Ambitious, but poor implementation of new features.

User Rating: 7.5 | Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II PC
This game is rather difficult for me to summarize fairly. On the one hand, the combat in the game is breathtaking. It's fast paced, tactical and beautiful to look at. This is a game where you CAN really be rewarded for using your troops properly. Cover and direction of fire are extremely important and you really feel like you right on the field fighting it out. The actual FIGHTING is extremely fun.

The overall experience, however, is lackluster. Where it all breaks down is on the strategy level. This is NOT a strategy game. It's a tactical role-playing game. You don't build bases or defend them. You don't follow tech trees. Instead, you get right into the combat and fight over resources on the map. This is a good idea in that it gets people fighting on early in the game and throughout, but it feels more like a simple tug of war match than it does anything else.

Fighting over resources is all fine and dandy, but unfortunately units are so expensive and so rock/paper/scissors oriented that if your opponent gets an early advantage in resources you've already likely lost the game.

I'll try to avoid talking about the single player campaign because it's absolutely dreadful. It's impossible to lose and no game is fun when that happens.