Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Anniversary Edition

Fantastic game

Sloppy game design, over mighty bosses,boring as hell

fun, but boss fights suck

Just finished this recently. The biggest disappointment in the story mode is that it's not base-building. You are provided with a squad to battle across the story. Kinda remove the chaotic fun of Dawn of War. BUT, if you enjoy Warhammer 40k, it's an interesting play.

Game is cool, but there is one big problem if you play this game with Resolution like 3600x2180 Mouse pointer becomes extremely tiny even in rainy missions you can't see it. And there is no way you can increase the mouse pointer size in game options.

shit game, DOW 1 better

Crashes on launch every time. There is supposedly a fix online if you look but it appears to be arduous and i dont care that much. Steam is now trying to deny me a refund (2+ weeks) despite the fact I was just attempting various fixes I saw online. 0/10

Literally unplayable. Wont launch, did all these work around with no results. I'm sure its a great game, but if I can't even play it, why would I buy it? In this state, it shouldn't even be on the store, much less rehashed as an anniversary edition that requires you to download something off git hub to even run it. Don't buy, even if it's 99% sale.

This game is not a sequel to Dawn of War. This is an entirely different style of game play. If this wasn't named as a sequel to the first game, I wouldn't have bought it. I went into this expecting a base building RTS game, but instead you get to pick a few characters to form a party and complete the missions with those people you chose. I'm not saying this is a bad game, but the name is highly misleading if you're looking for a sequel to Dawn of War. This game play is just not for me.

After playing the original Dawn of War and its expansions I decided I'd try Dawn of War 2. After all I loved the original game and its expansions were fun with Dark Crusade and Soulstorm being my favs. There's no way I'd dislike the 2nd game... Right?

+The graphics are nice, sounds are good, music isn't half bad, controls are easy. Voice acting is nice.
+In the campaing levelling up your squads and giving them better equipment, getting better skills for them is very fun. You can do this for your commanders in the new coop game mode too which is great.
+Having the Tyranids as a playable faction in game is actually super cool. Sad that the Necrons and Imperial Guard etc are gone though.

+/- The campaing, unlike Soulstorm and Dark Crusade, is very similar to the original Dawn of War game and the Winter Assault expansion. There is a story, you have missions to do, go and do em while in Soulstorm and Dark Crusade you just chose a faction and fought against all the other factions over regions. This for me is neither a positive point nor a negative point. I definitely prefer Soulstorm and Dark Crusade's campaings above all others but I still accept this type of campaing too.
+/- Another thing about the campaing is that it goes on for quite some time. It gets interesting at times but it overstays its welcome by a lot.
+/- The online skirmish matches against players or AI doesn't have some of the issues I listed in the negative points section. You can't build bases but you can build units and upgrade them and lose them. While its a lil better its not what I'm really here for.

-No more base building. You just have a handful of squads and when they die you just need to heal them. This is my biggest issue with the campaing and it leads to the other big issues for me too.
-This is somewhat influenced by the previous point but because there is no more base building now you can't have huge armies either. You can't build a barracks, a vehicle factory, spawn like 3-4 standard soldier units, build a transport vehicle and carry them to battle or anything like that. You just start the mission with a few squads and you need to use them from the beginning to the end.
-So no base building, no huge armies... What happens when a squad gets hit so bad that they die? Well they don't. They never die actually. The members of the squad will die but the commander will always remain and he simply goes "unconcious" until you bring an allied squad over to heal him. Then you can send him back to a safe spot and wait a few seconds for the dead members of that squad to be replenished. You can't build bases, you can't have huge armies, deaths have no meaning because losing an unit is literally not a thing... The entire tug-of-war, attritional warfare feeling you got from the original Dawn of War game has been taken away in the worst way possible. The feeling of it stays but its been gutted. In the original Dawn of War you could have several bases on the map, all pumping out units, you could have a huge army just attacking all at once and while it was important to keep your units alive you could fail at that or you'd have no choice but to fail, no choice but to send a squad to its death to gain a lil bit more time. They would die, you'd make new ones and try to keep going. A single match could last hours, fighting against the same enemy on the same few areas, neither of you unable to gain the upper hand. In the original games it really felt like an attritional war was going on but it never went to the "oh my god do I just have to keep smacking my head against this brick wall till it breaks?" territory, it definitely got close to that territory but it always felt like you could try something else to break the stalemate cuz you could try new tactics, you had the buildings and the resources and the ability to produce different units, try something new. Thats not here anymore. I thought you couldn't have attritional war style of gameplay when the game only lets you command 4-5 units. Turns out I was mistaken, even with a small force you can still have that sort of gameplay feel. The issue is that because you're locked with what you have and because you can't build anything new to try a different approach what ends up happening is that the attiritional warfare feeling stays but it stays in and never leaves the "do I just keep smacking my head against this brick wall till it collapses?" territory. When your unit losses mean nothing, when everything gets replenished for free in safe spots, when you can't build anything new and when you're going up against numerically superior and rarely unit-wise superior enemies (that can heal too like your guys can by just backing off from the combat and going somewhere thats safer) then the only option left to you is to hit your head against that brick wall until something happens.
-As if all of this isn't enough, adding insult to injury... The ending to the story sucks. Spoilers obviously but it does the entire "the mission is lost, we've done our best but its not enough, we'll die but we'll take as many of those bastards along with us!" it does that then you fight like 1-2 waves of enemies and all of a sudden it goes "oh my god! Reinforcements! We're saved! Lets go and kick their ass!" wtf. You beat back the enemies, there's another hold out segment where you defend your location (lasts 30 seconds) and then you fight a boss, story ends. You should have let me died against a never ending wave of Tyranids.

I wouldn't necessarily call the game "bad". It works and every now and then you'll enjoy a mission or a part of the story will get interesting etc. but that doesn't happen all the time. Its a mix of "the story is getting boring, I feel like a lot of missions in here are here just to make the story feel longer... My squads are good enough and the new equipment I'm getting isn't worth using..." and "oh wow this mission was actually cool with its main objective and side objectives... Wow the Tyranids and the Orks are fighting each other, I can just sneak around I don't even need to fight every battle? Thats an interesting gimmick for this mission... Oh my god my unit gets Terminator armor that changes how my unit looks and behaves by quite a lot? Wow thats fucking cool." Its a mix of those two feelings which is why I can't say I hate the game but nor can I say I love it either. The multiplayer skirmish stuff is a lil better, a lil closer to the style the first Dawn of War game had but thats not what I'm here for I'm here for the campaing. The coop game mode sounds cool but I don't enjoy playing with randoms and I haven't invited any friends to try out the game mode with so I just won't include that part of the game in the review. Its a very mixed bag and if I could give it a mixed recommendation I would but I can only recommend it or not recommend it, no middle ground so I'll give it a thumbs down because its not what I hoped it would be. I'm sure fans of the series or fans of 40k in general will still enjoy it but I came here expecting something else and didn't get it and what I got in return isn't that fun for me.
Edit: Apperantly this anniversary edition includes Chaos Rising too which originally was an expansion pack for Dawn of War 2. I haven't played the Chaos Rising campaing, maybe I'll add it to the review in the future.

One of the best Warhammer Universe RTS ever, a must have

it was perfect.perfect Everything down to the last minute details :)

I play the singleplayer campaign at least once a year. Together with the mod Ultimate Exterminatus, which I highly recommend, the campaign becomes a great experience (on top of what it already was) with great replayability.

The friendly AI is frustratingly stupid. They seemingly try to not do what you tell them. Go get in that cover so its between you and the enemy. Yes sir. Proceeds to use their body to block the cover from taking dmg. Ok super tanky unit in terminator armor stand out in the open and take hits. Yes sir. Trys to take cover with other units than destroys the cover bc you know... terminator armor. I say that its frustratingly stupid bc part of your mission scoring to get extra deployments is based on units going down. (to get full score no one can go down, and essentially you get 4 downs each one costing you a large chunk of the score) So when your sniper unit decides with one of the longest ranges in the game to leave cover and than die 2+ times a mission.

I really like this game

Fun 40k action. I like upgrading the heroes but I wish you could also switch out the war gear for the other squad members.

A stellar entry in the Warhammer 40K universe that shifts focus from traditional base-building to tactical, squad-based combat. Each mission feels dynamic and rewarding, with a strong emphasis on strategy and unit customization. The campaign is engaging, offering a well-crafted story that captures the grimdark tone of the 40K universe.

New warhammer fan since space marine 2 so this is part of of my crusade into the content and lore with the games (and books and models and painting). And yeah this is a great warhammer game. The ambiance is there, the faction, the action, the quotes. Epic Warhammer 40 k! (and I 'm no heritic to say otherwise)

Fun times and good tactical combat. Plus GW was nice enough to give out the DLC for free. Good stuff

One of the best co-op experiences I've had. Up there with Helldivers 1. Brilliant game.

If you are old and your twitch reactions are slow and you want to be depressed I would highly recommend. I'm sure the strategy is fun for some but if you reactions are too slow strategy is meaningless. I tried the campaign and realized I suck to bad to ever have a chance. I'll never understand why "strategy" games don't allow you to control the speed in the campaign. Mission sucess, I guess I'll go lay in bed and be depressed now.

At first I didn't like the gameplay being a StarCraft verteran.But I warmed up to it .The atmosphere is where it's at as this game seems to capture the essence of 40K.I would recommend this game to anyone who likes squad based hero type RTS games with no focus on base building or resource management.

Great game. One of the WH40k and general best ones. Alows you to make your own pace and tactics. Easy to lern mechanics and lot of options for fine tuning your squads.

it is a fun single player game with stratigey.(sorry for my bad spelling)

its pretty good, the AI can be annoying sometimes tho

Still holds pretty solid after all these years. I like the customization I can do to characters with weapons and gear.

Great, but prefer the previous game. I'm a bit old but the love the old school games.

Frustratingly close to a perfect 40K experience. If it'd come along five years later modding would have done wonders for this.

Great game for RTS. Sadly it seem like GW is making the board game more like this, hence the combat patrols.

I would recommend Dawn of War I over this. Both for reasons Warhammer and gameplay. So if you want to play a more traditional and medium-to-large scale RTS, chose Dawn of War I instead of this.

Dawn of War II is more MOBA than RTS at its core.

Even the intros were better in the first series. One of which was epic Space Marine doing fuckin cool last stand on a torn barren epic looking landscape vs This hot mess of gigajaw Rambo looking nobody killing lady looking elves in some wonderland forest just to get screwed over by some space bug thingy (aka Tyranid but you don't get to play them in this whatsoever) like a absolute fuckin idiot.

Edit: what kind of Steam moderation hides the word F U C K I N G ?

Warhammer 40 000: Dawn of War II - with achievements .... time come to replay this great game again.

Working great on both windows or macos - including progress synchronization.

I used to love this game and recently gave it a shot again with the DoW 2 campaign. I got quite far and then all the bugs from 15 years ago started rearing their heads. Missions had errors so it couldn't load them, and the latest is that I now have no more missions and thus no way to progress.

It's such a shame, as it was one of the best 40k games to date =(

Dawn of War 2 delivers a thrilling and tactical real-time strategy experience, stepping away from traditional base-building mechanics in favor of a more squad-focused approach. Set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, it excels in fast-paced combat, where you control elite squads of soldiers across strategic maps. The diverse factions, including Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar, each bring unique gameplay elements, making battles feel distinct and dynamic.

The single-player campaign is engaging, with a solid narrative and a series of increasingly intense missions. The progression system allows you to customize your units, making each encounter feel rewarding. However, the lack of a base-building mechanic might feel limiting to some fans of the genre.

Multiplayer is where Dawn of War 2 truly shines, with tactical depth and a steep learning curve that rewards strategic thinking. While the overall experience is stellar, some may find the combat occasionally repetitive and the AI in single-player a bit predictable. Nonetheless, Dawn of War 2 stands as a polished, entertaining RTS with excellent combat and strong multiplayer.

Rating: 8/10

Fun game with hours of replay-ability.

Just finished the campaign of the base game, definitely can say its a awesome game... i wouldn't have called it Dawn of War if number 1 was your thing, maybe give it a different name.

Really cool took inspiration from Company of Heroes and more close up squad based but really good, you can feel the impacts of the bullets and explosiona, would definitely give it a try.

Unless your heretic scum?

This might be still the best of the Dawn of War titles. Hours of play and an interesting story. It is a classic in my opinion.

I literally can't play it. It locks up my computer and makes it so that I can't click anything unless I restart.

Great classic game, runs good on modern hardware and software (windows 10)

Base game:

I was hoping for an RTS sequel to the first Dawn of War (for the single-player campaign). Kinda disappointed at first when there was no base building and different units to use. This is more like a real-time tactical squad role-playing game.

Played a few missions, and to my surprise, I actually enjoyed the RPG and real-time tactics element. What better way to capture the strength of space marine when you lead 3 other squads to defeat a full-scale Tyranid when Ork and Eldar constantly sabotage your defense.

There are so many different play styles depending on the squads you bring, the skills you choose, and the weapons and equipment you carry. Bringing the right weapons makes the fight so much easier (I once used bolters on a vehicle boss fight, and that really took forever)

The game also has an amazing soundtrack. Beat the original campaign three times (one on Primarch, one on Recruit to grind the "Legend" achievement, and one Sergeant playthrough when the base game was given away for "free" on Amazon Prime), and I am still not tired of the soundtrack!

Great dialogue design as well. I really enjoyed them whenever party pooper Cyrus spoke, lmao.

This game might be a nightmare for achievement hunters because 1/3 of the achievements are related to co-op or online multiplayer, so be aware if you don't have friends and want to 100% this game.

Now, if you excuse me, I have some Chaos Space Marine to kill!

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising

Chaos Rising introduces Chaos Space Marines as the most prominent threat. The campaign story continues after the original Dawn of War II game. Story-wise, Chaos Rising is well-written.

They made a few changes to the campaign: Introduced a corruption meter, added some new war gears (related to corruption and redemption), broke up supply crates into three categories, reduced the energy regen on all squads, changed the difficulty setting (on the hardest difficulty, the enemy no longer do ridiculous damage, but their health is greatly increased, this makes some fight really long.), and had a set number of missions you can play.

I really liked the design of the corruption meter. It gives you different ways to play the game. Corrupting wargears are powerful, but they will add to the corruption meter. Once a squad is fully corrupted, there is no more redemption. Some of the missions also give you corruption and redemption objectives.

Chaos Rising has a lot of multiplayer achievements, so be aware if you want to 100% this game (and have no friends).

They deleted my old account, for the anniversary edtion.... Wasted lot of hours, top levels characters...

Looks like the aggressive campaign feature that tracks days will also delete the entire campaign if the game has an error while playing. 20 hours, poof gone. Only option is to restart campaign.

This game is a Classic imo and well worth your game time. You can even play co-op in the campaign storyline.

Game play, Story and Graphics has aged well for a game that released in 2009. I replayed the original campaign again in 2024 (coz I recently played and completed DoW1 original campaign).
When comparing DoW1 and DoW2. DoW2 is more RPG/Real-time Tactics genre, where DoW1 is focused on RTS genre and its not a bad thing. They're just both different yet good in their own way.

If you're going to play this game in 4K resolution, I highly recommend to download a mod to scale the UI larger and use something like Yolomouse(if you have it) to better cursor visibility.

"Dawn of War II Anniversary Edition" release wiped all my online profile concerning "Last Stand" and Multiplayer modes which is a shame since I spent many hours in its online modes. DoW2's 3rd expansion "Retribution" (which is not part of "Anniversary Edition")still have my online profile saved, so thank goodness for that.

I was an autistic 18 year old and and only wanted to play the engineer and build that dumb gun. idk why but i thought it was so cool and that thing sucked so bad its all i did LOL
For the emperor

its a brilliant game.
my only criticism is the random loot drops.

Superb RTS game. Also the storyline is amazing!

Takes the Relic ethos of Micro-Heavy RTS combat and runs with it. The campaign feels like an RTS-RPG, and it's much better for it. It feels more dynamic than most RTS campaigns, which typically revolve around death-ball building and slow rolling levels.

Btw it's still worth playing RTS especially if you like old school Blizzard's style squad missions over typical economical fast phase base/army building from DoW1 and many others games in the same genre. A lot of details and attention to Warhammer 40k, but unfortunately missing certain factions (like my favorite Tau or Imperial Guards) and obviously zero support here after two DLCs and DoW3 released.
Still, the game will pay off for its price and quality even with its graphics, even in 2025-2030 I believe or until we will see a decent DoW4 or Total War in 40k, but let's be fair because we won't.

Does not work on modern systems.

I love this game and its mods and its co op mode where I can be a tau or tyranid with my friends. Please make a followup game that isn't dawn of war 3. If I could have just a dawn of war 1 or 2 sequel that was as good as those two games, I'd be so happy with the tech we have at our disposal today and the faithful fanbase, modders, etc. Also I don't know why it only shows like 3 and a half hours, I definitely have played WAY more than that lol.

I saw retribution was delisted, turns out it was folded into this. Already had and beaten all these, but the last stand is really cool to occasionally come back to