Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Definitive Edition

Brother, heed the Litany of Review. Censures of HERESY The same game-breaking bugs that haunted the original Soulstorm still stalk the battlefield. A ranking system that yet refuses to function with the discipline of the Astra Militarum. Maps remain an unholy paradise for flying units - balance cast into the Warp. Pathfinding and unit clumping: squads bunch like frightened conscripts, blocking holy firelanes. Multiplayer lobbies and desyncs: the Machine Spirit is fickle, connections falter mid-crusade. UI & readability: fonts and scaling strain mortal eyes on modern monitors... Sacred clarity is not achieved. Audio mix is uneven - bolters roar, but some voices whisper like terrified serfs. Campaign pacing: between glorious strongholds lie repetitive sorties that test faith more than skill. QoL relics missing: better rebinds, clearer tooltips, smarter rally logic - these litanies were not inscribed. Tithe versus sanctification: the Emperor’s coin demanded feels proud for th...

Ok, I must admit it is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall in plus. There are caveats. Another one the "I wish steam had middle option between 'yes' and 'no'. Long story short - if you expected an AoE2 Definitive Edition level - walk away. If you expect a glorified HD edition - that is what you get. Let's start with the good. - It is good old Dawn of War with all the expansions - The new lighting is nice - The new pathfinding is lovely - units, especially vehicles are MUCH less likely to get stuck, which was huge issue of the original - you can finally zoom out the camera nicely - new UI and resolution fixes are also lovely - 64bit upgrade - so they game should no longer bottleneck on RAM and other things it doesn't see past certain value - will be big for modding. Now the bad - and this is going to get nuanced: - The new upscaled textures reek of AI and all the marks of the beast are there. The 'improvements' are uneven to say the least. For example - the hole on Gabriels backpack is ...

Still one of the greatest games ever made !! Been a long time coming for modern systems but they have done a great job :) FOR THE EMPEROR !!

EDIT: They have added a few more keybind presets. You can now sort of do WASD camera movement... but only if you hold shift. Its a step in the right direction I guess? Its not really usable WASD since shift matters so much, and its so clunky to use. Sort of a monkey's paw version of WASD camera. We still do not have full keybinding, pathfinding is still really bad, and there's still a myriad of other issues and missed opportunity. If we get like one big item implemented properly I'll happily make this a positive review, but this sure ain't it as it stands. That being said, I do appreciate the work that is being put in. It should have been put in before it was released, and its far from being finished - but nevertheless, the effort by the devs is appreciated. I really want to recommend this, but its just too unfinished. This is clearly a minimum effort way to cash in on the Dawn of War IP. There's no way this should have shipped as is. I'm sorry, I really wanted to like thi...

The Good: - Graphical improvements and widescreen support - All of DOW1 in one package - Discount for owners of the previous games - Units are more responsive - Game stability is improved The Bad: - Skirmish/Multiplayer mode is Soulstorm rules/units only - No achievements - Some visual oddities relating to the improved textures - No WASD camera control - Some of the upscaling is poorly done (Unit icons) Hopefully these issues can be resolved with a patch or two.

A good RELIC made remaster with a DISCOUNT for loyal SONS OF THE EMPIRE? Ignore the orcs besmirching the remaster quality! They are probably trying to run the game with a potato or just two rocks put together. Time to "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH" as the Blood Raven captain from the intro said! My only complain? No Trazyn exists in this 40K reality......Come on Relic! We want a Dawn of 2/Retribution remaster and the REAL Dawn of War 3! EMPRAH bless you all.

Alright, so as a huge WH40K fan and an even bigger fan of DoW 1 and 2 (DoW 3 does not exist), i have to give it a thumbs down for now. As much as they touted the improvement in graphical fidelity, the team did a half a**ed job of it. Here are some examples: 1. Some gun barrels got the pentagon to full circle treatment and texture work, but most like the plasma pistol, flamer, sniper rifle, Orc shootas still have smudged low res textures and an even more apparent pentagon since you can zoom in now. 2. The texture work overall looks to be done by bad AI model, and little human touch was applied. The terminators look washed out as always, but now more apparent. 3. The unit portraits... they are just straight up bad. AI took what little pixels there were and tried to make 4K out of it, and now it looks like a GPU artifact. The SM Servitor and Terminators look unrecognizable up close, and maybe like themselves from 5 feet away. 4. Terain textures on skirmish maps leave a lot to be desired...

Crashing all the time in multiplayer. Game looks great, but I can't play with friends. Hopefully, they fix this soon, then I will change the review to a positive one.

You should get it if you like the original games want better mod support because of the 64 bit engine upgrade. Looks great textures are nice and sharp. A good discount for owners of the original games is nice to see as well. Widescreen support and ultra wide support is great to have. Only heretics do not like this game.

Nothing "definitive" about DoW:DE, this is functionally just a visual upgrade to Soulstorm. The update to 64-bit processing is not an upgrade when nothing in the game utilises it except the new lighting system. View distance has not been expanded, population capacities have not been increased, things that were restricted due to 2004 hardware limitations have not been updated. Things like WASD camera controls and camera rotation are shockingly not present in a [current year] release. Relic should have been taking notes from Age of Empires 2:DE because that's what a definitive edition of a game looks like.