Warhammer 40.000 Dawn Of War II Is not a traditional RTS in fact fans of the traditional base building gameplay RTS games shouldn't go into this game thinking thats the experience that awaits them.In fact building your own base isn't even part of the multiplayer gameplay, Yess you have a base but you will notice improving it is limited to only upgrading technology. Now some will see this as a negative point, but me I love It and I'm gonna tell you why so go on to read the XLN review!

Welcome to the future a very grim future where mankind has explored space and pretty much rules the galaxy. Where superhuman warriors strap themselves into suits of armor that would make the average bodybuilder collapse under the intense weight. In this future you are an unknown force commander of the Space Marines Blood Angel chapter. And when starting the main game your first enemies will be the Orks, but the first few missions are basically tutorials and excuses to gather your different squads and getting to know them.And getting to know them you will each squad has a squad leader and all of them have interesting perspectives on whats happening wich keeps the story interesting.

Now to get to the actual gameplay and to my earlier point to explain why not having the focus on base building is actually a very good thing! Its cause of the main story gameplay, your focus on not having more then 4 squads in the field at a time creates a bond between you and them. It makes you go for the cover instead of rushing your way into a horde of enemies getting ready to build your next few squads. Having your force commander fall in the middle of a tyranid base with most of them attacking you from all sides could make you panic at first. But then you see that building overlooking your force commander and decide to put your heavy bolter squad in there to create cover for your tactical marines. During their rescue attempt you decide to use your assault marines as a distraction and when your force commander is revived you retreat the 3 squads in the field but keep your heavy bolter squad to suppress the enemy. This is just one of the many situations you could encounter, and I'm sure you could use a few different strategies to handle the situation but this is my personal favorite tactic in such a situation.

There is another aspect to the campaign gameplay I wanna bring up and that is the RPG aspect of leveling your squads and upgrading them with different weapons and armor. This increases the bond even further and choosing to give them specific experience points in lets say strength can get each squad different upgrades or special abilities and its enough to affect your playing style doing so. Say a squad didn't have the ability of using certain heavy ranged weapons before but after a few levels choosing to upgrade a specific ability It does, wich gives you the opportunity to experiment with some interesting combinations of squads! I'm more the type that focuses on each squads strengths and builds on that but I experimented a little early on and that was pretty fun! Too bad there is only one campaign available and that is the space marine one, but the campaign delivers such a complete feel to It that its not a real issue in my eyes. I'm sure an expansion or 2 could let us experience these events from a different perspective. I would love to encounter the squads I was controlling In a different expansion playing as the Eldars or Orks!

Like with most RTS games there is also a little thing called multiplayer and well let me just say the experience is pretty satisfying. But its also hard cause everyone online seems to be a better tactician then you are however with practice and looking at how others do it you will learn to hold your own. RTS games are not easy to master, people can come up with new strategies today for RTS games that are 10 years old.Now in multiplayer you have 3 modes a co-op mode for the campaign a strategic point capturing one and annihilation I'm sure you can figure out that the last one is simply aimed at destroying your opponents. The balance like in Relic Entertainment their previous RTS games is just right I didn't have the feeling one race is overpowered each race has their pro's and con's. Space marines focus on brute firepower and armor, Ork's have a little more focus on melee so differences like that but each have different units to deal with different situations. Tyranid's and Eldar have their focus on other aspects of combat but your either familiar with the lore so you know those allready or I will leave them for you to explore for yourself.

The population cap won't give you the chance to simply keep building lots of units, there is a limit and you will probably reach that limit faster then you would like. You can look at It as a negative point because you simply want to build your army and then march them to your opponent's base. Or you can look at It as a way the developer chose to reward strategic thinking obviously just building your strongest unit over and over won't get you far this way. Because you will be easy to counter so your really gonna have to build for the situation your facing at the moment then go from there. The experience is solid and will probably keep everyone entertained untill the first expansion comes out!

Now when It comes to graphics the game holds its own thanks to the many details like crumbling buildings and kicked up dust you never feel like your looking at something ugly. And when it comes to sound the first thing that comes to my mind is the voice acting, and thats excellent at least from your own squads hearing them say lines you would expect to hear in a Warhammer 40.000 game feels pretty good! So when it comes to graphics and gameplay the game is pretty solid!

Now as you probably noticed I'm pretty positive about the way Relic Entertainment took what they learned from previous games and improved It. For me Relic Entertainment proved once again that they are the ones currently leading the RTS genre into a positive direction. They didn't reinvent the wheel they just brought it one step closer to perfection so I give the game a solid 9!