A weak story and some minor annoyances fail to undermine the core gameplay. It sucks you in.
Con: Weak storyline, occasional AI mishaps
The first game and it's expansion (Dark Crusade) left me with some high expectations, so I was really looking forward to this release. Then a few days before it got to stores I read that the single player campaign will not have resource gathering or base building. I was a bit frightened by the news, since innovation is usually a good way to kill a great franchise. When I finally got my hands on it I was relieved. The campaign played great with the new mechanics. It wasn't really a strategy game though. You control four squads of soldiers, never more than 11 people. Every squad has its own role like the fast assault marines that can jump into the middle of the fight, or the heavy devastators who lay down suppressive fire from afar. Every single unit can count when you're against an overwhelming enemy force. The lack of resource management and unit building takes this game out of the scope of RTS and into a more RPG like setting with a deep tactical aspect. Instead of building large forces and sending them onto the field, you often have to decide carefully where to place a squad or the other to get the maximum out of their abilities and sometimes I even found myself laying traps and luring the enemy in. Light and heavy cover are used the same way as in Company of Heroes, giving a considerable edge for the person who can use it best.
The AI isn't always shining. Some enemies will run after you for a while but then just turn back and leave your units if they get far enough away from their starting location. I even managed to kill a boss this way once standing just outside its range.
The missions themselves are so linear and alike that it's amazing how the developers managed to keep them interesting. Every single one is about killing off a lot of lesser enemies then a boss character at the end. A few special plot missions are the only ones exempt from this and they are few and far between. The war itself wages on three planets with you deciding which one you want to do your next mission on. Each has 4-5 regions that eighter have an assignment available or not. It looks a lot like the turn based section of Dark Crusade, and it's integrated into the game seamlessly. Instead of turns you pass the time by doing missions and if you do it fast or brutally enough you can get extra missions for the same day. This is what makes it really interesting as you are always racing against time in the game. Some missions have a time limit of three days and if you don't do them in that time they expire and give a penalty. This is also a very engaging part since you will often have to choose between doing it or letting it expire in favor of another and every single one you let slip will come back at you in the form of heightened enemy activity or lost combat gear.
Speaking about combat gear, in between missions you are constantly equipping your squads with the new stuff you found in the battle -drops like in Diablo- or what you got as a prize for completing a mission. It looks a lot like an RPG screen where you have an inventory, left and right hand slot, armor and extra equipment slots for stuff like grenades, stimulant packs or other bonus giving accessories. Some real thinking will take place here as it's important which combat gear you take for which mission since some stuff might be absolutely vital to finish one assignment while completely useless for another depending mostly on what sort of enemy you are about to face. Your squads gain levels and have four attributes to spend skill points on; Stamina, Ranged, Strength and Will. The game states you can develop any squad in any way you like, but that seems unlikely, as different squads have different maximum levels for every skill, for example the devastators that start as a heavy ranged infantry have a much lower cap for their strength (melee) attribute that their ranged attribute, so they can never be as good in hand-to-hand as the assault marines. The level cap is at 20 with two skill points per level so you won't get nearly enough skill points to max out everything, making your choices with character development matter.
The story is nothing special. The bad guys come and you kill them off against incredible odds. You know, the kind of thing that three meter tall religious fanatics in power armor do the best. I'm a really story oriented person so the fact that I like it even with such a weak plot goes to show that it makes up for it in gameplay. Even with the missions being clones of each other it still manages to tie you to the screen for a few days at least.
Visuals are really on the money. When maxed out the game delivers a truckload of eye candy and deposits it right in your face. The almost fully destructive environment adds to the feeling as whole walls and towers crumble to the ground while the battle rages. It can also be annoying though as there are some elements that can't be destroyed, but are impossible to tell from the ones that can be. This will sometimes result in your heroes' house razing, concrete wall breaking, steel tower twisting charge being stopped by an indestructible park bench.
If you liked the first installment or are just generally into strategy games that try something new I recommend DoW II, but if you are looking for an epic story to go with it you won't find it here.