Dawn of War 2 Beta Impressions

Now that I've officially made a massive return back to my PC for satisfying my gaming needs, I've launched full steam ahead into the amazing offerings that Steam has been providing. This week, the Steam gods offered up access to the Multiplayer Beta to Dawn of War 2 if you bought Soulstorm or pre-ordered DoW2. I finally got setup last night and thought I'd share my thoughts.

I've been a fan of the RTS genre on pc pretty much since I started getting "hardcore" into pc gaming. I always seem to float back to them and it always proves to be the one genre I'm actually decent at competitive wise (compared to friends, etc). The first Dawn of War was pretty neat and I tried it out but have to admit I did not play a lot of it. In fact, its one of those games I regret not going back and getting more into. When I first read about DoW2 and how they were going to add a more character-centric approach to the campaign, I was intrigued. From what I've gathered the game is more about upgrading a core group of characters and using constructed units to support them versus just all out base building / combat. I'm still pretty excited about the single player campaign but the beta was Multiplayer only, so lets get into that.

Dawn Of War 2 strips a ton of stuff out of the standard RTS genre and in turn puts a ridiculous amount of focus on fighting. First off, there is no base building. None. Nada. You start with one building that produces all your units and allows you to move up tech trees. The "base building" actually comes from your units. Almost every single unit has upgrades that can be made and you do those while they are on the move. Secondly, DoW2 only allows you build a relatively small amount of squads. In turn, each squad is given more power and survive longer. The focus then becomes on you micro-managing a smaller army then a normal RTS. To top it off, when you enter a match you select a hero character that becomes the cornerstone of your army. Each of the four factions (Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, and Tyranid) have 3 heroes with each one focusing on a different key strength of that faction. The hero has several powers that can turn the tide of a skirmish along with a plethora of war gear that allows them to be customized.

Since your unit choices are limited and it takes longer to replace lost units, it is obvious that the game is putting a strong emphasis on your army layout. For example, a Force Commander driven space marine army would want to play to his strengths (melee and defense) and would want to bring Assault Marines with some light ranged support. Where the army of a Techmarine would be more about base defense then pure assault. I played a few matches with Raj last night and we already noticed the differences in our commanders and the effect they had. I brought heavy assault troops with my Techmarine who then established a defensive position along with his the turrets that he can create. Raj brought his Force Commander to go one-on-one with a Tyranid Carnifex (a super heavy melee unit) while I kept the swarms of infantry off his back. We held the Victory Point the Tyranids needed with this combination for a few waves.

The game does have it flaws though. Right now a lot of the feedback with the powers is not 100% clear. Certain aura buffs are difficult to reckongize on the field. Units are poorly highlighted especially when you are tabbing through a selected group. This ends up forcing you to click on units to give specific orders which in the end isn't too bad since the game provides a slightly slower pace to allow you actually think. To top it off, some of the wargear icons are hard to differentiate forcing you to always read the helper text.

Overall, I'm pretty excited about this game now. The campaign looks like it will an excellent cross between an RTS and a party-based RPG, which is exactly what I'm looking for (and in some cases already found with Spellforge 2). Sadly (well not so sadly) I'm going home to Indiana this weekend to see my mom before she goes into surgery so I won't have my PC with me. On the positive side, I get to use their nice big tv for all the xbox gaming goodness I could ask for.