Dawn of war 2 review

[paecmaker]

Today Ive chosen

DAWN OF WAR 2 for my review.


Its a squad tactical stragety game developed by relic.

In the campaign you play as the space marine chapter bloodravens. They are an ancient order that do the most dangerous and deadly missions for the empire.
You start the game as a new commander in a planet system where the orcs are doing some sort of uprising. It is later shown that the orcs only was the beginning.

Gameplay

The gameplay in DoW2 is a squad based tactical strategy without basebuilding. Thats right, you dont have a base and only a limited amount of soldiers.
At the beginning of most missions your squads are dropped down in a drop pod to the battlefield.



They have taken away the victory points, relics and all other strategic points and swithed them.

The most normal point is some sort of emitter witch can heal your squads and replace lost soldiers.

There are also things like shrines and factorys that you can take but none of the strategic points are crucial for most missions. And apart from the emitters you can only take one(1) other strategic point per mission.
Many missions are about killing the enemy leader and destroy some buildings. The missions often end in a boss fight against the leader. Personally I think taht the bosses are a bit boring, they are often just (much)stronger versions of normal soldiers and always have annoyingly much health.

One thing I dont like is that many missions are very similar. You start in one corner of the map and have to fight through the place into the opposite corner, there is a boss waiting to give your soldiers a good spanking, you kill the boss and mission over. I like the missions where you have to do something differently too.

Because you only have a limited numbers of troops you have to use the right soldiers for the right task and move to cover. The cover system is pretty similar to the cover system of company of heroes and features,
Good cover(green dots
average cover(yellow dots)
no/bad cover (white dots)

Most of your squads have a hero as a leader, this means that if they "die" you can resurect the leader. Move the leader to an emitter and you have a full squad again. Your squads also have different powers that can be very useful.
In the missions you will sometimes find special weapons and armor that you can use. If you pick up let say a machine gun you can equip a squad the weapon after the mission.



Between missions you are on a spaceship above the planet. In this place you can alter with you squads and choose missions.

several buttons her you can press like the save button(you cant save during missions), a button to connect to windows live.(you can play the campaign in coop), a button for squad changes and squad choosing.

The mission selection part is shown on the map as highlighted areas.



When you choose squads for a mission remember that you cant use all squads in one missions in later parts of the game.

In squad the equip screen you can give the squad a special weapon and armor to increase their protection and firepower. However not all squads can carry all weapons. You have also different special items that you can put on your squad,like grenades and arty.



You can also sell items for xp to increase level up speed.Graphics

The graphics in the game are pretty screaming dawn of war. The graphics aint bad but I think that the maps are sometimes a little boring even if they look good. The effects are nice and sometimes my pc almost surrendered by the explosions.

The sound is good. The voices of the orcs are as hilarious as always and the explosions got some power in the sound.

Multiplayer

I havent played so much multiplayer for obvious reasons but Ive seen some.

There are two big game modes(and a few lesser) the normal where you have to conquer strategic points and stuff.I havent played it much. You only got control of one building though.

The other one let you take control of one hero and with some friends you have to survive wave after wave of enemies. As you play you will unlock several new wapons, armor and powers.



Points.


Story 7/10- The story evolves so it get better and its always funny to see how the different species react.
Gameplay 7/10- Its really fun to play, but its lesser fun to play repeating missions with some boring bosses.(please skip the bosses in the next dawn of war games or make them funnier)

graphics 8/10- The graphics look good and the effects are really nice but the maps are sometimes boring.

sound 8/10- the sound good and can really overwhelm you in big battles.
Feeling 8/10 It really feels like a warhammer game.

Total points. 8/10 Its a really good game with only a few bad things.

[paecmaker]

Why does it feel like I faile, only 29 views and 0 comments IN TWO REVIEWS(double )

[BobTD]

oh hey, I read your reviews. =D

I have this game already and most of the expansions. As well as all the expansions for the first DOW. So I didnt really comment because its mostly stuff I know about already.

I also had read a few of the novels and various omnibus for factions like the Soul Drinkers. As well as actually having played the table top war game that started the series. (I used to have a pretty large Tau army)

So I am very familiar with the series as well as with it as a game. I feel your explanation of the lore could be more in depth but this game does appeal to people not familiar with the franchise or Games Workshop.

But you could expand your review or structure it with your own format to make sure you cover the same bases each time.

I dont like criticizing reviews because I know my reviews are not perfect. One thing I want to try to do more is to use attention getting methods right at the top of the review. Also linking to your reviews in your sig can help draw readers.

Thanks for the review. =D

[paecmaker]

Thanks for the input, I want people to say what I can do better and stuff. I am currently thinking on how to put up some structure and stuff to make both the hardcore and regular gamers without to much texts. And I will try to take own screenshots if they look good.