Dawn of War II

Dawn of War II is amazing.

Why do I say that? Because it’s true. I haven’t finished the game, nor have I played all the armies in skirmish but I have to say it really is quite fun.

I got Dawn of War II this Thursday from Derek, lol… first off, this game is so pirated. :P there is no install, no crack, just copy the game into your harddrive (or is it ONTO? Bah… my grammar is horrid) and then play! Anyways… it works fine, and I love it.

The single player is like Dawn of War I’s single player. It’s a Blood Raven Space Marine Chapter campaign. However, instead of the evil Chaos Marines of Alpha Legion you face off against the Tyranid (which I learned I had been pronouncing wrong this entire time! Lol… I pronounce half my vocabulary wrong. I suppose that’s to be expected since most of the people I hang with don’t speak English as their first language and I don’t use half my vocabulary regularly. :p) So anyways… you fight against the ‘nids the orks and the eldar. The game starts pretty much the same, the orks are attacking and we need to stop them, then it turns out that the eldar were manipulating the orks into attacking this area because the nids were coming and now we’re all doomed because the nids will destroy us all!

So that’s the plot… yes, it’s quite shallow but it’s all the game really needs. Warhammer 40k isn’t known for its amazing plots now, is it? So long as those plots allow for lots of violence and battle, then we’re all happy.

What makes Dawn of War II so different from Dawn of War I is that the campaign is… like an RPG. You get a force commander, a scout squad, a devastator squad, an assault squad, a tactical squad, a later a Dreadnought and you can take your force commander and 3 other squads out on a bunch of missions. As they complete missions they get EXP and sometimes the enemy will drop “Wargear” (read: loot!). At the end of the mission you can level up squads by increasing one of their four skills: health, ranged attack, melee attack, and their special power stuff (what I would call magic power if this game was fantasy…), as well as giving them better equipment.

Now, all your units have their own specializations, but you can mess some stuff around. For instance, the tactical squad is meant to be a ranged “tank” unit and has some powers that make people attack them. However, you can give them chainswords and attack, or a flamer or a plasma gun, or even a missile launcher. Your commander is meant to use melee weapons, but he can also wield a heavy bolter with some leveling. Right now I’m playing everyone to their strengths, tactical squad with bolters, assault squad with chainswords, commander with a power weapon. But next time I play through the campaign I wanna try it all messed up. Give my assault squad bolters and my tactical squad chainswords… that’ll be… fun. :P

My only complaint towards the game would have to be the squad sizes. Your commander has no retinue, and while I can live with that, its somewhat unfluffy… and stupid. Then again, he’s only in charge of like 5 squads and only takes like 3 of them with him on missions, so they’re rather small scale battles. But your squads… are hardly that. Your scout, devastator, and assault squad are 3 man squads, your tactical squad has 4 guys. Sorry, but a sergeant and two bodies does not make a squad, I don’t care what you say. I think they did it for balance reasons, since the orks and the nids have 8 man squads that get eaten alive by a marine tactical squad. So in bigger battles if you wanted 5 man squads (which would mean something like 20 men in a marine army. :P) you’d be fighting… 53ish nids, and I can see how that would be a problem. Still, I don’t like the squad sizes.

Anyways… it’s a good game.