Dawn of War II Comes Out This Week.

Budgetary constraints put me another 2 weeks away from getting it. That said, it is well worth it.

Now that I'm getting used to the interface, and the different gameplay it is really a very complimentary game to the original Dawn of War.

Dawn of War was a game that applied the standard concepts associated with RTS games to the Warhammer 40,000 universe. You had your various races, you had characters that worked as the heroes a la Warcraft III, you had tech trees to move up, and resources to manage. The game involved standard exploration, base management, and battle management strategies that had to be balanced.

Dawn of War II takes away the base management, simplifies the tech tree and hero management and really pushes the focus away from management and balance to action. Oh sure, don't be stupid and get your forces wiped because good luck rebuilding in time to survive. But don't worry about having workers to build buildings, and balancing buildings with unit production. Other than building turrets or power generators there really is only one thing. Tech up, build units, and go forth and fight.

That's what makes DoW II so cool. They didn't make a straight sequel. They really made a different game. DoW is just as viable a game to play as DoW II. Each has a different challenge, each has a different focus, and each is fun in their own rights. The biggest thing that sets DoW II above DoW is graphics. Because let's face it, DoW II's graphics are just better. DoW still looks good, but just not as good as DoW II. Beyond that, the games may both be RTS, may both be 40K, but they are different...and that's just fine by me.