As a follow-up from my Letting off some Steam™ post a few days back, I thought it would be good to post my thoughts now that I've actually been able to play the game (and some other general feedback).
I remembered reading somewhere that Dawn of War-2 was quite visually stunning and quite a good game. Having played the first iteration DoW, I was expecting more of the same Squad based RTS that really set the first game apart from its RTS brethren.
What DoW2 delivered however, was something quite vastly different from the first game. It's some-what difficult to describe it exactly, but it's somewhere between a RTS and a RPG taking some of the good elements from both genre's into a single experience.
The gameplay takes place with you controlling a commando squad of Blood-Ravens, with no resource gathering or base building some hard-core RTS fans might be disappointed, but the strategy component is definitely a strong point in the game.
The first few missions teach you how to control your squads and move them in and out of cover (this probably could have been handled better but it does the job okay) and these first few missions are fairly forgiving in their difficulty without feeling like baby-sitting.
As the game progresses and you level up your squads and pick different abilities and start to outfit them with some of the random pickups you find and earn the game really starts to shine, as you can customize your squads to your preferred play-style.
I personally favored the ranged heavy-bolter squad and the tactical marines, out-fitting them with the best gear I could find, but I could easily imagine another player going heavily into the close-combat squads with a completely different strategy for each mission.
The game does ship with online multi-player (unfortunately this is forced upon you via Microsoft Games for Windows) and offers some interesting modes. One in particular I quite liked was the "Survive the Horde" mode, which is played with 2 friends (or randoms) and pits you against ever increasing difficulty waves of enemies.
Overall I was very impressed with the quality of the game, and I expect to put many more hours into both the campaign (hopefully I can organize co-op) and also the multiplayer missions. I'd highly recommend the game to any RTS fan's who also like RPG's/MMO's as it does borrow a few elements from both genre's.
Now I have a few gripes about the THQ pack I bought with DoW2 but I'll save that for another post/day...
