WarHammer 40K's Dawn of War is 50% Off at Steam

[Windigo]

Worth it?

Never played a single thing warhammerish.

Similar to?

Thanks in advance for your views

[JudgeDredd]

Isn't it like Warcraft meets Company of Heroes?

I think it's similar to Company of Heroes in that you capture sections of map and hold them, build units etc...but not WWII...using Orcs and Humans I think

I played an iteration of it one time loooong ago...it wasn't half bad....but space/magic/sorcery etc really isn't my cup of tea.

[Arctic Blast]

Yes, it is. Get it.

If we're talking about the original DoW, one of the later releases (Dark Crusade or Soulstorm) is your best bet. Or just snag a Gold/Platinum pack to get everything. Fairly typical RTS-style game, though it's a fair bit calmer than something like Command & Conquer.

DoW II changes it up and has you command a few squads in tactical battles, with characters who carry over from mission to mission. You'll get wargear you can use to upgrade and customize capabilities.

I've enjoyed basically all of it.

[Gusington]

I loved both DoW I and II.

[panzerde]

Definitely a lot of fun. More so if you're into any of the fluff for the game.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Never played a single thing warhammerish.

Get it.

[JasonPratt]

Worth it?

Never played a single thing warhammerish.

Similar to?

Thanks in advance for your views

As noted above, the same people refined the original engine to create Company of Heroes, so if you've played that you'll have some idea of gameplay. There are some big differences, too, particularly in the number of factions available for DOW.

I would say no real reason to pick up the first of the DOW1 games or its expansion, except that you need their keys (or will have to hunt up an unlock) in order to play their factions in multiplayer. All factions are open for any single-player option (campaign or skirmish) in the later games, though. Multiplayer is a blast, but unsure how many people still play it. A LAN party definitely works best in my experience. Be sure to patch up.

DOW1 was made about the time as the original Battle for Middle-Earth or Kohan 2: Kings of War, and all three games were following out, in somewhat different ways (or a very same way for K2) the RTS renaissance originally pioneered by Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. As such all three are still the easiest introductions to modern RTS games: highly colorful games that do a lot of the work of squad management for the player. The other two games also simplify base-building, but DOW1 has a much more conventional base-building aspect although each of the factions have variations on the basic themes.

You've been around long enough to get the basic idea of WH40K I guess: standard fantasy trope factions converted mostly to science-fiction tropes. There are space knight paladins and orks and elves and demon knights and tall skinny beardless dwarves (they took the biggest changes ;) ) and undead robots and dark elves and hyperactive space nuns, and also just poor regular human soldiers with mere little laser rifles and a lot of tanks trying to stay alive while caught between all this mess. (There's also a whole faction spun off the xenomorphs from the Alien films, but they don't show up until DOW2 unless you install an unofficial mod.) It's a crapsack world where there are practically no good guys (nominally the paladins and the elves should be good guys but they're far too xenophobic and arrogant; the tall skinny shooty beardly dwarves are the closest thing to pure good guys -- and are also the closest things to secular humanists in the game, fwiw) and everyone is caught in a cycle of constant warfare which will only continue spiraling until the chaos manifestations of people's greed and violence destroy the universe. Fun!

The campaigns of the first game and its expansion are basically tutorials for playing skirmish and mp, but they have pretty good stories for RTS games. In the last two games (Dark Crusade and Soulstorm) you'll pick any faction during the campaign and beat down other factions by generating tactical battles on a simple strategic map; there's a loose story for each faction, but not so much as in the first DOW1 and its expansion (Winter Assault).

While the early game + WA lacks four of the eventual nine playable factions, some fans still prefer it for skirmish and mp because it's a lot more flexible about letting players go about winning through various build options. With DC and SS the designers (and the main modders) tried to balance the game better by adding more caps on how many of what kind of units could be built (and reducing turret spam), meaning any final force built by a player for a faction will end up being pretty similar to any other final force built by any player for that faction. Also Soulstorm was farmed out to another developer and arrived a little undercooked and rougher looking than Dark Crusade before it.

Still, it's hard to argue that any other RTS is better overall than DoW1: it has more factions, with more real differences between the factions, than any other game I know of except maybe Warlords: Battlecry 2 and 3; but provides modern control over large groups (unlike W:B2/3, which is a pretty genius game(s) otherwise in its own right); but also provides more flexible base-building design options than Kohan 2 or BfME1. Its nearest modern competitor would be BfME2, which opens up base-building and adds more factions, but ended up somehow broken in its implementation. (My late pupil and I loved BfME1 and wanted to love BfME2 but could never manage its gameplay as well as with DoW1:DC or SS.)


Dawn of War 2, as noted above, is a somewhat different beast, focusing back strongly on story and therefore on managing small hero squads. (If you want to 'play the whole story', play DoW1; take the Order option instead of Chaos in WH and make sure the Eldar get to the final battle; play the Space Marines again for Dark Crusade; and then the Imperial Guard for Soulstorm. They have the best SS story anyway.) DoW2 has three parts to its story: DoW2, its Chaos Rising expansion, and DoW2 Retribution which finishes up the overarching story of DoW2 and ties back to the story started in DoW1 (or just before it actually) -- obviously stay faithful to the Blood Ravens during CR and take the Space Marines in Retribution to get the 'canon' ending. But Retribution actually opens up all six available DoW2 factions (Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tyranids, Orks, Eldar and Chaos Marines) to 'finish' out the story through their campaigns. Retribution also offers a skirmish and mp game more like the original DoW1 series than the first DoW2, so if what you want is to play a good RTS you should either stick with that one (for updated sfx) or DoWSS (for the most gameplay options) or DoWDC (for somewhat more polish than SS).

[JasonPratt]

I should perhaps add that if you want a more arcadey taste of the Dawn of War games, at least from the Space Marine sides, and don't want to invest in a whole package yet, you could play the Kill Team game which uses DoW2 assets.

Space Hulk, though a bit broken and buggy, is a more methodical turn-based atmospheric introduction to the milieu, focusing on the Space Marines vs one type of Tyranid. The old FPS version of Space Hulk from back in the days of the first Doom game is, in my opinion, still the best translation of that game however, despite being in real-time instead of turn based. It can be found cheap or for free in various places but needs Dosbox to run (and a slightly older version of DB at that. Also for no clear reason I have to re-edit something in DB whenever I want to play the original SH computer game. So while it's great it's currently a hassle to play.)

For a much different real-time or turn-based Warhammer experience with tons of factions and lots of nifty management detail, I'd recommend Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition. It's far more humorous than WH40K by its nature, too.

[Nefaro]

I've enjoyed occasionally playing the original Dawn of War series and still keep the latter ones installed.  While not a big fan of this type of RTS, the WH40K stuff is wonderfully grim stuff and there is a lot of unit variety and upgrades.   

It also has a game speed option, so if you're worried about a click-fest you can slow it down.

Despite my love of RPG-style gameplay, I couldn't get into DOWII all that much.  I got a short way through the original campaign a couple times but it just felt too canned, and the episodes too small, for me to get into. I believe the later DOWII releases may have a wannabe dual-layered campaign but I think it's just choosing which battle you fight next so it's not a real one.  I've not even fired those up despite having them a few years.

[JasonPratt]

Nah, none of the DoW2 games have more than a rail story track with optional side missions. The first DoW2 has that, too; you just didn't get far enough for the optional missions to start popping up, Nef.

I just had a thought. Ahem...

WARHAMMER 40K: DIABLO

That would be like printing money.

[jomni]

Though I love the game mechanics, theme and content of DOW1. I can't seem to get to enjoy it so much. No matter what I do, I lose out to a skilled and efficient AI. I'm quite warry of the genre (base building rts).

[Nefaro]

I just had a thought. Ahem...

WARHAMMER 40K: DIABLO

That would be like printing money.

I've been saying that a WH40K Action-RPG could be superb. 

I would also like to have a turn-based tactical combat game, such as a new version of WH40K: Chaos Gate.  Which was pretty much X-Com in the 40K universe.  We need another one like that.

[Nefaro]

Though I love the game mechanics, theme and content of DOW1. I can't seem to get to enjoy it so much. No matter what I do, I lose out to a skilled and efficient AI. I'm quite warry of the genre (base building rts).

My biggest complaint with DOW1 is that the Normal-level AI difficulty spanks me but when I lower it down one level, it's a tad too easy for my tastes.  So I can't find a proper AI difficulty balance.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I normally beat it on hard. 2 important things are:
-rush to take control points at the opening
-be ready for the tech up tank push. You must have anti armor units with grenades ready when the tanks come. Beat that, the rest is cake.

[Nefaro]

My biggest problem was trying to be doing something everywhere, at once.  Keeping up with the click-fest, which the AI player can easily do. 

Despite having a speed option, I still found myself wanting to give multiple orders to different units in different places ASAP but being unable to without having to pause all the time.