I remember the original Dawn Of War, I picked it up at the local wally-world because..to be honest, to me anyway, the RTS genre was in a bit of a slump in 2004. Warcraft III and its expansion had just graced us with their presence back in 2002-2003 and nothing really great had crawled out of the woodwork since then.

Just so its known I've never been a fan of the ridiculous camp of C&C, and most other RTS reminded me far too much of a Warcraft or Starcraft clone. Regardless when the first Dawn of War came out I was pretty impressed, a RTS with a moderately decent story a take on a universe that at the time I was not aware of.(I'd actually learned about the Warhammer universe 40k or otherwise thanks to that game.)

The game impressed me with its gory deaths, blasted landscapes and novel approach to RTS strategy. The only problems I had with the game were its distinct shortness and lack of playable factions in the campaign(your pretty much limited to one.) I largely ignored the Winter Assault expansion because the imperial guard did not exactly blow my mind.

Anyway 2006 rolls around and Dark Crusade comes out, which I was perfectly ready to ignore also...until my friends started gushing their brains out over the game. So I picked up a copy and I can tell you I'm not disappointed that I did, I've always been a fan of a overarching strategic map style campaign in RTS.

Such as the Total War games, or Battle for Middle Earth II's war of the ring mode. So the exclusion of a cohesive story driven campaign in light of a less story intensive strategic campaign was right up my alley. I mean, story campaigns are fine and dandy but once I've played through them once...possible twice, thats it...I'm done with them.

The graphics for Dark Crusade still looked great with blasted landscapes, rich colors and plenty of unit detail(not to mention the gory deaths.) The additional two races brings up one of my only two beefs with the game, the Tau are a perfectly fine if slightly underpowered race(lack of turrets and a complete **** relic unit anybody?)

The Necrons on the other hand, when the game first came out were god awfully overpowered. Which I can understand is part of the lore but balance is a good thing to have in a RTS, leave the lore in...well the lore. Thankfully Relic pushed out a patch moderately quickly which balanced out the Necrons thus taking care of that gripe.

My only other concern was the distinct lack of pressure from the AI in the strategic layer of the game. Not the smaller scale map battles mind you, the AI can still spank you like a five month old there. But the strategic map AI is decidedly sketchy...it seems to go wherever it wants at random and rarely ever puts the pressure on you past taking a territory here or there.

Which I know doesn't concern most people since everybody seems to be all for the multiplayer, which is fine and dandy. I myself prefer to stay offline with most RTS games I play, partly due to my distinct lack of skill and partly due to the fact that most RTS communities are about as mature as a kindergarten class.

Regardless multiplayer is what really keeps the game alive, there are a decent selection of mods for the games as well as the fact that the core gameplay is still excellent. No more base turtling and then running out with giant mobs of troops to run everything over baloney since strategic points control the flow of resources for most races(with the exception of the Necrons.)

I still enjoy playing this game to this day, and for anybody thats a RTS fan, classic or otherwise, I would suggest giving the game a try you most likely wont regret it.