When I hear sequel in the gaming industry I can only think of one thing. Blowing the original game away and that’s just what Dawn of War II set out to do here. Can RTS and RPG come together in one game?

Some of the changes that Dawn of War 2 makes are the elimination of base-building and adding in an amount of RPG. It’s a hybrid between RPG and RTS, and it works well. Relic also added the Next Generation RTS Engine – Utilizing Relic’s proprietary Essence Engine 2.0 to deliver cinematic visuals, detailed graphics & special effects. Achievements were also nice bonus for the hardcore gamers really into their gamer cards and points.

Relic offers gamers two modes of play which include campaign mode which you can play co-operative through the entire single player campaign with a friend and an even more entertaining skirmish mode online that allows you to play in standard one-on-one matches, or three-on-three.

When you begin the campaign mode, you start as a Space Marine and you will play as a new Force Commander from the Blood Ravens as you’ll fight against the Orkish, Eldar and Tyranid. When you drop onto the map at the start of the game you only have one tactical squad and your commander unit to use. As you advance the storyline you acquire additional squad types you will have to advance through waves of enemies to complete set objectives. These range from search and destroy to defense or rescue missions. Most end with a boss battle of course. Though six squads become available, you can only have four units with you and given so many variations that four’s all you really need. Creating a core group of four might not always be the best idea, since defensive missions usually rely on the Heavy Weapons Marines, while assault missions could benefit from the presence of a stealthy Scout.

During the course of the campaign you fight on three different planets, each with four to five zones or maps. Eventually the game opens up from a linear progression and lets you choose your own path, though there are consequences if you focus on one planet without helping the others. Some missions are optional and may provide you with a good piece of gear, while others continue to advance a segment of the storyline, until the final mission.

Multiplayer allows you not only to play as a Marine but Orks, Eldar, and Tyranids.  A nice addition is that not only does a player select a race, they also must select from one of three commanders for that race, with commanders having their own special abilities. There are two modes, the classic destroy your opponents everything has and control point mode. Victories are self explanatory for both. With the limited number of maps available in multiplayer at the time of the review it might be one of the downfalls but I know that will be corrected. With the small number available, I can see players mastering maps. This makes the games unfair if you are your new or you make a mistake but I liked what I played of multiplayer in my time reviewing the game.

Some tips for gamers to remember are when in a mission, it’s important for the player to use tactics and the terrain to their advantage. Cover can be destroyed by weapons, grenades, and etc. Also sometimes when squads are told to retreat, they do so by picking the shortest route and if that route happens to go through an enemy camp, you’ll have to fight them off although you’re down a squad.

Overall I think die-hard strategy fans may complain about adding a blend of RPG but I think it works nice. Graphically, the game is very impressive and the sound just makes you want to crank your surround sound up and shake the windows. The game play is a little short and doesn’t offer much replay value except for multi-player. Dawn of War II doesn’t feel like the first game with a new coat of paint. So if you’re like me and you enjoy a new take on the genre then this game may be for you. I say thank you to Relic for shaking up the genre and give Dawn of War II an 8.5 and two thumbs up.

PC Minimum Requirements

• Operating System: – XP Service Pack 2 / Vista Service Pack 1
• CPU: – P4 3.2 GHz Single Core Processor
• RAM: – 1 GB for XP / 1.5 GB for Vista
• Hard Drive Space: – 5.5GB
• Graphics Card: – 128MB Nvidia Geforce 6600 GT / 128MB ATi x1600
• Sound Hardware: – DirectX 9.0c compliant card
• Recommended
• Operating System: – XP Service Pack 2 / Vista Service Pack 1
• CPU: – AMD Athlon 642 4400+ or any Intel Core 2 Duo
• RAM: – 2.0 GB for XP / 2.0 GB for Vista