Retreading hallowed ground
I may have set my expectations for Dawn of War 4 too high, but it's a series that, to my mind, never retreads the same ground. It's therefore been disappointing to feel, having played it across two its campaigns that this long-awaited sequel may have taken too few risks - or been too reverent of the games that came before.
Back in the hands of Relic Entertainment, the original Dawn of War was closest to a traditional RTS game. Yet its use of cover mechanics, unit customisation, and onscreen violence felt distinctly new compared to other games I was playing at the time. As someone who'd grown up on Age of Empires and Command & Conquer, seeing units pair off and take part in animated scuffles brought the battlefield to life, especially after spending years of Saturday afternoons sliding static Warhammer figurines around a tabletop.
Then, in Dawn of War 2, Relic dropped traditional basebuilding and pushed the camera in to focus the action on commanding just a few squads. It upended the tried and tested mechanics of the genre I was used to. The hard unit cap meant it simply wasn't possible to assemble a vast army with which to overwhelm the enemy. The only way to succeed was to use each differently-specced squad as it was designed: heavy bolters supplying cover, assault marines launching into the fray to break up the enemy's defensive positions, recon units circumventing the frontline to attack a vulnerable flank. It was a bold reinvention when they could have just offered more of the same.
Admittedly, I played much less of Dawn of War 3, but it too was responding and reacting to what was happening in the RTS genre at the time. Dota 2 and League of Legends were in their ascendency and, rather than ignore the former mods of RTS games, Relic tried to thread their DNA back into the Warhammer-y battlefield. Hero characters were beefed up and each unit gained special abilities to be used in combat. Armies were made both larger and weaker, meaning there was a much higher death toll in each mission. And base building returned, but cover was ejected, changing the dynamics we had got used to in the previous two games.
I run through all this history so you can see why Dawn of War 4 is both a good game and an unexciting one. From what I've played of the Orks and Adeptus Mechanicus campaigns, it can produce enjoyable afternoons of pushing virtual soldiers around a sci-fi battlefield, but all the while it feels too familiar to what came before it. King Art Games have made no secret that of the Dawn of War games, they've mostly closely been cribbing from the original. The battles aren't as large as Dawn of War 3, but the unit cap is significantly larger than Dawn of War 2, and both base building and cover make a return. As a result of this deference to the 2004 original, m first impression – and this is a preview rather than a review – is that Dawn of War 4 is a competent RTS that immediately feels dated.
I went back to the original Dawn of War to compare the two. Dawn of War 4 doesn't entirely miss the opportunity to expand: your units, for instance, have far more customisation options, allowing you to swap out their weapons and equip them with additional abilities. Plus, there are more tools available for grouping and selecting your units, making it a little easier to manage your forces. And, in all the ways you would expect, it looks like a more modern game, with sharper looking textures, more detailed models, and a camera that lets you peer even closer upon the violence. But while the original Dawn of War is fun to play today, it has decades-old issues that nonetheless crop up in Dawn of War 4 as well.
Despite your being able to group units, select all on screen, and select all units of single type, the larger your army grows, the less your ability to make meaningful tactical choices becomes. The unit toolbar, which Dawn of War 4 places at the bottom of your screen, fills with squashed unit portraits that eventually become indistinguishable. The Orks suffer from this more even than the Adeptus Mechanicus, as their roster is so cheap to recruit. With the growing inability to be selective, in mission after mission, I just grabbed as many units as I could and threw them at the enemies' defences. It was effective and I don't want to complain too much about the victories, but they weren't satisfying when attaining them involved so few of my own, meaningful choices. This was also the weakness of the original Dawn of War's design and why the move to smaller squads to focusing on squads was so effective in its sequel. The ability to roll over your enemy with a large army was removed entirely.
The Adeptus Mechanicus, at least, make a much better first impression. Unlike the Waaargh-obsessed boyz, it's hard to grab a lump of soldiers, chuck them at the enemy, and expect results. I was more inclined to play around the specialisations of certain units, like the Skitarii Rangers, excellent long-range anti-infantry snipers who - when plonked into cover - will whittle down any greenskins or Necrons that march on their position. Meanwhile, the Skitarii Vanguard, armed with radiation-emitting ammunition, can vapourise the more heavily-armoured troops. However, both Skitarii ranged units are truly awful in melee, so to keep them effective, I paired them with units of Sicarian Ruststalkers. These blade-armed cyborg assassins are brutal in close combat, and can hold back infantry while the Rangers and Vanguard finish them off. Combine and position your units well, and you'll scythe through enemy troops, but do it haphazardly and they'll crumble just as quickly.
The early missions in the Adeptus Mechanicus campaign introduce you to Potentia Delta-9, a Technoarcheologist exploring the surface of Kronus to learn about what stirs in its depths, and Skitarii Marshal Sek-IX-23, who is doing his best to put down the Ork uprising. It was the opening where the Adeptus Mechanicus were most enjoyable to command., the shape and smaller scale of the battlefields giving a lot more opportunities to embrace the tactics of managing their extreme strengths and weaknesses.
In one early defence mission, Potentia finds herself surrounded by newly-awoken Necron troops. (If you've seen Dawn of War 4's trailers or know the history of planet Kronus from the previous games, you won't be surprised to learn it's Necrons that are stirring from a decades-long slumber, like Sleeping Beauty if she were clad in self-repairing battle armour.) You must hold out against waves of the immortal robots with their fizzing green eyes and even fizzier laser cannons. It's a set up that pressures you into thoughtfully applying your resources, ensuring that each entrance to your base has a firm defensive line composed of mixed troops. Then, as the waves against you grow stronger, and the attacks come against you from different angles, you must relocate your forces to bloody the nose of the attackers. Complicating things is the appearance of trapped Adeptus Mechanicus units around the map; if you can break out from your base and rescue them, they'll bolster your army, but at the risk of depleting your defences.
It's a mission design I've seen before in many RTS games, which does undermine the enjoyment, but it hints at the tactical play that's missing in the Ork campaign. Sadly, the further I get into the Adeptus Mechanicus campaign, the larger the battles become, with fewer opportunities to focus on unit-specific tactics. The result is that these too are won by treating your forces as a bolter-armed blob that just rolls over the enemy. It doesn't matter whether you're fighting Necrons or Orks, they all fall down before the bolter-blob.
As I say, I may have set my expectations for a new Dawn of War game too high. Over the past year, I've spoken to the team about their attention to detail in capturing units in the Adeptus Mechanicus and Necron armies, like the perpetual motion machine walkers that can't stand still, or the mega unit you can summon who makes no secret of the fact they hate you. Those conversations only stoked my hopes, which also might point to why I'm feeling a little deflated after what I've played.
I will still be playing through the full four campaigns when I get the opportunity (the preview build is limited to two of the four factions and I'm only able to talk about the opening six missions in each of those stories). And one change I will be making will be to whack the difficulty up. If I can make whomping the enemy harder, perhaps it will push me into thinking more tactically.
Still, while that may make Dawn of War 4 more enjoyable, it won't hide the fact this feels like a missed opportunity in a series that has marked itself by its reinvention, especially as it's recreated weaknesses of the original game which were addressed in its sequels.