Review of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade

Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade is Relic Entertainment's second expansion to award winning 2004 RTS Warhammer 40000 Dawn of War. Dark Crusade is a stand-alone expansion, meaning that the user doesn't need to own the original Dawn of War to play this game, however races introduced in the previous games are locked in multiplayer combat until the original games are installed.

Dark Crusade introduces two new races, namely the Tau Empire and the Necrons, bringing the total playable races in the game up to seven.

To any player new to the Warhammer universe the Tau's warriors would seem at first glance to be futuristic robots, however they are in fact an entirely organic race who don advanced battlesuits so as to be capable combatants. The Tau bring with them the forces of the Kroot which while humanoid, resemble bipedal birds. To anyone who's played any of Dawn of War or Winter Assault's races the Tau will be quite simple to pick up and learn. It is quite clear that the Kroot make up the Empire's close combat component while being backed up by the incredibly powerful ranged weaponry of the Tau's battlesuits. An interesting and unique aspect of the Tau Empire's tech tree is its late game split, forcing the player to focus on either Kroot or Tau units and upgrades.

The Necrons are a very mysterious race due to their shrouded origins and physical makeup. All of their units resemble undead beings made entirely of living metal, and are characterized in battle by slow movement balanced with devastating force. The Necrons deviate substantially from the other races in the game, especially in their resource gathering and technological advancement. While literally all other races rely heavily on the Requisition resource, particularly in the early game, the Necrons forgo Requisition completely to concentrate solely on the Power resource to awaken their armies. This might seem unbalanced, as power is available right at the player's well defended main base, but Relic forces Necron players to capture Strategic Points to gather their other pseudo-resource, speed. Without any captured strategic points, Necron units are built at an excruciatingly slow pace, but upon capturing a handful of strategic points, they can boost their production speed to more than double. The Necrons are also unique in that their main HQ, the monolith is the only structure that can summon Necron units, the other Necron buildings being used only for upgrades and unlocking better units for production. Also, the monolith starts of each battle as a ruined structure, but as the player becomes more advanced, they can carry out repairs until it is fully reactivated as an extremely powerful mobile fortress, being roughly equivalent to the super units of most other races.

As well as these new races, each of the five races from the previous entries into the series have received an overhaul, including most importantly new units that help to round out their respective arsenals. Most of these additions are highly trained but unique units, so they won't change the balance of the game considerably.

After receiving complaints about the lack of full length campaigns for all the races in the previous games, Relic decided to set up the single player campaign in Dark Crusade as a planetary conquest reminiscent of a game of Risk with the story revolving around this newfound planet. The user chooses a race to control as all seven races in the game attempt to capture the globe at all costs. Players are given a home province from which to expand their territory until they are the sole race on the planet. However the other six races have the same intentions and the player must defend against any incursions into his own territory. Most provincial battles are pretty straightforward, with a variety of objectives to mix up the action so as not to bore the player with repetitive annihilation. Relic has spiced up this formula with an assortment of enhancements to the game, such as provincial bonuses, which offers the players incentive to capture certain provinces over others. The campaign also presents some RPG-like elements, specifically the ability to buy weapons and armor for the player's commander, as well as veteran persistent units called the honor guard that the player can bring into battles, for a price. Persistence is another interesting aspect of the Dark Crusade campaign. For instance, in turn 1, the player invades and successfully captures an enemy territory, then in turn 2, the computer counter-attacks into the same province, all of the player's buildings will have persisted and the player will have a significant advantage over the attackers.

Unfortunately, the global domination mode is only available against computer controlled opponents, however Dark Crusade's multi-player component carries over the strong precedent set by the preceding two games. Relic has provided a full-featured online mode including a matchmaking and a ranked ladder, dozens of maps for from two to eight players as well as a multitude of modes and options beyond the standard annihilation mode. The multi-player is strongly backed up by Dark Crusade's extremely active and inviting community, which offers a great way for new players to learn to play the online elements of the game.

Little has changed in terms of the graphical quality of the game from Dawn of War to Dark Crusade, but that's not to say that the graphics aren't an still a benchmark for RTS games to come, only less so. The game is entirely in 3D, allowing for full camera control and the ability to zoom in on the action. One thing to mention is that the units also still have personalized finishing moves when in melee combat, and as these are of course exceptionally violent this usually results in lots of blood and gore, which is where the game's M rating stems from. Dark Crusade's music is very engaging, with appropriate excitement during battles and a majestic orchestration when clicking around menu screens. The sound in Dark Crusade is also overall very good, however I found while playing that the guns carried by infantry often lacked a sense of power as they sounded cheap and unimposing.

For the Dawn of War player, Dark Crusade is a absolute must buy, and is definitely a solid starting point for those new to the series. Dark Crusade is already earning its due, earning multiple online awards and receiving glowing recognition. Relic has also released two patches for the game fixing bugs and improving racial balance. Actions speak louder than words, and seems that Relic is saying the Dark Crusade and Dawn of War will last on RTS players' hard drives for years to come.