Dawn of War one it aint, but hell its a good game
I personally loved the first and its following many expansions, and at first felt a little let down that the sequel wasn't exactly the same, but after playing I'm actually enjoying the campaign alot more than the first.
Much like the first game you take control of the blood ravens chapter ducking it out with the usual array of warhammer40k bad ass aliens. You've got your space elves the Eldar, rampaging Orks, and new to the mix the insanely cool and sketchy, Tyranids. There's no chaos, which is kind of neat as I think the whole "chaos wants to destroy everything" story that almost every 40k game has is pretty played, so it's nice to have a new overarching enemy.
The story overall is pretty much a forgettable affair, but I don't think I was ever blown away any previous 40k games story line. You can see the "plot twists" coming a mile off, the voice acting is pretty good and the actors deliver the lines believably, but space marines are cool, you can't deny that.
The single player/ co-op campaign is pretty much what war craft 3 was going for before it turned into another rts. It is almost solely an RPG, and I'm actually liking it quite alot. Rather than building a base getting your boys together and wreaking havoc, the squads you have at the beginning of the mission are the ones you're going to end with.
There are points throughout each map, but these serve as rally points for your soldiers, they can retreat back and regain lost members.
Resource gathering has been taken out almost completely, there are points, such as monasteries and factories you can capture, but these seem to make abilities able to be used more often, as well as exp bonus.
You can equip each squad leader with weapons and armour that drop from enemies (that's right phat lewt!!), ranging from greens, to epics. Also all your squads gain levels obviously from the battlefield, you get some skill points to specialise squads. I do always feel bad that I'm neglecting some of squads, mainly my scout squad who have just been sitting around falling behind the rest of my army, I'm sorry Cyrus but I just love assault marines for smashing through some puny eldar defences.
The multiplayer for me wasn't as epic as I had hoped sadly. This was the thing I loved most about the first, multiplayer or just kicking the computers ass.
It retains the notion of no base building as with the single player, rather you have one building from which all your units are produced from.
You go around capturing points on the map which give you requisition and power, and get into fights with the enemy.
It's cool getting to play with the other races, but the battles aren't epic enough for me. In the single player its 4 squads versus a **** load of enemies, in multiplayer it's about 4 squads vs. 4 squads, just not cool enough for me.
I also had a few issues with lag and alot of players playing it with way to high graphics messing up the game (way not cool playing with a bunch of bots)
This game does look amazing, even on low settings, easily one of the prettiest rts. The units are all well detailed and the sound is awesome, the units all say pretty good things although they will end up annoying you.
All in all, I really enjoy the campaign, and don't like the multiplayer that much. 40k fans should enjoy it, strategy lovers may be turned off by the single player, but it does seem there's some strategy to be had in multiplayer.
Oh hell just buy it, it's well worth £30