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And Space Marines, while the most straightforward of the bunch, have tons of armored vehicles and soldiers that can be built at a factory or dramatically dropped from the sky on top of the enemy, plus tricks like a deployable battle standard that boosts them in combat. At the same time they’re much faster and better fighters when within range of a warp gate, so controlling lots of territory is important for them. Meanwhile, Eldar units are shielded, and you can teleport their buildings anywhere on the map and then warp their armies between any two. They can even scavenge those piles to build a new mech in the field, and they can also reinforce squads on the go with certain units, letting them keep up the momentum of an attack.
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The Orks, for instance, upgrade themselves using scrap piles, a unique resource that’s generated by towers or left behind after vehicles or buildings are destroyed. The three factions differ from each other in a few interesting ways. It was totally my fault for not saving early and often, but also it felt like a reasonable assumption that Dawn of War 3 should have checkpoints at logical points. A few times I failed at the end of a multi-stage mission and had to repeat the whole thing. It felt even longer because there’s no autosave, so it’s easy to lose close to an hour of progress if you don’t save manually and something goes wrong. The other issue is that because Dawn of War 3 is such a complex game, switching between three significantly different factions so frequently meant it was tough to grasp their nuances, and it was close to the end of the campaign before I began to feel comfortable with any of them.Įach mission takes 20 minutes to an hour, so there’s no shortage of content. For one, you don’t get the same time to get to know any one group of heroes that we did in Dawn of War 2 and its expansions, so most of them feel flat even after listening to the optional expanded dialogue during mission briefings. Nearly every subsequent mission cycles between the perspective of the Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar factions, which is a questionable decision for a couple of reasons.
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The lengthy 17-mission campaign is driven by a paint-by-numbers Warhammer 40K story full of Wrestlemania-like shouting, much of which Ork leader Goregutz very effectively boils down to “I WANT DAT POINTY STICK!” The voice acting enthusiastically embraces the over-the-top writing, I’ll give it that. The counterpoint is that high settings were too much for even my GTX 1080 when running at 1440p with no antialiasing – it was hovering around 40fps most of the time. It looks great, and while the animations might not have quite the gory flourish of those in Dawn of War 2 (moves in which a large unit grab a small one and rip it to shreds are notably absent this time), they’re still outstanding considering how much is happening on screen at any given time.
Watching the Space Marine leader, Gabriel Angelos, stride across the battlefield and smash an Ork with his enormous hammer is always entertaining, especially since he stands easily twice the height of a normal Space Marine and in order to help you pick him out in the fray when dozens of units (each part of a squad) collide. It’s definitely still big on grim Warhammer 40K spectacle, including battles with absolutely gigantic super mechs that cut swaths through enemy armies, flashy and bloody effects as lasers, bullets, and melee weapons carve soldiers to pieces, and bodies flying everywhere. It's definitely still big on grim Warhammer 40K spectacle.
A little sadly, though, it feels less like Relic’s own unique style as a result. Dawn of War 3 is distinctly set apart by major differences like Relic’s signature control point resource generation systems, but its abandonment of Dawn of War 2’s cover, suppression, and weapon facing systems make give it more of that fun and fast old-school pacing. With its focus on controlling up to three powerful hero characters next to disposable troops, Dawn of War 3 feels like a spiritual successor to Blizzard’s divisive Warcraft 3, the game from which DotA and the entire MOBA genre was born. It’s not big on variety and its campaign has a scattered pace, but it’s a good real-time strategy game that makes some bold moves. After its predecessor memorably focused almost exclusively on unit tactics, the pendulum has swung back toward larger armies and basic base-building, creating some extremely challenging micromanagement with a complex set of rules that makes it tough to dive into. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 3 is as bloody and chaotic as its bombastic sci-fi universe demands.