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I just finished this game last evening (The single player Campaign) and have tried a few skirmishes and such. I have to say when I read they were using the Company of Heroes engine I was pretty excited. Man I love that game as well as Dawn of War and the videos I viewed for this one looked unbelievable! I was excited to play.

Actually playing the game I was MUCH less impressed. It is kind of like they forgot the 'fun'. I don't get it.

It looks great! It sounds pretty much the same (which was very strong in DOW). But one playable race in the campaign? Are they kidding? And I get to control fifteen Space Marines? Really? Fifteen? After ten missions I played nine 'let's get to the end/arena like structure and fight the big baddie' and one 'lets defend this from baddies' missions. Really? That's not much variety. Did the missions editors do this in their sleep? Sure, in the end their were two other 'specific' missions that were different but only those two specifically. I'm honestly confused.

The Wargear part was neat and by the final few missions, once I reached level 20 with all of my squads (For a grand total of six squads of nineteen Space Marines and one Dreadnought, only four squads of which are playable for 95% of the missions) I walked over just about every Tyranid I came across.

Then I tried the online play. Wow, look! I'm limited to a whopping 20-26 marines for my whole force! What!?!? A whopping six squads and the Captain? And the maps are all pretty similar, I'm still trying to find one that tactically is any different than another one. I'm really quite confused by this. Dawn of War is great, Company of Heroes is fantastic, Dawn of War II is lacking, severely.

Last minute gripes:

1.) How do you screw up the Army Painter? So I can plan out my very own Space Marine chapter but I can't actually see what an average marine looks like? Or Ork, Tyranid or Eldar Guardian for that matter. Kind of weird, Dawn of War's has more flexibility.

2.) Cyrus - A Metro-Sexual/Emo Space Marine Scout! Hilarious! But probably not for the right reasons. Gotta love the Fabio hair and perfectly coiffed VanDyke he's sportin'. Very Marine like. He has the proverbial eye-patch/cyborg eye too! How piratey! Also, I felt he was pretty worthless in the game, especially since the game is built around aggressive tactics.



I really hope the new downloadable for this game (available tonight) really helps open it up a bit.

If I'm wrong or you think I'm really off-base with any of this, please let me know. Although I may be embarrassed when you tell me how to get to the other campaigns, at least I'll get to play them.

I think I'll play some Company of Heroes.

I searched this forum for what others thought and despite the THQ thread announcing the new download I couldn't find anything. Did anyone other than a few bother?

The new content is multiplayer oriented for the most part.

Well, it was pretty obvious from the first gameplay trailers that DoW II was going to be on a much smaller scale than the first game.

I mean, in the first DoW, you could have an endless army of Marines who weren't even that tough. Look at the SM in DoW II's skirmish. Yes, they are few in number, but they have an asston of health.

Yeah but even Orks and Tyranids (I haven't tried Eldar) may have larger units but you are still limited to 6 or 7 units, tops.

And it just isn't that much fun. It's just lacking. Too few unit types and some aren't very effective at all. I mean the Campaign was actually kind of cool but got way too repetitive. Maybe its my fault because I expected too much.

Well, in a skirmish-scale setting, you aren't going to have much choice, are you? I'd have been very angry if it was just Dawn of War + Tyranids.

Fair point. But DOW with Tyranids and improved graphics wouldn't have been as bad. DOWII is like a trimmed down version of Company of Heroes.

Maybe I'm just sulking.

Do you like it? Or do you feel a bit disappointed?

No, I think it's the best RTS I've ever played. I think it's much more 40K-realistic in that the Space Marines are ridiculously tough and Guardians are absolutely pathetic, and *gasp* anti-tank weapons actually hurt infantry!

Oh, okay. It is much more like the actual game I'll give you that. I guess I should think of it as Rogue Trader for PC. I'm just not seeing the fun yet.

...

You thought *Cyrus* was useless?

Do you just zerg and spam medpacks?

Cyrus, with the right setup(sink most of his points into stamina and range) is deadly once you get a Dread and Terminator squads.

I cannot count the number of missions that Cyrus has brought down something that shredded through my Commander, just by looking at it sideways with his rifle.

He was so sucky early on (as was the dreadnought) that I never bothered. Especially once I had Terminator armor.

My commander had Iron Halo in Power Armor
Thaddeus had the toughest termie armor
The Devastator guy had the weakest termie armor with the no re-load assualt cannon
The bald guy had some relic heavy flamer

I struggled a bit with bosses in the teens but when they were level 17 or so I walked over everything. Including the final Hive Tyrant.

I just managed my squads and stuck and moved with the Commander and Thaddeus. The other two automatically picked up the slack so I never went back to Cyrus (also he was whiney and annoying so I never wanted to).

The Dread was too slow for my style.

I read Cyrus is really tough later on if you develop him right, maybe I'll have to give him a try. At least try to feel like its worth the money I spent.



I should have bought a third Battlewagon or a couple of trukks!

The thing is, with Cyrus, you've got a great way to prepare the field for the more assaulty/heavy elements you've got.

This becomes pretty invaluable later on, especially in Defense missions. On those, especially against Eldar, I outfit him with Meltabombs(for the Wraithlord waves), Blind Grenades, and Satchel Charges. Against Orks, Blind Grenades, Remote Charges, and Mines.
Against Tyranids, you're best off using Frag Grenades, Remote Charges and Mines.
The trick though, is to have Cyrus with the Blind Grenades ready, toss the Blind Grenades from a good vantage points, immediately toss in explosives, or get ready to detonate a Remote Charge--and then unleash the rest of your force's abilities into the Blinded targets.

You have no clue the hell you can unleash Blind Grenading and then immediately letting loose Cyclone missiles, the Assault Cannon's special ability(Hellfire Barrage) from the Dread, etc. onto the blinded target.
It can, if done well, wipe out an entire wave.

I actually did this with the bald guy and Blind grenade and charges, The Devastator guy and Termie missle launcher (cyclone?). Wiped out a whole wave. Two Orbital bombardments later, two more waves gone, etc.

Tarkus is better suited for Terminator armor, especially if you deck him out with the max Tactical Advance you can(where it extends to other units, and also gives his squad a damage bonus when it's active).

The Devastator+Assault squads only get used by me against the Eldar, to be honest, as I just don't find them useful with a cautious approach.

There's a reason though, that I get high resilience ratings and low speed ratings

the bald guys name is tarkus.

And I kind of agree with gofenris to a point. Although I think that DOW2 is a lot more tactical and all around a better game then DOW1, it is missing the fun factor that DOW1 had.

Mainly because In DOW2 you can't have a horde of 200 rampaging screaming eldar charging across the battlefield. Maybe if they come up with an expansion to DOW2 with chaos space marines in it I will enjoy the game more.

In my second playthrough I ignored the termie armour and just went power armour all the way to the Angel of Death ranking.

I agree with you, the campagin is just zzzzz, while the Mp part is just Sm and Tyrannind rampage, but Im hoping an exp pack with Dark Eldar or perhaps Necrons whil make it worth playing several times over.

The weird thing with the Marines in DOW2 is that they're godly in the campaign, yet die like flies in Skirmish.

GoFenris wrote:
2.) Cyrus - A Metro-Sexual/Emo Space Marine Scout! Hilarious! But probably not for the right reasons. Gotta love the Fabio hair and perfectly coiffed VanDyke he's sportin'. Very Marine like. He has the proverbial eye-patch/cyborg eye too! How piratey! Also, I felt he was pretty worthless in the game, especially since the game is built around aggressive tactics.

Oh, and stop knocking Cyrus. He's so fab he gaks pink.

I understand that there may only be one campain, but the way the campain is used stresses me!
The new "Defend the shrine of the emperor/communication arrey-and-what-not" Makes me mad, at least at high level.
I'm at level 20 now! And first there are almost no battles anywhere, I still have two "Five-day-left" optional defence! And one "Two-days-left"!
Then I does one of the five-days-left because I didn't like the reward for the two-days and wanted to get good stuff first!
Well, when I compleated that, TWO TWO-DAYS-LEFT APPEARED!!! I was like Moar fight eh?
And when I did the first ANOTHER THREE TWO-DAYS-LEFT APPEARED! Then I was like and Fffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuu...
And when I was done with half of those another two appeared! :
Too many defence missions...
Cyrus is my favorite just because of his interesting history, dark voice and nice hair! I have the same haircut.

I love the game! I especially love the realistic Space Marines, which are faithful to the fluff (totally badass).

the fact that a bright lance can actually hurt infantry is nice too.

One problem is that as eldar, once I get a wraithlord out I've pretty much won.

I brought DOW 2 for my birthday, Ive tried it on two Laptops and this message has come up:


"Failed to find a Supported Hardware rending device. Ensure that your systems meet the minimum Requirements for Dawn of War II. Verify that Direct X is properly installed and that you have the latest drivers for your systems"


Any help?

Yeah, it's telling you that your computers suck.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Yeah, it's telling you that your computers suck.

:(

Shame realy. Ive never used it for games or anything as Ive got my 360. My laptop is generally used for coursework, internet surfing etc.

I enjoyed the campaign. It did get a bit repetitive toward the end. Also you can go full termie armor/med spam and make the game uninteresting. You've gotta resist that urge if you want to have a tactical experience.

In any event, I'd buy another one if they had an ork campaign...hell if they had a campaign for any other faction.

The multiplayer wasn't all tha great IMO. I felt the SM and Eldar had a huge advantage over the Orks and Nids. Maybe I was missing something. Some maps there are no way to set up a decent defensive line so you just chase each other around the map grabbing objectives, which isn't all that fun. Hopefully user created maps will offer a variety of well constructed maps.

Cyrus was a perfect character to destroy encampments with his satchel bombs and bih ass remote bomb or he could be used to infiltrate a boss zone and set up a couple sentry guns. Not to mention the fact that his sniper rifle can kill fething zoanthropes in one shot, completely throwing off tyranid synapse ranges- causing tons of lulzy infighting. He was a great character in my opinion with an awesome voice actor (Steve Blum of cowboy bebop fame), interesting back story, etc. The only thing is, he was a unit that involved some special time on the players' part- setting him up in ambushes and all that. Scouts are not designed for smash and grab tactics- if it doesnt work on tabletop, why should it work in dow 2?

Personally, another awesome unit was the dreadnought. I used the build to make it venerable, self repairing and for good measure I made the assault cannon barrage packed with exploding bullets. That cantankerous ol' man in a box could wage war on xenos for the entire mission, and never budge a damn inch.

My only gripes with the game were that there was only the spess muhreen campaign, and that thaddeus was fething useless-- but thats just my opinion.


PS why is it that marines are god tier in campaign but gak tier in skirmish for dow 2?
PPS why cant we import our own shoulder emblem and banner design in dawn of war games now? I miss that feature and it would have been welcomed in dow2 for me