The Warhammer 40K franchise has never been hotter. Space Marine II has paved the way for increased focus among game studios, and the upcoming series adaptation is also waiting in the wings. In the midst of this Chaos (get it?), developer Relic has done something that many have been asking for for a long, long time, they have brought back the original Dawn of War RTS game in a slightly updated version.
This isn’t actually the first time something like this has been attempted. You may, like me, have played Dawn of War Anniversary Edition before and quickly dropped it again because it was ugly and poorly optimised for modern hardware. It wasn’t the epic experience we expected at all. However, the idea of including all the extra expansions in one game is still fantastic.
So now comes the Definitive Edition, which is significantly better optimised, first and foremost. However, you will quickly realise that even though the assets have been scaled up to 4K, which is of course welcome, they haven’t been able to do much about the basic geometry of the character models, which are still completely off and look like something I made out of modelling clay in fourth grade. Therefore, it’s again important to adjust your expectations, as this is not a restoration as such, and we are still waiting for that.
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That said, it’s a major upgrade in many ways. The game is bearable to look at, even though it’s more than 20 years old, and a number of modern graphic elements have been added. That’s why it’s a shame that more drastic changes weren’t made. For example, the game’s unit cap hasn’t been changed, even though computers are now much more powerful.
The improvements not only make it possible to play the game without problems on modern systems, but your units also behave a little more intelligently when they run around, which I remember as a real problem in the original. However, I think it’s nice that I can now see what the icons are supposed to look like, where already here there are criticisms to be made. But again, this is not a restoration, it’s an update, so to speak.
Even with that in mind, there are glitches here and there. There is still no achievement system, which is a shame, because there really should be one. This is a game that many “40K nerds” want to reach the elusive 100% in, and it seems like this is really the minimum you can expect as a fan.
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There is a tutorial, and it crashed repeatedly for me, and I was never allowed to try it again. Everything freezes when there’s in-game dialogue, and the save system is not always logical. But at least there are still “inspirational” quotes every time you log in.
I played this before the actual launch, so I haven’t tried mods, but this is supposed to be included and fully supported. There is a fairly large community for it, and if you’re a 40K nerd, there’s a lot to dive into, and it’s a plus that mods are built into the game from the start, no doubt about it.
The price is $30, and there is a 30% discount if you own the Anniversary Edition. That’s acceptable if I play this game even half as much as the original, especially since many mods – as it is promised – will also work without needing changes in this edition. For that money, you get a game that is Warhammer 40K at its best, with really good voice acting that still holds up, with the joy of sending your troops to certain death knowing that this is what they were born to do, so no guilty conscience develops.
My family has already sent Relic death threats for taking up more of my extremely limited time, but I’ve dug out my Imperial Guard helmet all the same, which is now upscaled to 4K. This is just the RTS genre at its absolute best, and while Relic could have done more, they really could, what they have done works well overall, and at a lower price, it’s hard not to recommend it.