The mere mention of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War can cause my mind to flood with interesting and nostalgic memories. I started playing this game when I was in highschool, my family’s new shiny computer just finished its stint with Warcraft III and I looked for something to play. On the shelf was Dawn of War. This choice inevitably kickstarted my spiral into the lore and the eventual collection of miniatures of Warhammer 40,000. But that aside, what is with this game? Is it even that good? Or am I just looking at rose-tinted, nostalgia glasses? Let’s find out in this review of Dawn of War Definitive Edition!
As its name implies, the game is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. If you’ve heard of it, yes, it is a universe notorious for its incredibly deep lore as it has been ongoing and being built upon since 1987.
Warhammer 40,000 is set in the 41st millenium. Mankind, led by the half-dead-ish God-Emperor and known collectively as the Imperium of Man, has traversed the stars and have fought numerous aliens to conquer the galaxy. To traverse the stars and surpass the speed of light, mankind relies on the “Warp”, an immaterial dimension that is akin to our version of “hell”, a place filled with demons and malicious beings. As with anything that involves “hell”, things soured for humanity. Betrayals happened, and now humanity is fighting every manner of beasts, aliens, and even demons just to survive.
That’s Warhammmer 40,000 lore in just three sentences. If you want a deeper dive, and have a lot of spare time, best read summaries online, watch Youtube videos, or hit the books. It’s that deep.
Before I start rambling on, just note that the game itself contains a total of four standalone titles. Yes, you read that right. From the base Dawn of War game, up to the last expansion, Soulstorm, the Dawn of War Definitive Edition has them all. Each of these games have their own respective stories, some self-contained, while others standalone. If you have perused the internet or Youtube, you might find that the stories themselves have endeared a lot of people. Some of the story elements have become to cheesy, making them perfect meme material. So anyway, I won’t dwell in this for too long and I’ll just give each a few sentences to explain them.
Players get to play the Blood Ravens, a chapter of super soldiers genetically engineered by humanity to fight off foes, both alien and immaterial. Initially tasked to contain an Ork invasion on planet Tartarus, the Blood Ravens ultimately must fight off an ancient, hidden enemy, the Alpha Legion’s Chaos Space Marines.
The Imperial Guard and Eldar fight against the Orks and Chaos Space Marines to secure a Titan, a gigantic weapon of mass destruction. Each faction has their own agenda, leading to shenanigans and politics as they try to outpace each other in getting the weapon. In this game, players can play as different factions to see how the story develops in their own point of view.
The game that many love, this standalone expansion features seven different factions vying for control of the planet Kronus. Each faction has their own agenda and ending, making this game highly replayable even in today’s standards.
Dark Crusade but more. Soulstorm is set in the Kaurava system, spanning multiple planets and moons. Similar to Dark Crusade, a total of nine factions are battling it out for control over this system, each one having their own targets and goals.
Dawn of War Definitive Edition is an RTS or Real-Time Strategy game. Players must make good use of resources available in the map to produce units and command them in the field. Goals differ depending on the game mode, but it’s mostly about crushing the opponents and preventing them from reaching the same goal. The game progresses to a battle of not just who has the bigger gun, but to a competition of who has the better tactical chops to outwit and outmatch opponents.
To get the resources, you need to capture specific locations in the map. These locations then produce “Requisition”, points that allow you to buy more men and material for the war effort. Supporting this is “Power”, another resource that you can produce by building generators or power plants. Both of these accumulate over time and there is no need to mine them. As such, having a lot of them grants you a lot of resources in a short period of time.
Owing to their stationary nature, strategic locations are the hot points in any battle map. Players must capture them to gain more, and since you’re going to fight with other players, they’ll want the same.
Things are not only decided on who has the bigger gun. Units of each faction, be it from Dawn of War up to Soulstorm, can counter specific unit types. Likewise, they too can be countered. A smart move would be to populate your army with varied units so that they can counter any attack the enemy throws at them. This is true unless you play as the Imperial Guard, which can field Infantry that can crush anything in their path (definitely not biased, but based).
The “Definitive Edition” that’s attached to the name says it all. Graphics have been improved. Not overhauled, but definitely a cut above the original one. It has made the game more “playable” in a sense that the graphics do not look like potato cutouts and flat heads. I mean, this is a game from 20 years ago, and looks modern enough to pass for something made in the past five years. It’s not “Crysis”-impressive but the updated textures really do breathe new life into this two decade old title.
The game runs well on a modern system. There’s neither magic nor directory tinkering involved to get game running on any modern gaming PC. Just install it and run it. And it runs incredibly well, no hiccups or lags despite having a lot of things happening at the same time on screen. Furthermore, the improvements don’t stop there. We also have the UI overhauled and camera improved for it to run on resolutions that were not available twenty years ago.
A significant part of Dawn of War’s longevity and continued relevance are its mods. There are a lot of mods here. I’ve personally tried some but the original Dawn of War’s system and coding made the mods insufferably slow or downright hard to install. Dawn of War Definitive Edition fixes those headaches. It’s modern look now supported with 64-bit support, ensuring compatibility and greater access to your PC’s resources. It’s great that the developers also thought of that part of the fanbase and they even have cooperated with the larger mods for easy integration into the Definitive Edition.
Yes, it has been improved but there are still some problems. I’ve had some issues with units getting stuck on terrain, unable to correct and be moved. There were also cases where-in I’ve seen AI-controlled enemies stop and have a seizure as they try to figure out which way they should go. Although the path finding is an improvement, and I commend the developer for this, there are still some things to further improve.
| Dawn of War (Original) | Dawn of War (Definitive Edition) |
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With a higher resolution, some portraits in the game look weird. Some polygons have been ironed out and are not smooth but some have details in places where they not be. Thinking it was a case of misremembering, I fired up my base Dawn of War: Soulstorm just to check and compare it to the Definitive Edition. Check out the differences in the portraits using the table above.
While not a big issue, it does have an impression that they did cut some corners in remaking these icons.
There were also some instances during the campaign that some dialogue lines went blazingly fast. Perhaps because I triggered the event instance by mistake? While it was annoying that I wasn’t able to follow any of the cheesy dialogue in game, it did not cause any major issues in terms of my gaming experience. Other than those bugs, I can say that I did not encounter any game-breaking ones during my 20+ hours of game time. I also did not encounter any crashes.
There’s no denying it. I’m a fan of this game. Twenty years ago, I played it on my PC and am reliving the good times with better textures and a modern gaming PC. While it may be an old game with old mechanics, there’s no denying that it is still a solid game. The bugs are minor nuisances that rarely occur and they do not diminish the fun I’ve experienced when playing this game.
I can definitely recommend this Dawn of War Definitive Edition to Warhammer 40,000 fans, those who want a classic RTS game with a fresh skin, and to those who just want a strategy game with content filled to the brim. Highly recommended. Buy it now.
Dawn of War – Definitive Edition is available on Steam. Players who own the base Dawn of War game have a substantial discount when they purchase the Definitive Edition up until the 29th of August.
