Taldeer, Caerys, Idranel all were severe redheads with the distinct aesthetic of an ADA from Law and Order when you were playing them, or your shitty boss from work when you weren’t. Farseer Macha returns from Dawn of War ’s original campaign, but if that doesn’t ring a bell, you’d be forgiven every Eldar farseer across the entire series used the same model and the same voice direction. Gabriel Angelos is back, but is sadly no longer being voiced by Brian Dobson the new voice talent is serviceable, but doesn’t have the judgmental sneer that Dobson brought to the role. This is strictly preferable to Dawn of War ’s Space Marine-only campaign, but that’s the only way in which the single-player content distinguishes itself. There is only one campaign, and it has you switch between all three factions in a round robin - Space Marines, Orks, Eldar, then Space Marines again and so on.

Not so here you have three playable races which are slightly less sophisticated than their counterparts all the way back in the original Dawn of War - and Dawn of War had fully functional, playable Chaos Space Marines. When Battlefleet Gothic launched with relatively few controllable factions it was because, for instance, the entire Imperium was a faction containing broken-out flavor for the Imperial Guard, the Space Marines, and the Adeptus Mechanicus. I suspect this is the business model because the game makes the galling decision of only having three races available for play - the Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar - and not making them that deep or comprehensive, such that this feels like a real investment in those three properties. Or maybe I just have in the most brutal way possible for a game that clearly lived or died based on the success of its multiplayer to prove to Relic that there was a market to add more drip-feed, DLC content. The two multiplayer games I tried to join, once I found someone to connect with, resulted in immediate drops, so I can’t really speak to the multiplayer. I got the game for $40 on Steam - outside of buying keys on the grey market, that’s about the price point the game is sitting at right now - and was done with it in two sittings. People would rather play this from a decade ago than DoW 3.

The most recent - and almost certainly final, at least until there’s a hard reboot - entry into the franchise launched in April 2017, and by February of next year, Relic Entertainment had pulled the plug and cancelled any plans for follow-up content.

And more importantly, Dawn of War II is a decade old. All the Dawn of War games are dead games now, to be fair, but you can usually find at least some diehards still doing The Last Stand back in Dawn of War II if it’s the right time of day.

Dawn of war 3 grey knights