The Ork Warboss Gorgutz is aware that other people want something shiny, and wants it for himself. The Eldar’s Farseer Macha comes in aid of her Craftworld and the Autarch Kyre, who is in search of a powerful artifact he believes will restore their status as leaders of the galaxy. Gabriel Angelos of the Space Marine’s Blood Ravens chapter arrives to assist the Imperial House Varlock, which is besieged by an army of Orks. You’ll spend your time equally between the Space Marines, Eldar, and Orks (five levels each, with two end levels where you play as all three). I’ll start with the campaign, as it’s much smaller and easier to talk about. I’ll break this review down into two sections, as the single and multiplayer are really two completely different experiences. So taking a step back, is Dawn of War 3 worth the $60 of strategy game fans? As much as I love Dawn of War 2, heavens knows the amount of patches it took to get the game in working multiplayer order. The reality is, they scaled back on the teams so that they could focus on quality and balance. I don’t want to write this entire review as a disgruntled fan, angry that my favorite team wasn’t included or that the game didn’t live up to my overhyped expectations. Everyone was expecting some kind of fourth team twist (fan money was on Necrons), but nope, what you see with Dawn of War 3 is what you get. The previous Dawn of War games launched with four teams (Tyranids and Chaos being semi-”secret”), at least two multiplayer map types, and in Dawn of War 2’s case one of the most robust and interesting strategy game campaigns I’ve ever played. Fans of the franchise will find this to be incredibly disappointing. At three teams, a single multiplayer game type, and 17 campaign levels, this is the smallest Dawn of War package to date. I have to say, seeing the final package, I’m stunned that not that much has changed. Still, the game had a lot of time before launch, and I was eager to see what more was in store for us. There were a lot of explosions on screen, but I wondered how realistically manageable that would all be on the fly.
![dawn of war angry marines dawn of war angry marines](http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/250260/capsule_467x181.jpg)
The game promised to return to a much grander scale, but a lot of the combat seemed frantic and unfocused. What I saw of the closed doors gameplay trailer was slightly concerning. For me, this was like Christ returning to lead us to the strategy game promised land. I have about 1000+ combined hours in the franchise, with a lion’s share of those in Dawn of War 2. I got a chance to talk to the devs at E3 after the announcement, and the nerd in me could hardly be contained.