Soulstorm leaves me with a single thought: Why didn´t Relic do the damned expansion instead of Iron Lore?
I am disappointed, it is as simple as that. Please read along with my points and see if you agree, and note that everything bad I comment upon was probably made better in Dark Crusade.
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Point one would be the map size. In Dawn of War: Soulstorm we have 31 zones. 31 zones divided up on 4 planets and 3 moons. Dawn of War: Dark Crusade had 24 zones, on one planet. In my eyes it is easy to see which game was given most time and effort into its creation. Soulstorm's greatest flaw when it comes to map size is the fact that the respective races start very, very close to one another. Personally I played my first game as the Blood Raven's, and during my second (2:nd) round, I destroyed the orc's HQ, punting them from the battle. Being capable of attacking an HQ during round two (assuming you win round 1) is a rediculous concept that really shows how god damned small of a game this is.
Due to the small mapsize, taking over zones doesn't really feel important any longer, but rather just staging areas for taking your troops one step closer towards the enemy stronghold. You´ll then spend LONGER time during the actual HQ battle than it took you to fight your way to it. Go figure.
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Point two would be the dialogues, story and in-game cutscenes. The background story of why the Imperial Guard, the Space Marines and Sisters of Battle are fighting amongst each other is pretty much shrugged off, instead you´re given a small notification to remind yourself about what happened on Kronus in Dark Crusade. Fiction in all honor, but I at least want to have a viable reason. "They hate each other because he did this and she did that" would have worked, as long as they made some kind of half-assed attempt at an actual EXPLANATION at least.
As far as I´ve seen, the only "good" (still not better than any Dark Crusade cutscene) cutscenes are the ending ones, who kind of makes SENSE for once. Where´s the bickering between commanders that I longed for? And where are the elaborate speeches about what happened to the crushed enemy forces? Dirt, blood and mayhem? Where did it all go?
The cutscenes are edgy, terribly lame at major points, and reeks of the strained need of giving characters... well, character. Something they utterly fail at. And I mean come on, a Chaos Lord should not act like a sissy and scream in a high pitched voice when things go to hell. He should bloody stand his ground and curse his men for being weaklings. He is especially not supposed to be a pansy when carrying around a god-damned Khorne chainaxe! Onto that, the Sisters of Battle doesn´t sound like battle-hardened maidens of purity, but rather desperate feminists with a bad case of hangover. Every voice in the game that is new with Soulstorm just falls flat on its face, failing to give a good impression of a commander/fanatic/soldier or just about anything else that opens its mouth. Argh, I hate you Iron Lore.
Also the HQ assault pre-texts and speech are just awful, giving no feeling of anticipation at all but merely annoys you with its amateurish design and makes you want to go in there and punt the **** out of your enemy and your own troops with equal measure. Despite the heroic voice (and effort) of the one reading the intro's, it all just goes down the drain.
Summed up, the new voicing, dialogues and general feel to the storybits of Soulstorm is "THIS IS NOT WARHAMMER 40K!". My Chaplain´s voice is a bright lantern in the dark that is this expansion.
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Point three would be the balance, or rather lack thereof. With Soulstorm comes the brilliance of having discarded every bit of tweaking, fixes and patching that Relic had done with Dark Crusade, reversing back to old methods. A slight example would be that a fully upgraded Space Marine group with an Apothecary has about the same amount of HP as an Imperial Guard Baneblade. I won´t even start on the Sisters of Battle issue.
Also, air units. They´re there, and they don´t do **** They´re like flies that can be annoying if the enemy knows how to use them, but in the end they´re pretty worthless as far as combat goes. Quick raids into enemy territory, sure, but no other units are fitted for this (Save for perhaps a few Dark Eldar ones.) The uselessness of air units is increased by the fact that every unit in the game that has a ranged weapon can shoot at them.
Speaking of Dark Eldars, who the hell rides a jet-skateboard into battle? They´re just silly. Tyranids would have been a much more viable option, but I´m not sure if I want Iron Lore to touch them.
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Summed up, Soulstorm as a whole is not what it was meant to be. 90% of the expactations I had were crushed immediately during my first campaign, and as I gave the game chance upon new chance, I realized that perhaps it was all in vain.
I wouldn´t be the least surprised if I got to know that Iron Lore is a second name used by EA.
This is not Warhammer 40k, this is a cheap copy of Dark Crusade that has been glued on top of a working franchice. I suggest you stay away from it, or just don´t play any of the other Dawn of War games before trying this one out. Perhaps then, thanks to oblivion, this can be seen as a half-assed or perhaps even decent game, and not just a failure of game creation.
//Ash