An expansion to a revolutionary title Dawn of War. But is it worth the same praise as the vanilla version?
The graphics haven't been upgraded, but considering it's an expansion; you really can't expect any, right?
You can still run the game on the same setting's (with few drops) as you would the "vanilla" version of Dawn of War.
I am not going deep into explaining how the mechanics of the game break down; if you need those, you should check out the review for the Vanilla version.
This game adds two new factions into the already vast fray of 7 factions; 9 factions? I think this achievement goes unopposed.
The campaign although is feels it's been dragged from Dark Crusade, so instead of fighting on a single planet; you're gonna be battling in an star system: This makes it feel there are gonna be about 100 maps compared to the Dark Crusade's 32.
But guess what? The 4 planets in the system are divided in 34 maps. Campaign feels the same as in Dark Crusade, no depths on the character, nor on the story department. It almost feels as a skirmish.
The two new races; Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar. are a welcome addition in the game. But on the multi-player aspect of the game both of these races seem have to been ignored by the player base considering on the balace-scale the latter is pretty Stale.
Balance? This expansion seems have fixed some, but broken much more. Now if you have played Dawn of War before, you will know most of the balance condition in the game. Eldar are still extremely overpowered with their Anti-everything units and Avatar.
Tau are still extremely overpowered with each and every unit being an off-map artillery unit and Space marines being over-the-top with their Deep strike and Quadruple elites build (namely Force commander, Chaplain, Librarian, and Grey Knights).
The game is very horrible on the multi-player scene as the developer's bias with their race namely Tau and Eldar, I know this game wasn't developed by Relic, but Iron Lore hasn't really made any changes to the balance, This bias has been continuing through the base roots of the game but never really looked out from the developers.
This doesn't mean you won't be enjoying the multi-player, not at all. You might be able to get a couple fun and enjoyable matches (3v3 and 4v4) since balance really can't be defined in this mode and the battles tend to be very engaging and fun.
I loved having team battles since they don't require you to be completely on your toe with micro-management and macro-management, but don't really diminish the latter's existence either.
The voice acting on both the new factions are very good, except for some units on the Sister's of battle faction, some may feel very uninspired, like the Missionary.
Some units on both Dark Eldar and Sisters of battle don't really make much sense. If you aren't a really big fluff-fan like i am. You will most likely ignore the detail but just for the sake of making a long review; Take the Sister's of battle missionary as an example. Missionary is an simple human, and has no armor on him either so it should make him no more durable then our regular Imperial Guard, and not any stronger either in terms of both melee and ranged. But this missionary can knock-back even the Space marines and several other units that they aren't supposed to, and on top of that they are very durable than an ordinary Imperial guard in-fact it has more health than several imperial guards combined. That's BAD unit design. Iron Lore could have alternated to a different unit, Sister's of battle array has a wide array of available units in tabletop.
So to the question; is this game worth the same praise as the original? Yes, now that the community has some mods available, the most prominent of those would be the Skirmish AI Mod which escalates the competence level of the basically brain-dead AI to a average-human kind of level. which makes for extremely fun offline games, basically an superior substitute to the multi-player.
There are some others fun mods aswell, like a mod (Forgot name) which puts you in an scenario of "besieging" an AI controlled base, which will attack your team ( can also be AI ) from several directions very fun and engaging, indeed.
If you ignore the campaign and some multi-player faults of this game, This game will suck you in with its incredibly challenging and competitive AI, Multi-player team-games fun. This game is worth buying but if your computer can handle Dawn of War 2, you should definitely purchase it, It's an AWESOME game and i can't wait to buy a new computer and play it myself.
If you can buy both, the better since this game is an Standalone but you would only be able play as two new races but if multiplayer doesn't concern you, and as i previously mentioned the offline scene in this game you will be looking towards 100+ or more guaranteed hours of pure chaotic fun.
I think i have covered up most of what can be reviewed in the game and i tried to make it as much un-biased as possible.
There is also some community scene down at rts-sanctuary where the community is developing an "community patch" which will hopefully fix the horrible state of balance in the game.