It hurts so much, but it must be done...
I found the first Dawn of War to be immense fun, the single player was filled with the traditional corniness expected from the world, and the races generally stayed true to their original settings (I used to play the table top).
Winter Assault was fun, allowing for more diverse strategy, and was the first Dawn of War to really show you how devastating tanks can be (rather than just as some backing units).
Dark Crusade was a change, having less of a story line and more of a "conquer the world" strategy. The map was just the right size not to become monotonous as you are essentially playing skirmish games for a large portion of the game, and re-enacting the same tactics over and over again.
And now we've reached Soulstorm, the Dawn of Disappointment. First off, it plays similarly to Dark Crusade, in that you have a map (albeit, over 4 planets) and you tramp around taking territory and destroying strongholds until you have killed everyone. This was fine in Dark Crusade, on a nice small map where the fighting was fast and furious, but here, the map is so big, and so stretched out, you're going to be spending most of your time playing skirmish game after skirmish game, using the same tactics over, and over and over again. The powers you'll receive upon taking an enemy stronghold are helpful, but not essential. They're not going to change the tide of battle any time soon. The only really cool ability is the Tau interplanetary cannon that you just WISH you could use and watch the effects of it shatter enemy defences. After your 15th conquest, the game begins to get dull and repetitive, with the territories taking around 30 min to complete, while the strongholds can take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. I think the biggest issue I have with this is that after the first 3 or so maps, you've seen all the units. You know what to build, what the research does. The point behind single player is to gradually work your way up to the cool new units, not get them right at the beginning and spoil the surprise. What reason would we have for progressing? We have all the powerful units from the first invasion. Hardly stimulating stuff.
As far as the story goes, this is, without a doubt, the worst story I have seen in the Dawn of War series. A warp storm has appeared in the system. Why? We have no idea. Maybe Chaos summoned it. They do happen to be in the centre of it. But we really don't know. Because of this warp storm, the other races have all decided to pop in for a major war. Isn't that enough?
I'm serious; the story line is so weak, that it really makes you wonder what the point is to playing all the way to the end. There's no real interaction among the races, it's all just "Generic" attacker and defender.
As far as the voice work goes, well the units are all tried and true, so it's hard to screw that up. Unfortunately, it seems that your army doesn't react as much when you encounter your enemy. Comments such as: "Orcs! Purge the beasts!" seem to be slowly drifting away, generating an even larger gap between the races and any sort of interaction. The narration is some of the worst I've heard in a Dawn of War, it seems as if the narrator can hardly believe the dross he's required to speak.
The sound is still solid in this game, but of course it is, it's all been used before. Units respond less now, which can be a little unsettling, especially if you need to zoom back to the unit to make sure that they're following your orders.
The music is good, effectively apocalyptic, but again, this is all tried and true so there isn't much to talk about.
So let's talk about the new races and units. First, the Dark Eldar. These guys are creepy, disturbing and fun to play. They're fast and evil and have a strange obsession with whips. They play similar to their Eldar brethren, but can take a bit more punishment. They rely on spells in order to succeed, but I can see them having difficulty with races such as Orcs, where the sheer numbers are likely to overwhelm them.
The Sisters of Battle are even more disturbing than the Dark Eldar. If you were ever perturbed by the Space Marines and their zealotry, they are as NOTHING compared to the Sister of Battle. These fanatical sisters are so obsessed with purging and flame, that most of their weapons are flame based. They are similar to the Space Marines, yet not as versatile, relying more on their spells and abilities to get them through conflict.
It's rather disappointing that the two new races are generic knock offs of already established races, especially with the Genestealers still waiting for their entrance into the world.
It's interesting to note that both these new races have a penchant for bondage. While the Dark Eldar are simply obvious, with their slaves, Succubi and so forth , the Sisters Penitent Engines seems almost obscene as it will respond to your orders with normal machine whirring and an abnormal feminine moan.
Now for the new units. All the races have been granted an exciting new toy to play with. An airplane! Except it's not that exciting and it's not really an airplane. This might be an issue with the game engine, not really being designed for it, but the airplanes work pretty much like landspeeders. They have this annoying habit of sometimes being unable to fly over units, buildings and trees, meaning that you need to coax them over things gently. It's the little Airplane that Couldn't. They just seem to be thrown in as an afterthought. They can be useful, but if you buy them, you're going to be limited to very few (if any) tanks. They have no jump capability, allowing you to zoom around the battlefield, (think Command & Conquer Firehawks), they have no real strafing. They like to hover in one position and shoot. No ducking and diving (like planes would), no swarming the enemy. If Starcraft managed it, all those years ago, with the Protoss Carrier, I don't see how it's difficult here.
And that's about it. An abysmal single player that'll have you playing skirmish after skirmish. A awful story. Interesting, obscene yet knocked off, new races. Sub-par new units that can't really fly all that well and possess a huge vehicle cap. For those looking to add a little more spice in their multiplaying experience, this is probably a fun add on. For those looking for the progression of the Warhammer 40K world, and a fun single player ride, the story alone is enough to make you cry tears of confusion, as you watch your dreams for 40K madness torn apart.