Author: Andrew Logue

If 1995’s Command & Conquer built upon early real-time strategy attempts to perfect the foundations of the genre, so too did 2004’s Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War for the nascent squad-based RTS genre. Strategy games in which your ability to micromanage fewer squads and control territory is often more important than fortifying bases, tech-ing up, and overwhelming your opponent with a mass of units (which is not to say that can’t be done). Losing territory could swiftly strip you of resources and access to high-tier units, while losing entire squads and powerful leader units could turn the tide against you as you scramble to reinforce from scratch. Two decades on, even with real-time strategy reduced to a more niche market, the legacy of Relic’s Dawn of War is still visible in game design.

Returning to it by way of the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition, I forgot how much it feels like a game of two halves – each half catering to a very different audience. If you share my fondness for fortifying every square inch of a map as you expand, upgrading every unit as far as possible, and using tactical retreats to preserve squads for a final push, the campaigns and lower difficulty AI skirmishes – either solo or coop – have you well catered for. If you prefer reactive, high-intensity, high-mobility battles to claim and hold territory, the PvP modes have you covered and, to a lesser extent, the Dark Crusade and Soulstorm campaigns on higher AI difficulties.

If this remaster is your introduction to Dawn of War, it is one of those “easy to grasp, hard to master” games. The original campaign and Winter Assault expansion serve as lengthy, glorified tutorials that introduce basic mechanics and strategies, while providing all the narrative context and world-building you could ask for. You might think Space Marines killing aliens and demons in the God Emperor’s name has limited potential, but the Dawn of War campaign gets right what so many modern Warhammer 40,000 games gets wrong: the cast show some self-awareness of the absurd universe they inhabit, it focuses on the distinctly human flaws under a Space Marine’s superhuman physiology, and that humanity makes it easy to root for the protagonists. The Winter Assault campaigns lean more into the absurdity and hypocrisy of the universe, whereas the Dark Crusade and Soulstorm expansions only offer narrated flavour text to link together skirmishes.

Of course, the minute-to-minute gameplay is the draw of any RTS, and the Dawn of War – Definitive Edition offers up everything from exhilarating chaos to plodding grind, with no shortage of frustration that’ll have you cursing unit pathfinding and their lack of self-preservation. Befitting the squad-based focus, base-building is relatively simple with three resources to manage – requisition, power, whether you control a holy relic or not – and there are typically three tiers of global upgrades. Controlling units is standard RTS fare but in addition to global upgrades, you can personalise squad weapon loadouts; attach support units, define movement and engagement rules; use light and heavy cover to enhance infantry effectiveness; and exploit morale damage, negative cover, high ground, and line-of-sight to give your forces the edge.

Irrespective of which of the nine factions you play as through the campaigns, skirmishes, or PvP modes, the basics are the same – even if the base-building and upgrade pathways may differ slightly. Control points need to be captured and fortified to generate requisition; generators or scattered plasma sources provide power; and rare holy relics must be captured and held to produce the most powerful units. Capturing points quickly requires spreading your infantry across the map; construction requires shepherding your weak builder units around; your defensive options are limited to one or two turret variants; and turtling is useless outside of scripted campaign missions that limit what enemy forces you face. There are units that can serve as base defence, but entrenched units and turrets are easily outranged. At best, defences can stall an enemy force while you move your army to intercept.

In PvP matches, AI skirmishes, and much of the Dark Crusade and Soulstorm expansions – which offer turn-by-turn conquest maps to dominate – battles take place across broadly symmetrical maps and play out as dynamic cycles of attack and retreat, favouring those who can juggle expansion and micromanaging their army. Capturing and defending control points is beneficial (and essential for some victory conditions), but your limited defensive options mean a combined army can always steamroll a primary base if not intercepted. It makes for a stressful but thrilling back-and-forth. Even a player that has dominated territory could suddenly lose their key unit producing buildings or holy relic and find themselves with an abundance of resources they can spend on only basic squads.

In contrast, the original campaign and the Winter Assault expansion are for those who prefer a scripted and more predictable experience. There are a few exceptions that impose time limits, but most missions allow you to slowly spread across a handcrafted map towards your objective. The methodical pacing and lower stakes might frustrate some, as even on the higher campaign difficulties the AI plays by the same rules. They may get free reinforcements at times, but as you claim control points and fortify chokepoints, they lose their ability to counterattack, and your growing force will inevitably steamroll the objective. There’s something about this predictable formula that I always enjoy, but after completing the original campaign and the Winter Assault expansion, I could understand why they wanted to change up the formula with Dark Crusade and Soulstorm.

I’ve got this far without discussing the remastered elements of the Definitive Edition as it does a great job of presenting the game as you mis-remember it. Having a combined launcher, fully customisable controls, a pulled back camera, and proper widescreen support that doesn’t stretch HUD elements are simple but significant improvements. There are apparently pathfinding tweaks but these did little to alleviate the frustration of units shuffling around one anther instead of engaging enemies. There’s no hiding the limited geometric complexity, but the remastered 4K textures are a notable improvement that serve both the gameplay and rudimentary in-game cinematics well. It also ran at a mostly consistent 1440/60 at max settings on my 5-year-old gaming laptop with an underpowered i7 CPU and 8GB RTX3070 mobile GPU.

Ultimately, I think the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition is a solid remaster – even if it’s not a particularly ambitious one. The core gameplay is still strong, even if the campaigns and PvP components can feel a world apart in how they play. Whether you’ve enjoyed structured RTS campaigns or chaotic PvP. there’s something for everyone. It should satisfy returning players looking for a nostalgia hit, and any fan of modern RTS games with a focus on managing fewer, more specialised units. If you’re someone that has spent last decade or two playing and modding the original, you might find the remastering effort too limited to justify the price – but there is the prospect of a revived and more robust multiplayer scene.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition was reviewed on PC using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher.