As before, the warm glow of pleasure doesn't necessarily come from creating the most effective fighting force, but the most thematically pleasing. That's a frankly enormous amount of content for an expansion, and for lovers of DoW II's RPG facets, a heady time-sink of hero-customisation and Rubiks-cubing with different force-permutations. What's more, each race gets a single-player (and optionally co-op) campaign, which takes around 8-10 hours to plough through. This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, Chaos and - my little geek-heart jumped for joy at this - the Tyranids. We're used to Dawn of War expansions drip-feeding us new races by contrast, Retribution opens the floodgates, with no less than six playable races.

Retribution's defining characteristic is choice. The first expansion, Chaos Rising, enriched the experience with meatier loot, deeper role-tinkering, tighter campaign-narrative and a meaningful purity/corruption mechanic. Dawn Of War had become a seamless blend of RTS and action-RPG a kind of plasma-fuelled, four-character Diablo, which posted chin-stroking tactical challenges at every turn. The reduction of sheer troop volumes to four heroes and their attached grunts, not to mention the abolition of traditional base-building mechanics, signified a decisive genre-shift. And for those of us whose days of inking and dry-brushing have passed into fond memory, it offered an accessible way to carry on enjoying 40K.Īfter the multitudinous mega-army madness of Dawn of War, and the further race-rostering of its expansions, DoW II came as a surprise. Dawn of War brought the races and technology of the 40K universe to vivid, howling, bolter-spewing life in a way that did justice to the universe. I mean, do those guys have ants in their pants? They just will not stop innovating.Īnd crucially, Relic has succeeded where so many other developers have failed: at making Warhammer 40,000 work as a videogame, and absolutely nailing the IP in the process. and let's not forget all those expansions. Consider, for a moment, Relic Entertainment's startlingly diverse RTS resumé.

Warhammer 40k dawn of war 2 review