Friday, May 16, 2014

Reviews of Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II Retribution - PC

Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II Retribution - PC
Customer Ratings: 4 stars
List Price: $29.99
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AS noted in another review, the campaign is short, but you can play it with 6 races. The "Last Stand" mode is not for novices. You should be familiar with the DoW "Last Stand" scenarios and have some virtual "combat" time under your belt with other DoW series games before playing (not required, but it is a steep learning curve for those without experience). If you want tips for Last Stand, use "Steam News" and it notes best heros with specific equipment that have been successful.

Don't bother using Amazon's downloader for this game. Tried for a whole day to download 8GB... left it overnight and the download continues to get interrupted. Finally, was so frustrated, I logged on to "Steam" and used the game validation code (from Amazon) it finished the entire download in an hour. Amazon has to do better with their downloader. Hope these notes are helpful.

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The second expansion to "Dawn of War 2", Retribution offers a new faction and a new campaign. It's more of the same, but that's hardly a bad thing.

The main new feature in "Retribution" is the addition of the Imperial Guard faction. Unlike their elite counterparts, the Space Marines, the IG relies on massive numbers and vehicle support to get the job done. There's a lot of concepts brought over from Dawn of War 1 and the tabletop game, but they don't really seem to fit as well. DoW2 has a much tighter squad focus with more enclosed maps, so the IG's traditional tactics don't seem to fit as well as they used to.

Still, there's some interesting potential. The basic IG unit is the guardsman squad, which focuses on improving its numbers rather than making soldiers more effective. Other guardsmen units include the stealth-based Catachan Devils, the specialized Stormtroopers, and the brutish Ogryn. Their heroes show the most diversity the Inquisitor is focused on targeting enemy heroes, the Commissar Lord combines melee damage with inspirational bonuses, and the Lord General relies on more tactical options like troop drops and battlefield commands.

The game's other factions have gotten some attention, too, in the form of a new unit for each one. Space Marines get a mighty Land Raider tank, Orks get a massive Battlewagon, the Eldar get a powerful Autarch, and so on. I wasn't particularly enthralled by any of the new units, but it at least gives them some new options instead of ignoring them for the new faction.

The other new feature in Retribution is an expanded campaign mode specifically, there's a campaign for every single faction, instead of just the Space Marines. This is kind of a neat idea, and holds some promise, but really it just boils down to similar missions on similar maps with RPG stats. It's fun in the same way that the old campaigns were fun, but other than new scenarios it doesn't seem to introduce much. It's good if you're okay with that old gameplay, but it honestly gets repetitive after a while. There's some ways it's different than previous campaigns, but that seems to come down to tech tree upgrades (in addition to character upgrades).

Basically, Retribution isn't a bad expansion pack by any means, but it gets old pretty quickly unless you really like the core gameplay. If you're already tired of DoW2, Retribution won't hold your attention for long. If you still like it, then it's a worthy addition to the game's content.

Rating: 7/10.

We purchased this game with our own funds for the purpose of this review.

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If you are a Dawn of War 2 fan this is a must have. The new map for "Last Stand" is very challenging. The campaign is too short but you can play through it with all six races. Oh and the new Imperial Guard units are a blast (pun intended).

Honest reviews on Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II Retribution - PC

To start off I only play single player. Ever since the first Dawn of war two I haven't really had any interest in multiplayer. It's possible that extend the value of the game for you, but it didn't really for me.

What I like about this game is that it allows you to treat some of your hero units for a larger quantity of lesser units. By lesser I don't necessarily mean week, as the generally they lack the special attacks and have no benefit from armor and such that you get with the main hero units. This means that you can choose either double small squad or if you go all in you can have a semi-large army.

The graphics and voice acting in this game are good. I have no complaints there. The levels are well laid out and I found them all the fun. A lot of cases you have to take advantage of cover and be strategic with your units or they'll all get slaughtered. You're also able to play the single player campaign with any of the factions. The best thing out of the game to me though, is it FINALLY ends the story of the first Dawn of War game way back when this was more a traditional RTS. I'd been waiting for that resolution ever since I played Winter Assault and was disappointed it didn't carry on the story.

So there so many factions and you can play single player, why do I say short? What problem is that each race plays in almost identical campaign. Sure they're sometimes different dialogue, some of the races don't play every level, every race gets their own blurb at the start, and their own ending, but the levels play pretty much the same and you only have a short period of time the level of any of your characters so the whole thing feels abbreviated. Despite the really impressive allowance to go with heroes or sacrifice them for lesser units, the story is weaker and it still feels like the weakest of the three Dawn of war two games.

Is it worth the price? Maybe. If you're into multiplayer games, want to play the Last Stand mode (which kind of got boring for me, but so many people like enough you can buy it separately from a certain digital download provider), or will be playing a race before doing something else and then coming back to try another one, I'd say get it. If you want a truly different experience for each race that you can play back to back, then it's slightly disappointing, so you may want to wait for a price drop.

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Pros:

-Great and New Concept to RTS Instead of building bases, etc, you actually focus on the hero units and your infantry as they can upgrade in items and experience.

-Great Same Old Races You got the typical races, as every 40K fan knows, the Orks, Chaos, Space Marine, Imperial Guards, and Eldar, and a new race but anticipated Tyranids.

-Includes a "Last Stand" gameplay Which allows you to play as you control your choosing hero unit and survive multiple waves of enemy units and vehicles. As you gain XP, you get more weapons and upgrades which will help you through the game.

-Co-Op Campaign Pretty fun addition if you want to play through Campaign with your buddies online.

Cons:

-Campaign Felt a little too short and too shallow. Compared to Chaos Rising, the story isn't defined and detailed, but you do get to play as multiple races.

-Last Stand There's not a lot of maps and items to make the experience entirely complete. I wish it had more items and maps but it didn't make the game not worth playing. It's still addicting and fun, if you want something different from the multiplayer RTS.

-Steam Don't like Steam being included with Retribution, but wished it was optional. Sometimes matchmaking through Steam doesn't work or is really slow.

Overall:

It's a really fun game, in my experience, and I feel confident that anyone who is already a 40K fan, will love as well. This game and it's new game plays make it worth the price. While there are a few hiccups like Steam in the way, it won't take out the fun out of your experience (most of the time).

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