Dawn of War underrated?

[johnrambo]

Being the voice of those who don't need to be heard, I have the strong desire to say what I think is currently on their minds: Dawn of War.
This is an "old" game (I can only afford games once their price tag lowers because of consumer A.D.D) so if you don't care I understand completely. Anyway, I purchased the game and both expansions for about $20.00 and...well...it was worth every penny as far as I'm concerned.
I had knew that their must be some sort of mental disorder that I had inherited at birth, for why would I love a game that no one else had really gave a second thought about. However, once google had revealed it wealth of game revewing knowladge to me; I was only left more perplexed. It had recived pretty good reviews. Sure, it did'nt get 10/10s and 100% but the reviews had very little bad to say about it.
Well If you havent heard of it then I am sure you would like to know what type of game it is. Dawn of War, and the expansions, are sci-fi RTS games set in the year 40,000; man has taken over other planets and now some aliens are getting pissed at us. The story isn't that important, but the game does a great job explaning things along the way. The game is based off of Warhammer 40k but you don't have to be a model nerd like me to enjoy it.
It is extremely easy to pick up and run with, because of its friendly interface. It handles like a mix between WarcraftIII and Starcraft, yet the thing that I enjoy which they introduce is the use of squads and moral. It sounds strange but every infantry unit you buy comes in a certain squad size which you can increase and upgrade(for a price of course. Also your units can freak out and panic if they are losing a fight, which adds a little more sense of realism, so you can't rush 2 people into an army and expect them to fight like mindless zombies (unless of course you buy mindless zombies, which have no moral).
The Thing I really enjoy about DoW is the fact that it is really balenced dispite its extreme differences in races. DoW has 8 different races(not mentioning the downloadable ones) which have litteraly nothing in common with each other. Yet each one has weakness that the other can exploit.
This is running on the long side and I hate to end the bad notes but I'm tired.
The multiplayer system is pretty "eh"
and the graphics could be better
but overall in my book it gets a 9/10

 

[John Galt]

What I loved best about DoW was the Orks. They could have made the orks the only playable race in the game and I would have thrown large sums of money at Relic anyways. The voice acting for the Grots and Slugga Boyz was perfect, a sort of Cockney/Neanderthal mix. While I already had a good idea of how the armies of the 40k Universe were, it showed me the dark regality of the Chaos Marines as opposed to their normal frenzied gibbering.

 

[runtheplacered]

nice review, and thank you. It looked like you got a little tired of writing there at the end, and just decided to stop for some reason. Please, feel free to be long-winded. It doesn't seem like people around here mind too much, which is nice to know when you're writing. It gives you a certain freedom.

Thanks for bringing up a game I had long forgotten about. This may very well make me want to reinstall it and play through the campaign again. Great game!

 

[CuddlyCombine]

I remember getting the first Dawn of War because I liked Relic's work with Homeworld and Homeworld 2. I have to say it was one of the better decisions I've made with my money; each race is completely unique, there's no steadfast winning solution, and you can actually have fun while still micromanaging. Personally, I loved being the target of brute-force Ork rushes, just so that I could roll over any opposition with heavy armour. That's something even Starcraft and Warcraft couldn't get right.

Dawn of War is still an excellent series, in my opinion. It's certainly still going strong; Soulstorm will be coming in a quarter or so, and that promises to add even more races. I do agree that it's underrated though.

 

[Adrenicide]

I personally love the game, I was upset to find I couldn't run it on my new 64-bit Vista laptop actually. Oh well, it's hard to get hung up on DoW when SC2 is coming out (relatively) soon. Unfortunately the (Fill in the blank)Craft games never really drop in price until the next game comes out so you'll soon be experiencing the joys of WC3 I assume but I have pretty high expectations for SC2.

But more to the topic, DoW is truly awesome. The morale system was well implemented, it isn't always a factor, but it can be if you incorporate morale breaking into your strategy which is perfectly viable, you don't need to have more units or the more powerful units if you know you can break the enemy's morale with Raptors for instance. The micro-managing of the game has an outstanding learning curve, you'll be trying to manage it like WC3 or SC for a little while then realize it's much more relaxed but still challenging and fun. The voice acting leaves nothing to be desired whatsoever, something few games can say. Fortifying strategy points is easy but critical points can make the game pivot almost immediately allowing for that rush to win at the last second possible, but hard and still require strategy.

All in all a very underrated game by the masses.

 

[johnrambo]

nice review, and thank you. It looked like you got a little tired of writing there at the end, and just decided to stop for some reason. Please, feel free to be long-winded. It doesn't seem like people around here mind too much, which is nice to know when you're writing. It gives you a certain freedom.

Thanks I was freaked because this was my first review

 

[Fire Daemon]

The one thing I don't like about DoW is that in the first game they made the spacemarines really overpowered, and then in the expansion packs made them weak as hell.

Apart from that they are great games.

 

[sathie]

Have only played the original Dawn of War, but it's a fantastic multiplayer game over LAN at least. Never bothered with multiplayer via internet as I don't like playing random people at RTS games, they go on for too long, or end immediately.

 

[Rykka]

I've actually been considering picking this up. I think I might now, thank you everyone for your interesting input on it.

 

[rawlight]

Dawn of War is teh roxors.

FEAR THE PSYKER!

 

[Gigantor]

Good review. I don't think you have a mental disorder (although don't ask me to testify to that in court). What always struck me about Dawn of War was that it was just...solid. It's really the best word to describe it. All the reviews seemed to give it about 80%- a solid score. They all pointed out how solidly balanced it was, the graphics, whilst not spectacular, are solid, and the multiplayer, whilst not about to set the world ablaze, had a certain solidity to it. Now I don't know if there was just some sort of worldwide thesaurus shortage around the time the game came out or what, but it seems the general consensus. I've always found that when people say 'solid' they really mean average. Maybe they were all scared that if they said 'average' a Dreadnought would come along and spin them around on it's big Power Claw.

I really liked the game, though. As an avid 40k fan in my teens, with a beautifully painted 3,000 point Eldar army hiding in some corner of my loft, I'd long been waiting for a decent game. The nearest I'd got before that was Final Liberation (anyone remember that?) which was different to dawn of War in that:
1. It was based on the Epic rules, and therefore had titans and Baneblades and other such arousing things.
2. It sucked balls.

I tried the DoW multiplayer once, though, and never again. It was like having a friendly arm wrestling match with The Undertaker. Lessons learned.

 

[Fire Daemon]

I can safetly say this game portrayed the Warhammer 40k universe a lot better then tau: Fire Warrior.

That game failed.

 

[dan_the_manatee]

For its age, the graphics are pretty good. Well animated compared to RTS games of the period.
I loved this game, and SOulstorm will definitely pry me away from my 360 for a few months. My only criticism is the squad cap; it makes finishing off a rich enemy pretty difficult, as it's bascially impossible to overwhelm it. Above a certain level of requisition, both forces can still be equally matched, even if one has 10x more power and requisition.

 

[madfool2]

Dawn of war is a very fun game, the mods also make the experience better due to variation, although Dawn of war already has that within the races. I play tabletop so it was kind of awesome to see a dreadnought just throw an ork away after smashing his skull.

 

[nightfish]

It was a good game with an excellent multiplayer, made even better by the fact that you could customise the colours of your army.

My gripe however is that in the original DoW it was let down by a poor single player mode. Not exactly hard, too linear and very short.

 

[John Galt]

For its age, the graphics are pretty good. Well animated compared to RTS games of the period.
I loved this game, and SOulstorm will definitely pry me away from my 360 for a few months. My only criticism is the squad cap; it makes finishing off a rich enemy pretty difficult, as it's bascially impossible to overwhelm it.

That's why ORKZ IZ DA BIGGEST AN' DA STRONGEST! Squad cap for them is pretty much only a suggestion, and as long as you have enough banners, you can keep a steady stream of boyz pouring out from your base into the map.

 

[Dectilon]

It's fun, the voice acting is the best I have ever heard (where the hell have those actors been hiding? WE NEED MORE NOBZ!), and the graphics are of the long-surviving kind. Multiplayer is also pretty fun, but I think that's the real problem with the game. It's a bit limited as to what you can do. The different units can pretty much only do what they were created for and not much else. And when gameplay is limited it gets boring or annoying pretty quickly.

Basically I would say that it's a great game, but if I had to choose between it and Warcraft 3 I'd rather be playing that.

As for blizzard games not dropping in price, I saw wc3+tft for 20£ (well, 200kr, but the exchange rate is almost exactly 10/1) in the local EB Games store : )

It's gone up and down in price a few times though. I guess it's because it keeps getting new players.

"Also your units can freak out and panic if they are losing a fight, which adds a little more sense of realism, so you can't rush 2 people into an army and expect them to fight like mindless zombies "

Well... they'll still fight like mindless zombies, only now with their attack power lowered to 20% and with increased movement speed so they can run away. It's not like they flee without orders.

 

[AnGeL.SLayer]

I want an army of mindless zombies at my command. espically if they have no morals. who wants a brain eating zombie who thinks twice about eating a little girls brains out. Silly. Everyone is game and they all taste the same.


hehe good review, keep it up.


^_^

 

[Dectilon]

You should try Necron then, they have no morale (or morals).