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

The game won't start and freezes my PC every time I try to start it.

If these devs were in prision I would protect them in the showers.

If you have a windows 11 system with a !13700 you will not beable to play this game, an there is no support for this game. DO NOT BUY! you will just have to refund it. I didnt buy recently i just upgraded my computer an was reinstalling some of my favort games... an oh yay... half my games dont run on this new system... feels like im back in WIndow Vista days... like didnt microsoft learn not to... ruin their reputation... guess they like not being more wealthy.

Still a grand example of the hero-focused RTS, and an excellent entry point into Warhammer 40K in general.

The best version of Dawn of War. The first one is fantastic, but a little dated in terms of aesthetics. The base game is second only to Chaos Rising, which is the absolute sweet spot of small unit tactic RTS. If you love WH40k, especially if you love Space Marines, this is a fantastic game. Even 15 years later.

lots of interesting combos

"I am eternal."
- Space Marine Dreadnought

The game is unplayable because of persistent 'A sign in change has occured" error that effectively prevents progression through campaign.

Even this late after release, this error appears randomly and affects some people, but not others. There is no apparent solution - as far as I know. Sometimes people have this problem, sometimes they don't. It's very inconsistent in this regard.

I don't recommend buying the game until the problem is fixed.

The best Warhammer 40k game I've ever played. I finished the base game multiple times. That good. Chaos Rising is also great.

Haven't played Rts in ages, campaign too a few missing to get used to but having fun now!

! find it fun in a odd way way. like the past melded with a raw future gone wrong

This felt like a huge step back from DoW 1. It started off with so much promise but I don't feel like DoW ever recovered after this.

Games are painfully small, repetitive, and boring.

The cover system is broken with squads often hiding on both sides of a wall.

Maps are boring with endlessly repeating assists.

Lead an elite strike force of space marines, doing lore-accurate missions across multiple planets, while facing the hopelessness of a Tyranid Hive Fleet, Ork Waaaagh!, and Eldar Secret Invasion.

9/10 Needs more IG.

The Emperor Protects

BOOOM! The lore and the gore, Still playable after all these years. ooooh. still crazy after aaaaaalll these years

Awesome game and awesome campaign. Way, way better than dawn of war 3.

Still not as bad as the haters claim. Yes its much smaller in scope, but the cover mechanic and teamwork required with such small squads was an interesting idea but the graphics are pretty good.

get it on sale play it a few times

Fun single player campaign. Lots of different units and ways to customize your heroes.

A game I wish I didn't skip out on back in 2009. Absolutely amazing MOBA game.

just make sure you are connected to the internet

You can't save and exit in the middle of a mission so if you have a life or responsibilities this game is not for you. That alone makes the game unplayable for me. Beyond that it gets old and repetitive very quickly. It's a really small game relative to DOW I. Save your money-- better options out there

Yet another forgettable RTS sequel from the "RTS is dying" era

There will be no mercy for the misguided, so I recommend this game.

Love the old school Warhammer 40k feel. Played this for well over 100 hours and keep coming back every year or so. Definitely pick it up if you love 40k.

This game and its expansions are really great games, a little hard to learn at the start, since it doesn't works like a normal RTS, so it will take some time to click, but when it does, is a glorious fest of battle and blood, just like the Emperor intended. Also, the Chaos Rising expansion is a master class in how to make an expansion for a game.

this is perfect except for no base building

It's a good Warhammer game if you're looking for a good Warhammer game

It's not an RTS though. I mean the PVP mode technically is, but it's not a good RTS. And the campaign is straight up just not an RTS campaign, it's a squad based tactics RPG but I like those too so yeah. I recommend it for 10 bucks on sale, don't spend 50 bucks on this shit.

1. Not a strategy game, it's a tactics game
2. It's not particularly fun or engaging to play
3. Cringeworthy writing and direction, as though it were aimed at 7 year olds who've never heard of 40k
4. Underwhelming and unimpressive campaign with zero payoff
5. Visuals (rain) that make it really hard to see anything, including the cursor
6. 'Sequel' to an infinitely better game.
7. I could go on but I have work tomorrow

Squad based shooter with a choice of squads to use per mission. Lots of upgrades to units, though very few change the style of play dramatically.

Solid and maybe even great real time tactical game which works well even on older systems. It's probably especially good if you like multiplayer, I only played the campaigns.

I'm generally not an RTS fan, BUT this one is pretty easy to learn and hard to master; fairly deep tactical strategy and the RTS will keep you on your toes when you're in the blood and bolters.

please make it playable for window 11 i can't start the game

A very, very different game from DOW I, but that's not a negative. Overall a very good real time squad tactics game with some light rpg elements. One of the last good strategy games Relic has put out, unfortunately.

Absolute classic, one of the best WH40K games ever, and a very solid RTS in it's own right. Honestly holds up so well too. One of the *original* PC games for me, and an endless source of joy for that!

More micro focused RTS.
Very neat hero system with upgrades.
Good counters, great universe.

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