Dawn of War has always been one of my favourite series, and the 3rd
expansion/sequel to this title has been more impressive than I had
hoped for. To start, the large change in the campaign has been a
pleasant welcome to this gaming experience, as it is a new way to
display the campaign as a map rather than a single story line, as is
the ability to play as 7 different races and to follow them on their
own path of destruction, mixed with the ability to change the
difficulty, enables the player to play and replay the campaign in a
number of different ways. I also like the addition of the two new
races (the Necrons, a race of metal zombies, and the Tau, a
futuristic race of squishy humanoids), as well as the new units for
different races. The wide variety of maps to play in the multiplayer
and the ability to customise armies, along with the attention to
detail by Relic helps make this game an impressive experience.
Sure, the storyline took a hit for the cause – we changed from
looking at the stories of one or two specific races, to being able
to play as any race we choose – but we were rewarded with incredibly
fun and ingenious ‘Stronghold’ areas to attack, from one where
control of an area relies with you destroying a number of towers to
create a schism between different Orc groups, to a challenge centred
on you gaining control of the Imperial base through the capture of a
giant f**king Titan gun.
Second, I like the way that Dawn of War is good not only for
warhammer fans, but also for anyone to be introduced into the
warhammer universe, or even for people who just want a unique and
well-made strategy game to just pick-up-and-play. It is also one of
the best selling and most popular RTS games out!
Third, I like how the community has been supported, listened to and
given free-reign to create additional content. There are literally
hundreds of modifications for the game, and that Relic has actually
bothered to listen to the community and made patches accordingly is
an impressive and rare skill for most developers these days to have.
To conclude, Dawn of War: Dark Crusade is one of my favourite
titles, and has not been disappointing, but there are small, minor
improvements that could be made (for example, having a bigger
campaign map or a wider variety of units) but I'm sure that these
will be fixed in further expansions, or already have been in 3rd
party modifications.
Writer: Jedijas
Editor: Sirchris83