Download it, rent it, borrow it; Just don't buy it.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War as one would expect, is a real time strategy game. For those of you new to the genre, you basically control builder units, that erect establishments to build your army and research different abilities that may affect them or your team globally. This is all done to hopefully smite another person (or computer) doing the same thing. The RTS genre is an old one, and many popular games such as Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, and Starcraft have made big marks. However; Dawn of War falls way short of making a respectable relation to any of these widely respected games.
In Dawn of War you build units that must move through a map and capture strategic points. Capturing these strategic points gives you your resources, which are used to build additional units. While there are two resources in the game (including requisition and power) you only need to capture requisition. You simply build power plants and let them work their magic. In any event, moving through the map and capturing all strategic points before you opponent does generally results in a win. Of course you can also choose different game modes such as Destroy HQ. But, since the game uses these strategic points as key resource generators, whoever has them will be able to out-create their opponent (generally).
In Dawn of War, the units you build generally come in squads. In each squad you can add more units, a commander, and equip individual members of that squad with different weapons (such as flamethrowers, rocket launchers, etc.). Different HQ upgrades yield more powerful units, some of which can attach to a specific squad. An interesting gameplay feature of Dawn of War is morale. Each squad and/or unit has morale which is signified by a blue bar. If that squad feels they are outnumbered or going against impossible opposition, the bar will decrease, and your squad will run. In addition, I believe they can deal less and receive more damage. This certainly adds strategic aspects to the game because certain weapons and units can decrease morale.
There are four races to the game, and each are different than their counterpart. You have: Space Marines, Eldar, Orcs, and Chaos Marines. Each of these races specialize in different respective categories such as: Overall effectiveness, technology, brute force, and evil/fear/chaos. By using these attributes effectively, players can identify which force best suits their playing style. What makes the game even more personable is the fact that you can create different paint styles for your forces. The table top game is very popular because the individual pieces can be painted to customize the army. Dawn of War is no different even though it's virtual.
While the game has lots to offer, the problems of Dawn of War center right down to the most important attribute in an RTS: Gameplay. The game itself does not add anything new to the formula of creating units from buildings that you established, but it takes away all of the strategy that surrounds it. For example, in such games as Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, you can build a plethora of different fighters, such as swordsman, archers, and cavalry. Each is effective against another, but what makes the game exciting is what you do with them. Ambushing, varying unit types, and traps are not available in Dawn of War. While units can have various strengths against the enemy, generally it comes down to who has the most units. Once you kill your enemies units, you pretty much move through the base and take over what you please.
It seems that every game has the 'big battle' where all units are thrown together in one large epic battle and after 2 minutes of chaos and a sense of 'I hope I win because I have no idea what to control' the battle ends. In addition, because every squad can add additional units, or weapons, or features, or use skills (at any point) there is SO much micromanagement during a battle that you really don't have an idea what to do. You just end up selecting the whole army and smashing whatever 'looks good' button there is. In the end you win, and you say, "Don't know how it happened, but whatever!" Maps are generally small and players can't rebuild quickly enough to threaten your original winning force, you pretty much just wipe the floor after the 'big battle'. Maps do offere up to 8 total players which obviously offers different outcomes since allies can aid you.
The AI itself in the game is lackluster, with AWFUL targeting and pathfinding. Many times you'll try to target a specific unit and your entire army instead starts shooting all over the place. There is no regard for friendly fire, and even though you target a specific enemy and want your units to use guns, they instead move in while your artillary blows everyone away. So you often just click all your units to a point where the enemy is and let the computer just play out the scenario.
There is a campaign mode, but it's rediculously easy as you just bombard through the computer controlled units. After the campaign you can explore skirmish and online play. Skirmish mode is quite rediculous, as there are 4-5 different difficulties ranging from easy to insane. In the standard difficulty you'll beat the computer pretty easily. All you have to do is build some big vehicles and a few squads and eventually you'll win. In the next difficulty up, the game becomes pretty unfair. Even though you're just playing hard mode (and not harder or insane) the computer generates more resources and bigger armies in faster times. For example, While I had my half of the strategic points, and both relics and mission point (more than 1/2 and relics generate more requisition) the computer still got more resources than I did. Somehow he generated more units as well, even though I was constantly creating. However; if you do not capture those points, you will not even have enough resources to fend off the first attack. It becomes pointless after a while.
Multiplayer is exciting, as obviously human players generally do not cheat, but the game requirements are so extensive that simply put, not many people can afford to play it. You have to have a decent amount of RAM, a good processor, and a great video card, not to mention internet connection, to hope at playing the game enjoyably. As a result, there's not a huge amount of players online. This was a problem with Command and Conquer Generals as well.
Make no mistake, the graphics, cinema, explosions, and character animations are beautiful in this game. By far the best of any RTS out there. However; with the lack of gameplay, real strategy, and overall bore, the game falls far short of having anything worthy of substance to a gamer looking to expand their mind in different ways.
ZeR0's final verdict: Leave this one in the store.