent played the original will probably find this shell of a game a blast but the formula used here is dull and the entire game online will become stale very quickly.

The entire match making system needs a huge revamp, which probably wont happen and I dont understand why Relic have removed the ability for players to actually make their OWN decisions when it comes to creating a game. The current set up just doesnt work. Random maps, random players and to make matters worse, how can the match maker put rank 1s against rank 20s?

Relic CAN do better

Problem is, I really can't see this depth and subtelty you're talking about. Most of the fights come down to whether or not your particular units are upgraded the way that suits the situation (lets just forget abut the patch that turned the beta into vehicle spam, they can still fix this before release). The same maps get old quickly, tactical tricks for each are learned by heart. Cover has minor effect on my particular gameplay style (I play the 'nids).

The main gripe I have is that with moving it to smaller scale it basically lost the WH40k feel that the previous one had. The campaign can redeem that but as stated previously, the first reviews aren't exactly heartening in that departament. And I don't consider it being based on CoH engine a merit, since technology doesn't constitute good gameplay.

I'm all for moving the genre forward as well, but into true TACTICAL dimension, where your immidiate tactics choice in a particular environment (and that means both choice of units AND choice of their deployment and manouvers on a unique battleground) decides the outcome of a battle. "Tactical" doesn't have to equal "smaller scale" - just look at Total War games.

Now, Apocalypse WH40k ruleset, Total War style. That would float my boat a whole lot.

@qoobah
The main gripe I have is that with moving it to smaller scale it basically lost the WH40k feel that the previous one had. The campaign can redeem that but as stated previously, the first reviews aren't exactly heartening in that departament. And I don't consider it being based on CoH engine a merit, since technology doesn't constitute good gameplay.

I agree with you qoobah however I have no hope that the campaign will redeem this game as it is even simpler than the multi-player. You have fewer units on the field and so fewer options in battle and you embark on dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl. It's more like a mix of Brothers in Arms and Dungeon Siege than a RTS.

The gameplay itself is now tactical any strategy has been pretty much removed. That, in itself, isn't a bad thing but it's tactical "lite": they could have simplified the unit production and removed the base building but left the scale of the engagements intact (where you could field full squads of marines rather than these 3-man sections, for example) and it'd be good but they stripped everything back and lost too much.

@Dizzy
Gee, thanks so much for explaining that we can continue to play DOW, a lot of us were unsure about that. It doesn't affect our disappointment with the direction they took DOW II in though.