It is the 41st Millennium and there is only war - what an amazing sentence, and one that fully sums up what the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop games have always been about; endless, tireless war in a futuristic, gothically styled universe filled with alien races who only have the complete annihilation of one another on their minds. This scenario is the perfect fodder for videogames you'd think, but it wasn't until the arrival of the first Dawn of War that the Warhammer name finally got a game that does it justice. Nearly five years later, Relic has finally seen fit to produce a follow up, but despite the 'II' at the end of the title, it would be erroneous to call this a direct sequel. In a brave, and what some may say (and already have) foolish move, Relic has completely changed the playing style of the very traditional strategy game original.

No longer can you control massive groups of Space Marines and any semblance of base building has been thrown completely out of the window, replaced by a rather more modest selection of controllable tactical squads that follow you throughout the entire game, although it's only the squad leaders who can shake off the more devastating blows that will render their lowly, minion followers dead. Leaders act as hero characters and have their own stories and background, gaining experience points from each kill that, as in an RPG, you can use to buff their stats and unlock new abilities. You can only use four squads at one time though, and with newer squads becoming available later on in the game, you've got to juggle between those whose abilities you think best serve the mission at hand.

It's not the only implementation of RPG trademarks that Dawn of War II showcases, as squads can also be outfitted with Wargear, loot drops appear randomly from defeated enemies, and you gain rewards for each completed mission. These take the form of powerful new weapons, stronger armour or special items that allow the use of certain abilities that you can't acquire anywhere else, plus you also have the freedom to customise each unit for whichever role you see fit. Want a powerful melee class? Then give your force commander that bloody great big battle hammer, equip the Devastator Marines with a rocket launcher to give them the added effect of being a capable anti-vehicle unit as they simultaneously suppress infantry with heavy bolters, while bestowing the medipack ability upon scouts allows that squad to play the role of support and heal friendlies when they need it. It's a choice that is always left down to you and a freedom that extends as far as the single player campaign.

In yet another attempt to further distance itself from its predecessor, Dawn of War II's campaign strays from the expected linear path that most story-driven RTS games walk you down. As part of a small contingent of Blood Raven Space Marines, it's your job to rid three of the Blood Raven's recruiting worlds of an infestation of Orks and Eldar, who are currently causing all sorts of chaos, a job made all the more difficult when a massive Tyranid hive fleet emerges in the sector and threatens to consume every living thing in its wake, leaving you with three factions to battle across multiple worlds. Presented on a map, you get to choose which world to visit and which mission to undertake, so although you always have to eventually complete all the story missions, you get to decide when to do them and you can simply opt to take on one of the numerous optional side missions that pop up from time to time. They're never the most important missions to undertake but they do provide a great source of continuous experience point gathering and wargear drops to tool up your squads.

It'd be accurate to claim that Dawn of War II feels more like a role-playing game than a strategy and it's not just the inclusion of a rewards system and progressive character development that will cause you to reach this conclusion; as far as the actual strategy elements go, it is as far removed from the most generic game of the RTS genre than it is from even the first Dawn of War. A more accurate summary of how Dawn of Wars II implements strategy would be to call it a tactical, isometric action game. Base building and resource gathering have been completely omitted, so you only have your squads and their individual abilities to get you through each mission. It's here that the game bears more in common with Relics's past WWII effort, Company of Heroes. Using a similar sort of covering system, squads perform better when they are hidden behind the relative safety of walls or when garrisoned in a building where they can lay down suppressing fire and hold off the relentless numbers that charge at them. The more losses that an enemy squad takes, the more likely they are to break apart and retreat. While the heavier squads lay down suppressing fire, you can then utilise the abilities of your other troops to perform a few flanking manoeuvres, maybe sending a cloaked scout squad to get behind a heavily defended enemy position and drop an explosive charge on unsuspecting foes or use some assault marines with jetpacks to fly in and break up large numbers of crowded enemies in some close range melee fighting.

It's a simple system that works best during the opening few missions of the campaign when you are still trying to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each squad and learning the tactics, but Dawn of War II seldom ever aims for anything loftier. Sure, there are a few strategic assets to capture in each map, which act as little more than spawn points to replenish fallen numbers, but the missions always seem to pan out the same: drop in, capture a few assets and then kill the continuous numbers of enemies who attack you at every opportunity before ending the level with a boss battle.

Yes, boss battles; in what appears to be an attempt to end each mission in something a little more satisfying than a simple "Mission Complete" pat on the back, almost every mission ends with you and your squads squaring off against a much stronger and often nastier version of the enemies that you've just been slaughtering. As with any boss encounter, these guys take far more hits and aren't shy in dishing out devastating special attacks. Although it is nice to get the opportunity to test your squad's abilities to their fullest against a strong adversary, there's seemingly no pattern to the difficulty of these bosses. In fact, I managed to breeze past the very last boss of the campaign with relative ease while some of the earlier boss battles took me a good five minutes of continuous fighting before they were toppled.

This isn't the only sore point of the single player campaign, either; the missions themselves tend not to be as varied as they could have been, with many of the optional missions not only following the same predictable path but also taking place on maps that you previously battled upon. A few altered camera angles and weather effects can do little to disguise the fact that essentially you spend most of the time backtracking through areas you have explored more than once before, but it's left to the story-led missions to add in what little variety they can.

All of this negativity might give you the impression that the game fails in almost every regard to recapture the success of the original, but despite my nay-saying, the single player campaign is actually a lot of fun. The action is intensive enough for the missions to remain engaging, while as ever the incredible variation of the Warhammer 40,000 races means that fighting the numerous enemies that oppose you is always fresh and exciting. The Orks and their ramshackle collection of stolen, looted tanks and Killer Kans, the Eldar, who proffer to strike from a distance while their powerful melee soldiers suppress at close range and Tyranids, here finally after years of waiting, rely on their sheer strength in numbers to overwhelm their enemies and never retreat, even in the face of colossal casualties.

It's also a credit to Relic that they've done such a fine job with the look and feel of the Warhammer universe. The graphics are astonishingly good and the detail on each character model is staggering - but it's in the little details of the explosions and fire, and tracer rounds from bolt guns, where the game really shines. Moreover, the artists who have worked on this game have fully captured the darkly gothic look of the environments perfectly, from dense jungle vistas to the cathedral buildings of huge, industrialised worlds, and while the maps might be small, the actual sense of scale is prevalent. The audio also works just as well, with the serious, gravelly voiceover fitting perfectly with the tough, macho exterior of the space marines, while the little sounds of the thudding of a heavy bolter or the shrieking noise of a chainsword as it's plunged into a group of enemies are minor touches that go a long way towards fully immersing you into the game world. These aesthetics are a clear indication that Relic are more than just a games developer who saw an opportunity to milk the Warhammer franchise - these guys clearly have a love for the tabletop game.

However, if anything is going to sell you on Dawn of War II, it's probably its extensive multiplayer mode. This was what has kept the original Dawn of War going all of these years, so it's easy to see why this would be the one aspect of the game that Relic has paid the most attention to. It's also here that the more traditional RTS gaming elements come back into play; as well the option to play as any of the four races, you can also get to grips with base management, capturing power nodes to bring in a steady flow of resources that can then be used to build as many squads as you can, whilst giving you access to certain units that you never get a chance to use in the single player campaign.

Yet even here Dawn of War II doesn't quite stick to the framework of its predecessor. You still need to rely on cover and squads can still be suppressed while out in the open, so battling it out against other players or the computer AI in the skirmish games still forces you to manipulate the environment to gain the advantage. Heavier units such as tanks are less susceptible to a covered enemies fire but these units take time to build and cost so much that you inevitably become a little overprotective of them, for fear of the heavy loss you feel should they be destroyed. With a pace that matches the intensity of the single player campaign, only with the added benefit of playing against other people, it's not hard to predict that Dawn of War II's multiplayer will be the selling point for many players; whether or not it'll be enough to convince returning Dawn of War veterans that it's worth switching will depend entirely on how well they receive the changes elsewhere. Relic also get bonus points for allowing co-op play, giving you the chance to invite a friend along to help you through the single player campaign. There are problems with the multiplayer though; there isn't a wide range of maps at present and many of them only allow up to six players maximum, compared with the eight-player limit of the original. Added to that, you only get four races to play as, compared to the countless brought about by the original game's numerous expansion packs, so to some returning fans of the series, Dawn of War II might feel like a step back rather than a leap forward.

What will be a major sore point for many fans has little to do with the game and everything to do with the way in which you have to play it. You need to have Steam installed, just as you need to be signed up to the Games for Windows Live service in order to able to save games and play in multiplayer, inevitably requiring that you also have an Internet connection. Whether or not the advantages of such stringent requirements (achievements, auto-patching, playing the game without the need to insert the CD) outweigh the negatives (that fact that these are all mandatory) will depend entirely on how you feel about these services.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II isn't Dawn of War - in fact, it'd easier if you approach this sequel not expecting a sequel at all, but a brand new interpretation of the series. I could debate tirelessly about the things that Relic could have included and shouldn't have taken away (there are plenty of people doing that already), but Dawn of War II deserves to be judged on its own merits, and despite the single player campaign not working quite as well as it could have done and the multiplayer feeling like it could have been greatly expanded upon, it's still fun game that's great to look at and occasionally addictive. However, Dawn of War 2's greatest accolade is something that it actually does share in common with its predecessor; it's a game that once again takes the Warhammer 40,000 licence and does something truly great with it. As for the rest, time will tell if Relic's gamble pays off or not.

Reviewed by Kieron Giacopazzi for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).