Not much of a sequel, not really the best thing ever, but definitely fun to play and deserving of a recommendation.
I
f we are to start off with the single player section of the game, some people are definitely going to be disappointed. The large scale battles are gone and have now been replaced with small scale contacts with enemies requiring the use the four squads with you to defeat them and advance to your objective. While this will sound like it requires more strategy than just selecting a unit and telling it to attack someone, in some cases it doesn't. Relic has unfortunately gone and made the campaign a little bit too easy in some areas. If you wish to simply complete the level then that is easier than finding an excuse not to homework (in my case that would be because I'm too lazy). While you men can quite easily die from just standing out in the open and soaking up all the bullets that the enemy with graciously throw at them, this will only slow you down because on every level there are multiple locations where you can replace the fallen soldiers that have fallen in battle with an unlimited amount of reinforcements. For example, at multiple stages in the game you will come across bosses which sticks to the new RPG style of game play which the game has taken on (which is added to with satisfying loot drops and levelling up) and if by any chance he wipes out most of your men you can simply hit the fall back button, reinforce your squads and then go back and finish the job with the boss having regained no health whatsoever. So basically the campaign is definitely far too easy, but it does make up for it with an interesting story, beautiful cut scenes and just a general addiction to wanting to carry on to find the best loot and kick those Tyranids back to…………. where ever the hell came from. Although other factors such as bad voice acting and a basic cooperative mode let it down.
Now on to the multiplayer. Without a doubt this is the best part of the game. Here you will be able to play as all four of the races that you see in the campaign and brings back some of the traits that made dawn of war so addictive, but not all of them. Each player, whether it is a 1 vs. 1 or 3 vs. 3 matches, will start off with a base building, the race that they selected and a hero which is now selected from the menu before the game. Each race has 3 heroes which mainly consist of offensive, support and another (this consisting of stealth, tunnel building or teleport depending on which race you choose), these will then be probably the leader unit of your army and their abilities and war gear really play an important role. In the multiplayer your units will need to use cover like in the campaign, but here it is far more important to use as it is always cheaper for you to simply reinforce your squad than building another one. While there may be some balancing issues to work out, these will eventually be sorted out in the future with patches.
So overall I believe that dawn of war 2 deserves some credit for the new path that it has taken which has allowed it to make an interesting (although repetitive) campaign and a dynamic multiplayer which makes it worth buying for any warhammer or dawn of war fan. (sorry if this gets posted a second time)
9/10