A complete Lowdown on Dawn of War 2. A serious look into this ambitious departure from traditional RTS. Please read.
Single Player and Multiplayer.... these are two entirely different beasts.
For me, the beef of the game is multiplayer and single player is just icing on the cake.
First off I'll look into the single player aspect of the game. Feel free to skip if you're not interested tactical single player and interested in the more strategic multiplayer aspec of this game.
************* SINGLE PLAYER *********
Single player in DoW2 is quite simply a Tactical Simulator on a squad to squad level with RPG elements.
If you enjoy 2 or more the following games or have the following attributes, you'll probably find DoW2 single player to be quite enjoyable.
*X com series
*UFO series
*CoH single player
*Diablo series
*Titan Quest series
*Love warhammer 40k fluff
*Enjoy playing smaller scale table top 40k
*Enjoy online co op
*Enjoy utilizing tactics
Basically in single player you get to command 4 squads in battle doing missions that you select from a system map. Eventually you can access 6 squads and each individual squad can be customized with armor, weapons, and accessories rewarded through mission rewards and random drops. As you go through the missions, your squads level up allowing you to customize them further with points allowing them to unlock powerful new abilities or passive traits.
The story is actually pretty decent for an title in this genre. It's not mass effect or hollywood, but all your squads have a backstory and personality and I actually did somewhat get attached to them over time as I learned their strengths and weaknesses and how awesome they can be if used right.
As for the missions themselves, most of the main story missions are well done with varied objectives and scripted events, there are alot of side missions you can do for extra experience and gear, however they are usually either defense missions where your squads hold out against waves of enemies (good fun, good for testing new weapons/accessories) or missions involving killing a boss. The boss fights themselves aren't terribly exciting, usually a boss has 2-3 special moves that you have to avoid... unless you play on the lower 2 difficulty levels, then they are just boring. Also they have special weaknesses that you have to figure out, these bosses can range from really bland and cheap to exciting and fun/cool to fight.
There are also 4 difficulty levels
1.Easiest- don't bother, units can be set on auto pilot and you'll probably still win
2.Sergeant - good starting point for people new to DoW2 to learn the basics in combat.
3.Captain - Decent AI, challenging but not frustrating. Need to use coordinated tactics with most encounters.
4.Primarch - if you enjoy pain... less painful if it is shared with a friend in co op.
Overall the SP player campaign will take 8-15 hours to complete depending on the difficulty and how many side missions you decide to do. However, there is quite a bit of replayability because you can never access all the abilities of your squads in one play though and a second run through will probably yield different weapons/armor as drops.
Also, Co op singleplayer is amazing fun. Basically co op splits the squads between you and your buddy so you each control 2 squads in a mission. Of course during mission loadout screen you can choose who controls which squad. It's always a lot of fun to work with a buddy to tackle some of the obstacles in the campaign.
Ok enough with single player, lets move on to the beef of DoW2
********* MULTIPLAYER!!!! ************
Ok I'm going to approach the multiplayer review a little differently.
I'm going to start right off stating what DoW2 multiplayer is not.
DoW2 multiplayer is not for people that enjoy memorizing the most efficient build orders for their faction or when going against a specific faction.
It's not for players that enjoy spending the first 2 minutes of a match building the same buildings.
It's not for players that enjoy turtleling, spending 90% of a match accumulating resources, going through the same tech trees and staring vacantly at the build times for their units while only fighting for the last minute of a match.
Now I'll move to what is basically the ESSENCE of DoW2 multiplayer and everything it IS.
In a DoW2 match, you have to fight for your resources and victory points, fighting starting roughly in less than 30 seconds in a typical match. You constantly have to decide which resources and victory points to defend or to assault. Whether it's best to spread out your units or work them in unison for those nodes, all based on their current positions and the positioning of cover on the battlefield. These strategic decisions can easily make or break a match.
Also at first glance there isn't a big unit selection, however it is very deceiving. Almost all units in DoW2 have a selection of upgrades to choose from as the match goes by. For some units upgrading can change their role entirely and because of this upgrading system its makes combat in DoW2 very fluid. It allows you to counter your opponent on the fly, a system where the role of your squads change through the course of battle. It's a constant struggle between you and your opponent to counter one another, and rarely is there a pause in action due to the fluid nature of DoW2 as you both engage for resources and adapt your units on the fly.
However don't be mislead into thinking DoW2 is all about finding the counters for units, far from it. A lot of winning matches is your actual tactical performance in the battles themselves. In an engagement you constantly move units around to find ideal cover. You feint to lure enemies into kill zones. You hide behind walls and trees to set up for ambushes while sending a unit to distract. You always take into account the enviroment. Is your opponent entrenched with their backs to a wall? Well go around the wall, and blow it up so you can just hit them from behind. Does your opponent have units all covering each other making it hard to push? Well a explosive to the front and a surprise jump pack to the back followed by a push will disrupt/destroy it.
As you are doing all this and as you kill your opponents units, you rack up another resource to use special abilities and devastating super weapons/units later on to turn the tides.
To sum it up. DoW2 multiplayer is amazing, its fast paced, brutal, and some of the higher level matches you can be truly be amazed at the tactics some people employ and the brilliance in how they execute them.