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Dawn of War 2 Beta has been released. It is now open to anyone who has purchased soulstorm and will be open to everyone else next week. Also Soulstorm has dropped in price to $7.50 on steam. I have not played it yet, was downloading it last night. Will post with thoughts once I get off of work.

where do you find this?

I'm not that impressed with he game. I wanted to like it. I was so sure I would. But the UI is congested and counter-intuitive. It's a mirror maze to try to figure out how to play a skirmish vs. the computer cause the game wants you to fight other players even though you're completely unfamiliar with the game mechanics. There's really no tutorial. Fewer choices of units for every army. The skirmishes are much smaller scale than in DoWI, so it doesn't feel like much of a battle. Reinforcing squads requires you to be near your base, so that's a headache. There's really no base building which I can't decide if that's good or bad. It seems good, but it feels like there's just something cool missing. Graphics are fantastic, but you can't zoom in close enough to really appreciate them. The sound is great but the music is forgettable. Maybe I just need to play more?

Be a little forgiving, it's still a beta, and doesn't include all the content. I'm sure it will have a liiiittle bit more music than 1-2 tracks in the final game.

If you have played Company of Heroes before, you will be RIGHT at home and be almost an expert on the bat.

If not, it will take some to get used to.

Cover is extremely important in this game. Make sure your ranged units are always in cover!

To get the beta, you need to have Steam, and have bought Soulstorm on steam, or have your CD key ready.

I won't get Soulstorm, but I'm happy and can wait a bit longer if the game is as good as Company of Heroes.

Greets
Schepp himself

Are they really only including four races again though? This aggravates me. I'll wait until it goes gold or platinum or whatever and get all the races at once. Why dole them out in such paltry heaps?

Scottywan82 wrote:Are they really only including four races again though? This aggravates me. I'll wait until it goes gold or platinum or whatever and get all the races at once. Why dole them out in such paltry heaps?

The suckness of Dawn of War was proportional with the amount of races in the game...I hope that doesn't happen with the second part.

Greets
Schepp himself

Company of Heroes is better. This is more or less a CoH for Kids version with brighter and shinier colours. I hate those glinting decals they use for everything metallic. Final verdict is on hold until I've played the full version and not a BETA.

That said, this game is fun. Played three of the four factions a bit and they all have their own little quirks and touches. Orks are straight up balls fun again with their special abilities (suicidal Storm Boyz and trigger-happy Kommandos), while the Nids are outright brutal. Build a Carnifex, charge it into an enemy squad of infantry and you'll see. Marines are okay I guess, but then again they are marines. I did like giving my scouts shotguns and having them fend off large hordes of Nids. The cover system is also nicely done. My tech marine was hiding behind a low wall from Eldar fire and was actually popping up every now and then to rattle off a burst, a really nice touch.

Downsides are rather abysmal voice acting, especially for the marines and orks along with the terrain being easily destroyed by units in terminator armour. My commander could walk through walls and hard cover.

Yeah I am not jumping up and down yet. I pretty much suck at these games pvp, so its more like work than fun, and seems soooo fast to me. Still hant figured out of to go vs the computer yet. Any one what to share how to do that? It really is pretty to look at, but the running back to home base all the time sucks and if an enemy happens to be in your path your guys just stand there and get killed. Mass guardians are BRUTAL and the spore mine units suck so bad, have not played as Nids yet, if those babys are as cheap as the seemed to be sent at me so often, they need to cost more. They blow up and so did every unit they touched the whole game....crazy broken!

Captain Vyper wrote:Still hant figured out of to go vs the computer yet. Any one what to share how to do that?

You have to go to "Multiplayer" then "Custom Games" then "Public". Then click on "Host" and make a name for your game. Pick your Commander. Then click the first box under "Enemy Team" and you'll get a list of options, among which you'll find the computer and different AI difficulties... Took me a while to figure all that out too. Hosting a public game isn't really where I'd guess to go for a 1P game vs. the computer...

I just started playing a couple of hours ago, and I must say that I'm very impressed. This is such a good direction away from any sort of a traditional RTS it's staggering. They've really found the core mechanics they want to focus on and hammered on them again and again and it really shows. The game play is much more to the tune of COH (a vastly superior game to DOWI) but with enough 'give' that it still feels like a proper 40k experience.

The feel of the respective races is really spectacular. Orks are Orky, Marines are Mariney (And I really mean that. I have never actually felt Space Marines represented in either table-top or DOWI, but this is *definitely* the closest.) There are so many different ways to play each faction, and hell, even each commander. They've stuck with the core of units that they should and it leaves all the extra gubbinz for expansions.

I can't really judge the balance at this point, as I've only been fighting experts, but for a beta it feels pretty good. The only thing that stands out as perhaps a little too powerful is the Tyranid Zoanthrope. It's so versatile and ranged that (Maybe just the AI?) doesn't know how to effectively counter.

It is very very micro-intensive, just like it should be. If you want large base building and huge-unit clusterf***s then you're going to want a different game, such as a Supreme Commander, or another comparable RTS.

I'd say that this game is really more to the tune of an RTT, Real Time Tactics. The more I've delved into the Genre, the more I've realized that most satisfying game play can't be found outside of this. COH has it right, and so does this. This game isn't about bum-rushing and blowing up a base (as a matter of fact, that's probably the hardest/worst thing you can do, even later in the game).

It's about finding a niche as far as play-style is concerned, being reactive, aggressive, and inventive when you play. You can't turtle, you can't just set a rally point and click produce.

They've taken out all elements of base-building, which is risky, but I like it a lot. A lot of the "Super Elite" units are only available later or to huge resource cost, which is how it should be. They're not your front line troops, they are to be your "back breakers." It's really just all-around excellent.

I strongly suggest if you value the sort of gameplay described that you get involved in this Beta ASAP.

That's all I can say with a few hours of play, I'll be back to add more later, I think.

I agree on some of the voice acting, its a tad dry. And I knew from the start, they would have to include the obligatory voice actor Steve Blum, the voice of Spike and many many many many other characters in games an anime. Guy gets a whole lot of work. Gets a little old when you notice 2 of the game's unit voices are the same fellow. Can you tell who?

Other than that, it's a very polished game. But not up to the tabletop. I find the need to put various weapons in squads that can take them in the tabletop, but were left out in DOW2 for whatever reason. No plasma guns for Tac marines? No melta guns? No lascannons or multi melta for the Dred? Hopefully many more features will be in the final version of the game, but so far I'm impressed.

So far it sounds like exactly the opposite of what I wanted from DOW2......

What werre you expecting? It was explained months ago what kind of game it was.

I think it's going to bring in alot of new people and lose some old fans. Devout players of 40k would probably play this game and fans of CoH probably too.
But a bunch of people won't like the game because it doesn't meet their high expectations or it is not a CLUSTER-FEST as most RTS games are.
Still there's always SC2 for them and those people won't be sorely missed.
It's still the BETA mind you and this game isn't perfect, yet.

I kinda like it. Unit amounts/sizes are A LOT smaller. This promotes micro managing each unit. Using each unit in conjunction with another.

Here is an example. I have been trying nids as its the new race to the series. If you use your termigaunts by themselves they are not impressive at all. However, if you use them with a synapse creature in range they get knock down and more damage!

All in all a very enjoyable game..to me that is.

This game's going to take enough time from me in February; I can wait until then.

I'm more looking forward to the actual single-player portion myself, I'm not a multi-player fan. The MP part seems to be more or less made for victory point matches, when you try to assault an enemy base be prepared to stay there for a while, it took my Eldar and a friends marines a good fifteen minutes to bring down that damned Nid hive structure.

After playing it all day here's my take on it.
Pros:
-The graphics are a huge improvement from the last game, they look great.
-The sound effects are great, the sound of an ork big shoota or dread asscan just need to be heard
-There's lots of units to choose from, the tyranids have everything but gargolyes and some how genestealers are absent

The Cons:
-nids have no genestealers WTF?
-It's too small. In the fact that you get a few units and your already at the population cap, and I mean a few. I played to today and capped out orks with a warboss, unit of nobz, stormboys, shootaboys, a dread and a truck.
-The screen is really full of stuff, at first it's hard to figure out what's going on.
-No base building, while this may seem like a blessing to some, it means when your enemy storms your base, it doesn't take long for them to wipe you. The fact that you only have one building means you can't get units out fast enough to repel any invaders.
-The space marines proportions are off, it's kinda weird, they look taller and skinnier than they are.
-There's way to much micromanaging, from pick abilities to making sure everyone is in cover and facing the right way (yes you have to make sure some units are facing the right way if you want them to shoot), it really bogs the game down at times.

I'm with some of the other people in this thread. It seems like something is missing but i'm not really sure what it is.
If anyone here played the 40k game that game out on the DS last year it's almost the same but real time.

Maybe without the base building it's like playing a FPS with out guns.

Cheese Elemental wrote:What werre you expecting? It was explained months ago what kind of game it was.

I was expecting DOW with a new engine and Tyranids.

It was stated long ago and shown in videos that it was intended to be more squad-based rather than a huge dakkafest. While DoW did capture the feel of large battles well, the squads didn't have many individual options. I haven't played it yet, but this seems to be more about playing an elite strike force or something like that.

Archonate wrote:I'm not that impressed with he game. I wanted to like it. I was so sure I would. But the UI is congested and counter-intuitive. It's a mirror maze to try to figure out how to play a skirmish vs. the computer cause the game wants you to fight other players even though you're completely unfamiliar with the game mechanics. There's really no tutorial. Fewer choices of units for every army. The skirmishes are much smaller scale than in DoWI, so it doesn't feel like much of a battle. Reinforcing squads requires you to be near your base, so that's a headache. There's really no base building which I can't decide if that's good or bad. It seems good, but it feels like there's just something cool missing. Graphics are fantastic, but you can't zoom in close enough to really appreciate them. The sound is great but the music is forgettable. Maybe I just need to play more?

so basically its been less and less of a mass army vs army game , more into micro managing each squads?

*edit... bad move from relic.... that will give people more reason to like sc2
( i thought DoW2 would for sure blow sc2 out of the RTS genre )

Lordhat wrote:

Cheese Elemental wrote:What werre you expecting? It was explained months ago what kind of game it was.

I was expecting DOW with a new engine and Tyranids.

I hoped for that one, too.
But that one is going to be called "Starcraft II".
So Relic really needed something different. And hey, Combat patrol is a fun game, too.

It's not THAT bad a game as most of you have been describing, just a little disappointing that's all.
And it's only the BETA, they are probably trying to figure out what's wrong with the game at the stage and release a patch for it later on, there's still room for improvement.
I recommend buying this game, whilst the dialog would get a bit annoying it's still pretty fun.
And even tough it may not be as popular or hyped as SC2 i find Dawn of War 2 to be an interesting game to play in between Tf2 and L4d.

And I'm not a big fan of SC 2, it's just SC with shiny new 3D graphics, not my cup of tea.

$7.50 for Soulstorm? I'm sold! Just to play skirmishes with the Sisters against my buddy.

Oh and the DoW2 Beta, I'm on that probably before I load up Soulstorm.

If only I didn't have to work till late tonight. :(

sweet now i have to wait for a week =(

Yea, DOW2 is a very different game from DOW. The amount of micro management is crazy. It is a good thing that max squads are so low as they become hard to control fast. Personally I give the game mixed reviews so far. I have only had a chance to play as orks and nids. The orks certainly felt very orky, but it seemed nearly impossible to kill a complete squad of enemy troops. They always managed to run away, where as if I told my guys to run back to base, they hardly ever made it before getting shot down. Also, there does not seem to be an effective counter to vehicals, other than other vehicals. Walkers are just brutal in this game. A deff dread and a looted tank was pretty much an unstopable combo against the computer at least.

"They always managed to run away, where as if I told my guys to run back to base, they hardly ever made it before TURNING AROUND AND CHARGING DA HUMEZ."
Dat's troo orky.

Heh, fielding the Warboss with a power klaw, 'eavy armour and trophy rack is good fun. That is one beast in close combat. He still needs support mind you, but seeing him charge into Tyranid warriors, grabbing hold of one, giving it a headbutt and then tossing it aside is just fun to watch.

I've played a few games of it so far. I'm absolutely in love with the tactical focus of the game. Setting up crossfires against a player that just thinks he can zergRushkekeke me is sublime.