Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV is arriving nearly a decade after the release of the third game in the real-time strategy series, and after spending some time with an extensive preview build that covered the opening missions of two its campaigns, I’m happy to report that it seems to be a return to form after the ill-received changes in Dawn of War III.
The Dawn of War series has always reinvented itself with each entry. Dawn of War II eschewed the first game’s focus on amassing large armies in favor of micro-managing smaller groups, or sometimes individual units. It removed the original's base-building mechanics, and its maps were less of an open-ended sandbox, hewing closer to being an isometric action-RPG. While these changes didn’t sit well with some players of the original Dawn of War, others found the alterations to be bold, and the game was received positively, with many today heralding it as the best entry in the series despite it not being much of an RTS.
With Dawn of War III, developer Relic Entertainment tried to meld the mechanics of both games while also attempting to capitalize on the growing popularity of esports. It was a textbook case of “something made for everyone is something for no one,” resulting in a game that largely disappointed the community. Players felt its systems were shallow and disliked its MOBA-like maps, mechanics, and focus on hero characters. As such, Dawn of War III never found success with either RTS players or the esports scene.
Now, almost 10 years later, the franchise is back with Dawn of War IV. The reins have been handed to King Art Games, the developer behind the steampunk RTS Iron Harvest, which was released in 2020. Dawn of War IV is billed as a modern interpretation of the first entry in the series, but after my time with its preview, the game appears to be a more faithful and functional melding of both the original game and its sequel than Dawn of War III ever was.
The first word that came to mind after multiple campaign missions was "active." You very quickly wind up juggling not only large squads of grunts, but also their upgrades and abilities, powerful hero characters that supplement said squads plus all their skills, destructive vehicles and mechs, and a deep base-building system that made me feel like I had just scratched the surface of what it had to offer.
Dawn of War IV makes every mechanic feel important and vital for victory, rather than there being a couple of core systems that make or break a match. Typically, I avoid using an RTS’ pause functionality, as I like to lean into the real-time aspect of the genre when I play, but there were moments in my preview when I was tempted to click it because it always felt like I was playing catch-up to actions I needed to be taking and choices I needed to be making due to the meaningful variety of decisions to be made.
However, this did often result in the feeling that I was too busy making my decisions to ever see them fully play out on the screen. By the time I’d clicked everything I needed to, my units were already wrapping up their current confrontation. It’s been a while since I’ve Played an RTS, so it definitely felt like I was getting my sea legs again, and the pause functionality was, of course, always available for me to help get caught up. But even though I wished I had a bit more time to soak in all the grim, dark battles, oh boy, was all that clicking satisfying, and I’d much rather my RTS games be too active than too inactive.
A big part of why the game feels so hectic is a return to proper base-building. After its removal in the second game and overly simplified implementation in the third release, Dawn of War IV takes the fundamentals of the first game's mechanic and adapts it even further, leaning more into what makes each faction unique.
For example, Orks can whip up ramshackle structures in a flash utilizing any of their infantry units and they have more freedom than other factions in where they build on the map. However, its scrapped-together nature means that Ork construction is not nearly as durable as that of the other factions, and the decentralized nature of their facilities makes managing them more chaotic. Adeptus Mechanicus bases couldn’t be more different, relying on a tightly connected network of buildings. This offers the faction strong fortifications, but it also means that if one link in the chain goes down, the whole system is threatened. For anyone who really enjoys the base-building aspect of an RTS, King Art Games seems to have invested so heavily in fleshing out that feature that it could be a game unto itself.
Of course, base building is only relevant if there are troops to deploy and enemies to defend against. Thankfully, as much care and consideration appears to have been put into the game’s combat as its fortification construction. Dawns of War I and II both approached conflicts in radically different ways, and the third entry was an ill-conceived attempt to marry the two. Dawn of War IV attempts the same melding, but with far better connective tissue to create an entirely new system that stands on its own.
The first Dawn of War was all about big armies smashing into one another, pushing players to feed their units into the meat grinder and replenish their forces back at base. Dawn of War IV allows for more units on the battlefield than any previous entry, but it also encourages you to upgrade and bolster the squads already in the fight, rather than cycling through them. Losing a unit has a much bigger impact on the game’s strategy than in the first game, as the squad you’ll be replacing it with is not nearly as battle-hardened when jumping into the muck.
Dawn of War II had a focus on smaller, tactical squads, and those are also here too, bringing some dynamism to the battlefield with their unique mechanics that supplement the more straightforward offensive capabilities of the larger infantry units. Players derided the uber-powerful, game-changing hero characters of Dawn of War III, and while this new entry features some potent commanders with very helpful abilities, they ultimately allow the rest of the units to do their best work, being extremely vulnerable and ineffective if caught without support.
I cannot wait to dive deeper into the game and go hands-on with the campaigns of the two other factions, the Necrons and Space Marines, as well as to put all these new systems to the test against other players. And as someone who loves to paint miniatures IRL even more than playing with them, I’m excited to see what innovations the game brings to its Painter mode, and if this will finally be the game that makes the hobby just as much fun digitally as it is physically.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV will be released on December 3 for PC.