Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II arrived in 2009 with a problem built into its name. It is a sequel to a game it does not play like. Relic Entertainment removed base building outright, pulled the camera in close, and rebuilt the real-time strategy formula around squads, cover and fast fights. The result is the most divisive entry in the series and, on the evidence, the best one.
Trailer, via dawnofwarDE.
Calderis, Sub-Sector Aurelia, and the Blood Ravens
The campaign opens with the Blood Ravens Space Marine chapter returning home to Sub-Sector Aurelia to rebuild after heavy losses in the Kaurava campaign. Ork attacks are already threatening to wipe the chapter out permanently. The player and Sergeant Tarkus deep-strike onto the desert planet Calderis to aid Captain Davian Thule and his initiates.
What follows is a hunt, not a base race.
Playable armies at launch are the Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Tyranids. The Chaos Space Marines and the Imperial Guard arrived later through the expansions Chaos Rising in 2010 and Retribution in 2011. The plot threads the campaign together through characters rather than territory: Scout Sergeant Cyrus, Sergeant Avitus, Sergeant Thaddeus, and the Ork Mek Badzappa, whose mechanical eye lets him see what the Eldar are doing.
That last detail matters. Cyrus notices the Orks are picking targets with unusual strategic skill and guesses a third party is directing them. He is right. The Eldar are disguising themselves as Orks and steering the attacks at key Imperial targets. A campaign that could have been a checklist of planets instead has a mystery with an answer.
Cover Is the Whole Game
Jonny Ebbert, the game’s lead designer, described the feel of Dawn of War II by saying it “takes everything that was great about the original and combines it with the best that Company of Heroes had to offer.” That is a fair summary of what shipped.
Cover now grants substantial defensive bonuses, and the game builds its counterplay around that fact. Grenades and other explosives destroy cover. Flamers ignore cover bonuses completely. Squads under fire seek cover on their own thanks to improved unit AI, and vehicles are scaled more realistically, backed by an improved physics engine.
The fall back command is the sharpest addition. A squad or command unit retreats at higher speed, becomes resistant to ranged damage and more vulnerable to melee. It turns a bad fight into a decision instead of a loss.
The AI Knows Where You Put Your Suppression Squads
The AI is the weak point, and it is a real one. The source is blunt about this: the AI is easy to manipulate. Place suppression squads and it will instantly know they are there and avoid them, which lets a player funnel the enemy army wherever they want it. The fall back command gets used somewhat liberally, which compounds the problem.
This is not a small flaw in a game built on tactical positioning. It is the difference between a skirmish and a puzzle with one solution.
Games for Windows – Live
Dawn of War II is a Games for Windows – Live title and uses the Xbox Live Achievements system. It is the first widely released, PC-exclusive game to do so. A player must be able to connect to the Windows Live servers to reach the game’s multiplayer features.
Single player, multiplayer and co-operative modes are all present. The requirement to authenticate against a service to play them is the least interesting thing about the game and the thing most likely to break it.
What Dawn of War II Gets Right
- Removing base building forces every fight to be about position, not production.
- Cover, and the tools that beat cover, give the RTS a readable tactical layer.
- The fall back command rewards a player who knows when to quit a fight.
- The campaign gives the Blood Ravens a reason to be on Calderis beyond a map marker.
- Four launch armies, with two more added across two expansions, is a generous roster.
The base-building removal is the decision that defines Dawn of War II. It cost the game some of its predecessor’s audience and bought it a tighter, more intimate kind of battle. The Eldar misdirection plot, the mechanical eye, the deep strike onto Calderis — these are the parts that stick.
Where Dawn of War II Stands
Dawn of War II is a sequel that bet against its own lineage and mostly won. The AI manipulation problem keeps it from the top tier. Everything else — the cover system, the fall back command, the campaign’s mystery — holds up.
Key facts
- Released: February 19, 2009 (North America), February 20, 2009 (Europe)
- Developer: Relic Entertainment
- Publishers: THQ, Feral Interactive
- Platforms: PC (Microsoft Windows), Linux, Mac
- Launch armies: Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, Tyranids
- Expansions: Chaos Rising (2010), Retribution (2011)
- Sequel: Dawn of War III (April 2017)
- Score: 8.1/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 6 outlets)
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
