Finally, defense missions must be accepted and completed within a certain number of campaign days, and they often involve defending an installation that you took in a prior mission. Optional missions are always available after they pop up and usually offer choice items as a reward. Plot missions are, rather obviously, key to advancing the plot. Missions break down into three distinct types. While taking a rounded approach will leave them with no real weaknesses, they will miss out on the choicest perks, which can only be found with a more focused approach.Īt the start of the campaign, the mission sequence is predetermined, but before long, you will be looking at a list of current missions from all three planets. However, with the cap in place, you cannot max out all four attributes of a squad, so care must be taken in developing them with an end goal in mind. At predefined points in these attributes, squads will unlock new abilities, such as being able to use a new weapon type or other perk. Stamina governs health points and regeneration, and Will dictates how much energy a squad has to spend on special abilities. Ranged and Strength cover a unit's combat effectiveness in gunfights and melee, respectively. Each level gives the squad two more attribute points that can be spent in one of four areas: Ranged, Stamina, Strength and Will. Equipping better items to a squad gradually changes its appearance, and by the end of the game, your squads will be dealing massive casualties to enemy forces while looking much more imposing than they did at the outset of the game.Īs enemies are killed and missions are completed, the squads gain experience, which eventually means that they'll gain levels all the way up to the level 20 cap. In a style usually found in RPGs, weapons have a spec sheet detailing their damage per second, weapon type and other characteristics, like bonus health or knockback. This allows your units to have flexibility beyond their squad archetypes for some missions, you'll want your scout squad to field a sniper rifle while at other times, you might want to keep them close with a shotgun. Before each mission, you have the option of outfitting your squad's weapons, armor and accessories, which are picked up via mission rewards and random drops from enemy corpses. The campaign is played out over the course of many days and eventually over the face of three different planets. You can only field four squads at a time under most circumstances, or two per player if playing cooperatively, so choosing squads best suited for a task can be the difference between an easy victory and a stunning defeat. As the campaign progresses, you end up with a total of six squads to round out your roster, including a heavy bolter squad led by Avitus, a scout squad led by Cyrus, an assault marine squad led by Thaddeus, and a lone dreadnought. Starting off in the campaign mode, you control two squads, your lone Force Commander and a squad of tactical marines who are your jack-of-all-trades infantry. This mission is thrown for a loop when the waif-like Eldar race begins taking potshots at the Space Marines, while the threat of an approaching Tyranid hive fleet threatens to consume all life in the sector. When some of their recruiting worlds come under attack by a band of Orks, the Blood Ravens dispatch a portion of their chapter led by Captain Thule to eradicate the infestation. The campaign mode's story revolves around the Blood Ravens chapter of the Space Marines, who, in Warhammer 40K lore, are the genetically superior soldiers of a war-hungry emperor. Campaign play in Dawn of War II isn't about rebuilding a base every mission or amassing units to overrun the enemy it is about the tactical usage of a few keys squads and their abilities. In multiplayer, the gameplay is a much more traditional affair, with players controlling large groups of units on the map, but the campaign mode is much more tactical and has the player usually controlling no more than four units. Not only does it easily take the crown as one of the better games released under the franchise, but it also sets a pretty high bar for RTS games coming out later this year.ĭawn of War II is best described if you think of the campaign and multiplayer modes separately while the two share many similarities, they also have more than a few key differences. Even with this track record, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II is somewhat of a surprise. Company of Heroes delivered an RTS with a surprising level of options for tactical thinking and an engine that was capable of delivering a suitably epic presentation of the carnage of war. If nothing else, Relic has a history of shaking up the real-time strategy genre every few years.
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