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187 of 215 people found the following review helpful.
Fun, innovative, but repetitive and steam+GFWL
By M. Cordoba
The game is fun, but it had the potential to be amazing, and fell short. Originally I said to wait before buying, but the bugs have been ironed out, and now it's a good time, specially at the discounted prices.Things to know:- Requires Games For Windows Live (GFWL) account- Steam installation and account required- No base building (departs from traditional RTS)=== SUMMARY ===I just realized the review has gotten pretty long as I've added other information, so I wanted to write something for those people who want a quick overview:If you don't mind few units, Steam, Games For Windows Live and lack of base building, you will enjoy the game a lot. The loot/items, unique characters, combat right from the start, persistent troops throughout the single player campaign, and an engaging and different 4 races make this game a great departure from traditional RTS. All wrapped up with great graphics, sound and animation to boot. The single player campaign does become very very repetitive after mission 30 or so. (there are probably 80 plus missions - I'm on 75 and counting)=== THE BAD STUFF ===- Steam (more details below)- You need to be connected to the internet to play the single player campaign.- You need to be logged in to Windows Live to play the game... ugh...- [[EDIT February 27: While the game crashed quite a bit when I first got it, it has been very stable with the last 2 patches, improving things dramatically. I only have 1 BSOD right after a February 23 major patch. So it looks like the crashing issues have been ironed out. But it was a serious issue at first]]- Single player campaign ONLY for marines... This is just plainly a bad decision. There are 4 fun and distinct races, with multiple heroes each, and they just do 1 (albeit quite long) campaign with only 1 faction, involving just 1 hero. Very disappointed. I hope they add more campaigns for cheap, like 9.99 for a long campaign for the Eldar or Tyranids.- Can't restart a mission. Got distracted and lost your units? Too bad, you can't restart it to get that reward you wanted. The game goes on even if you fail, which means you have to always be careful of what you're doing.- [[Edit: My wireless internet connection dropped while I was playing, and the game didn't stopped, just a little pop-up came up for a second letting me know the connection to GFWL was dropped - this is just a sigh of relief, as I didn't really know what would happen]]== Steam (why I don't like it) ==1. No resale value. Period. The software is attached to your steam account upon installation, and you cannot transfer the software or your steam account per the agreement you need to accept. (Kills the second game market - also a word of warning: Do not buy this game used - if someone is selling you one, it either won't work, or it's somehow a cracked version.)2. You have to log in to Steam to play the game. (offline mode is there but pointless for the game, since you need to log in to windows live anyhow, still needs to run steam though, even in offline mode).3. SLOW. Opening a game takes forever, since it first has to load up steam, then it needs to connect to steam online, then it starts launching the game. (At least 5 times as long as non-steam games.)4. You can't play your games if the server is busy (unless you do the walk around every boot up to set it to offline mode). This was a most unpleasant surprise, I did not know Steam would actually go that far, and honestly I cannot think of a worse thing, not even DRM is that annoying. I click on my game, then after about 30 seconds trying to connect to steam, it just tells you something like: "Our servers are busy, try again later"... I could go on and on about how dumb this decision is, but I digress. How hard can it be for them to do implement the logic: "If server is busy, launch the game in offline mode". Note, this wasn't for a minute, I couldn't play it for about half an hour of trying to connect to their servers. Also, if there is a patch, you cannot run your game. My internet connection is not blazing fast so a 150MB patch also leaves you without playing until that's done.... This is unacceptable, period. It is a single player game installed in my local computer, I don't want your server to tell me when I can play it or not.Note: Steam is not securom or a rootkit or malware like some reviewers are suggesting. It's just an extra software layer, some people love it (you can buy games online, it keeps track of your friends, so you can see who is online and play with them, etc. So there is stuff to like about Steam.=== THE GOOD STUFF ===- Co-op single player campaign. You can progress through the campaign online with a friend.- Graphics are really good, animation is great.- Loot. (there are white, green and purple 'drops' to powerup the crews from the campaign. So you can customize your characters with new weapons.- Leveling. You level up both in the single player and the multiplayer games. In the campaign you even get to enhance your stats by spreading those points around. In multiplayer it just increases your attributes, making a veteran squad much more powerful than a new one.- Tactics are all about combat. (Even though I like base building, it was nice to depart from it - more info below).- Smaller number of units - (you cannot just outnumber your opponent to victory, you need to plan and use your units accordingly)- 3 levels of cover (standing behind rocks makes you harder to hit/damage at a maximum level, while standing behind say, a fence gives you only a medium level of cover protection.- Destructible environment- The 4 races play very differently, making the game more unique.- Even though I am disappointed the campaign is only for the Marines, I have to commend the developers, because it's actually a long campaign. I haven't finished it yet, and played through at least 35 missions, if not more. Granted you have the option of finishing it sooner, but I am doing all the optional missions too.=== NO BASE BUILDING ===Since these 3 items are new for RTS games, I wanted to expand on Relic's implementation as far as the single player campaign goes:- I have come to really, really enjoy not having a base. It works superbly along with the small number of units. In typical RTS I found myself building a well defended base, while "teching" so I could unload lots of powerful units and overwhelm the enemy. So basically, it took a while to complete a mission, and most of the time was spent building defenses and teching up, while the actual battle took very little, since the enemy was outmatched. In this game, you start fighting right away.=== SMALL NUMBER OF UNITS ===Most of the time you control 4 squads (in single player, multiplayer is 100 units per race, which depending on the unit type can be 12-15 squads)What I like about it:- You learn to care more about your units. (you cannot afford to lose squads in an important battle) You get to experience each squad's personality through their leader, and they are always with you - they are with you through the entire campaign.- War tactics become most important. Using cover wisely, using the special items wisely (like a grenade to quickly clear units inside a structure)- And what I like the most: I know my squads 1 - 4 hot keyed, so I can call upon each squad when I need them. I am not managing 100 units where I just select all and click attack - in order to be successful, you need to plan out your attack, heal your quads when needed, and basically be able to quickly call upon any squad when the need arises. (My sniper squad is being attacked by stronger melee units, I need to quickly hit the hot key of my jump squad to jump there and save them)=== LEVELING ===Commenting only on the single player campaign.Do I want my hero to be melee based, or do I want him to be a range damage type? (through the levels and experience points you can choose a path). Do I want my all purpose squad to be stronger in melee? Or do I want to make it into a range squad? Do I want my sniper team for this mission, or should I go with my melee team?=== BOSS FIGHTS ===They are fun, and a lot of them really hard. They can quickly wipe out your squad if you are not careful. They drop powerful items some times, which you can then use to bolster your squad. I think they did this very well, since bosses have special abilities, all the boss fights (so far) have been different from each other.=== LOOT ===I like having to make decisions as to how to equip the squad, which squad should get which powerups, which armor is better suited for x, y or z. However, it also suffers the same problems of most loot systems:- An item will drop that I can't use for 2 more levels (which could take about 4 missions to do at the latter stages).- Right now I have 6 extra pretty good armor drops level 6-9 green drops (sit unused, or switched in for some missions). While my commander has a level 0 gun, and a level 4 sword (there just haven't been good weapon drops for me). My supression squad meanwhile has like 4-5 great guns to choose from. Basically, it is what it is with random drops. I just wish my hero had better weapons at this point, my sniper team is also pretty weak in the weapons department, as is my all-purpose squad.- The reward items for completing missions stink at first (white items, and the random drops from the mission are better). In the latter stages the reward items become very powerful. On a side note, a lot of blue drops seem worse than green drops...- One annoyance is changing the armor of a unit. Sometimes when changing the armor, all your equipped accessories get taken out as well. So you need to re-equip them, which means sorting those 3 items among the 20 others you have in your inventory.=== CONCLUSION ===Overall the game is very fun, their departures from traditional RTS games work surprisingly well, but I do wish they had made a single player campaign for the 4 races, as well as polish the game, so the crashes (even after various patches) wouldn't be present. Obviously, no steam or GFWL would be much appreciated.=== EDIT February 24th ===Relic released a big patch in hopes of solving the game crashes yesterday. While I was encouraged at first, I actually experienced the worse crash I've had after the patch. Before the game would freeze, and Windows would be active, so you could submit the error to Relic. The crash after the patch was a full blown BSOD (blue screen of death) - and I had never seen one in Vista before. I will update after a week with this patch to see how the game crashes are going. (see March 2nd edit below)=== EDIT February 25th ===I have edited several sections and added others. Some things have already been fixed by Relic, so they were no longer applicable. I plan on updating this review as patches are released, so it reflects the current game.=== EDIT March 2nd ===The game has been rock solid stable as of late. No crashes or anything of that sort. So they did fix the issue with the large patch.== NOTE ==If I missed a topic, or you have a particular question, make a post in the comments section, I will be checking those periodically and will give you my honest answer/opinion.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
A new direction but still good.
By Samuel Henderson
I was skeptical when I bought this game. It was not so much Dawn of War 2 as it was its own new game. The only thing it held in common with the original was the setting and the developer. If you can get past the fact that this isn't the original with better graphics then you should really enjoy this game.Single Player, the campaign was very enjoyable. The story was a little lacking compared to say Starcraft but it was much better then Dark Crusade or Soul Storm. The RPG element gives replayablity and is really fun to collect different weapons.Multiplayer, is fast paced and really enjoyable. 3v3 is where its at and you can have games that swing back and forth. The coop campaign is a huge bonus.It does require an internet connection, windows live and steam. But I personally have experienced no problems with this and I find it to be a better option compared to others.The future, this game has tons of options for the future. I really hope relic sticks to their promise of supporting this game, because it could be one of the greats.
35 of 46 people found the following review helpful.
If it ain't broke...
By JC Greffrath
Contrary the developers' opinion, this game does not combine the best of Company of Heroes and Dawn of War; rather, it is CoH translated into a Warhammer 40k storyline -- and a lot gets lost in translation.First off, the experience of installing this game -- simply getting to PLAY it for the first time -- was something I would not wish upon my worst enemy. Downloading and registering for three separate Big Name online platforms is just the beginning; then there's Steam to deal with and the fact that THQ are not thrifty with their update download sizes. Plus there's no way you can run the game if Steam even gets a whiff of an update that it wants. For someone with unlimited broadband access this is no problem; us plebs outside the US and Europe, however, usually have a download cap, which Steam apparently has no sympathy for.The game itself has an amusing, if monotonous, single player campaign, which is apparently touted as having great replay value. I was personally very disappointed with the RPG elements brought into the multiplayer, since this is exactly what Blizzard did to ruin WarCraft II when they made WarCraft III. Aside from the fact that armies are now considerably smaller than they used to be in DoW -- there goes another star off the rating -- the gameplay itself feels much more sluggish and unwieldy. Frankly this cover idea becomes annoying after the novelty has worn off. Combine with this fewer unit options, fewer upgrades, a tech tree that makes you wonder why they even bothered to include it, and you're left wondering how a great game like Dawn of War could have been pruned down to hatch such a lacklustre, over-hyped, and anaemic progeny.Did THQ want to make Dawn of War accessible to younger audiences (eg. the three to seven age group)? Did they simplify DoW because they were hoping to release it on the console platform (which we know is notorious for its lack of depth)? Or did they spend more time liaising with Valve and Microsoft concerning million-dollar involvement contracts rather than thinking about the marrow of their game?Amid these questions, and having finished the game campaign, I search my weary soul deeply for a reason to brush the dust off the CD and run it again. Perhaps this time I'll find that the game is now focused on exciting squad-based combat, or that the RPG elements introduce a hitherto-unexplored depth to the game. However, I just don't feel there would be a point to all the trouble.
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