Originally published February 2016

Shortly after completing Winter Assault, I jumped into the next Dawn of War expansion pack: Dark Crusade. While not the final expansion pack to the classic strategy game, Dark Crusade is the last one that I've played to completion—Soulstorm is the last, but it adds little that Dark Crusade didn't already do. What did Dark Crusade do? A fair amount actually.

Gameplay

The actual campaign gameplay of Dawn of War has been shifted dramatically with Dark Crusade. Unlike the original Dawn of War, where you could play only one campaign and control one army, and unlike Winter Assault, where you could play two halves of a campaign and switch off between 2 armies at a time without much choice in the matter, you can play as 1 of 7 different armies and campaigns in Dark Crusade. Seven different armies is a massive undertaking for any developer of strategy games because of all the balancing that is required for the various units, but Relic somehow managed to create an expansion to an already great Warhammer 40,000 game that manages to give only more insight into the various species of the universe. On top of the ability to play a campaign for each of the seven races, they've also added a meta-strategy aspect to the game to break up the constant struggle on the battlefield. Dark Crusade is a massive addition to Dawn of War with some interesting design choices, which are still not without their drawbacks.

Meta-Strategy Mechanics

When you start up the campaign, you choose the species you wish to control for the entirety of the single-player campaign. Your choices include the familiar races that were in previous versions: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Orks, and Chaos Marines. The two new species added include the Tao—the barely used aliens of the Warhammer 40,000 universe—as well as the Necrons, which were in Winter Assault, but not playable. I was unsure of what I was getting into with Dark Crusade and chose to go with the army with which I was most familiar: the Space Marines.

Upon selecting the army, you're treated to a dramatic and poorly dictated cutscene specific to the army of your choice. Then, you are thrust into the overview map. The map is a daunting indication of how much game there is to play in Dark Crusade. Sections of the planet are broken up into more than 20 territories, with each army controlling 2 or so at the start. The goal, as you might have guessed, is to eliminate all other armies from the map. To do this, you must make it to the home base of an opposing army and claim that territory. Likewise, if the same happens to you, you are eliminated.

The map view is turn-based, similar to that of a Total War or Civilization game where you can make various decisions or changes, like attacking an enemy territory. Then, you end your turn, whereupon the opposing armies each do the same. Since there are six other armies on the map, a lot is usually happening in those first few hours. If they were to all, hypothetically, band together against you and attack your territories at once, it could be a very eventful turn. At one point I had three different armies all attack the same territory in one turn, which basically meant that I had to defend the same location 3 times in a row before I was able to make any other decisions.

The various decisions you can make on the map view include moving your main army across the map, attacking a territory, upgrading your army, and upgrading your commander. Your commander is a bit of an RPG element to the game, which Relic would go on to reuse in Dawn of War II. Essentially, as you take over more territories and complete some arbitrary/secondary objectives throughout the campaign, your commander levels up. When this happens, you can select the gear to upgrade and improve the commander's stats or abilities. Your commander is an essential unit on the battlefield and, when fully powered, can be a tremendous asset in turning the tide of battle.

Your army can be upgraded on the map view as well. For each territory you claim, you gain requisition points, similar to how you do so in typical Dawn of War battles. There are also bonuses to each territory, which allow you to use these points to further upgrade your army. Most of the bonuses are simply the ability to add an extra, more powerful unit to your attacking forces, but some are important passive abilities as well. For example, controlling one particular territory allows you to attack anywhere on the map at a time, instead of having to trek across the whole map. Another allows you to have buildings already constructed upon entering a battlefield. Almost all of these bonuses cost the territory requisition points, which you gain at the end of each turn. By the time I was finished with the game, I never felt I had a real surplus of those points and even had to just let a turn pass occasionally so I would have enough the next time around to be properly prepared for the following battle. I thought that this mechanic was relatively balanced, overall, but it was also tough at the beginning of the game when I only had a few territories under my control.

Battlefield Gameplay

The meat and potatoes of Dark Crusade, of course, are on the battlefield. This is where the familiar mechanics of Dawn of War come into play. The combat is like it always has been with the Dawn of War franchise, apart from the new armies, the strategy required for attacking and defending territories, and the new super-powered commander unit.

The commander, whom you upgrade throughout the game, eventually becomes the most powerful thing you have on the battlefield. My Space Marine hero was able to smash tanks with his hammer in only a few blows by the time he was at full power. If he were a usable character in the original Dawn of War I would have felt like I was cheating if I used him. Still, he is not immortal and can fall in battle if overwhelmed. The commander is an expensive unit, so if he dies, it will cost a lot of resources to bring him back.

In order to get to the battlefield to test the strength of your commander, you need to attack or defend a territory. Attacking and defending is, of course, where the actual combat comes in. Once transported to the combat zone, your goal is always to eliminate all of the enemy bases. Every territory has a different map and layout, so every new attack is different, adding significant variety to the environments. Each one of these maps, varying in size and layout can take at least 20 minutes, and up to an hour to complete if you use the strategy that I did.

Defending

One thing I quickly learned in defending territories: any buildings you placed on the battlefield map the last time you successfully attacked or defended the territory are there the next time you defend it. Having all of your buildings up at the start of a match is a huge advantage for any RTS game because it doesn't cut in on resources and most of the units are already available for purchase without needing to go down a lengthy building process during the fight.

Since every building would remain at the end of a successful attack or defense, for every single territory I attacked, I would spend an hour on the battlefield, building up multiple bases in different locations and capturing every strategic point I could. The next time I had to defend this map, I would have armies ready to go within a minute and resources pumping in faster than I could spend them. I was more than prepared. This might seem excessive, but I assure you, it's necessary. The first time I defended a territory, I was unprepared for the size of an army I was up against.

Early in the game, I had taken a large northern territory from the Eldar, because screw the Eldar. In the process of claiming this territory, I only built one main base at the bottom of the huge map and captured half the strategic points. The territory was so big, that the time it took for my troops to cross the entire map took upwards of 5 minutes, which is more than enough time for an enemy to gain the upper hand in an RTS game. I managed to locate the two bases the Eldar had established and wiped them out.

In the next turn, the Eldar struck back to reclaim the territory. When the map loaded, I thought I'd have to play the area over again, then realized that I still had my base. Had I known, I would have spread out more and gathered more resources before claiming victory in my attack. It would have come in handy too, because I had no idea what was coming. Something I didn't learn right away was that the computer gets to start with two bases when it attacks, which you don't get to do as a player. With their extra base that I had no idea was up by the same spawn point as before, the Eldar got a big head start on their forces. By the time I had assembled a force to travel to where I assumed their base was, they had twice as many units. And by the time my army had made its way up the map to the base that they started with, their army that was probably 4 times as big and had made its way around the other side of the map to my base, systematically sweeping everything away. That was the last territory I lost.

After that crippling defeat, I made sure that, for every territory I claimed, I had all my bases scattered throughout the map, ensuring I could quickly find the location of the enemy's base immediately, and send my troops there before they had time to amass an army. I became swift, effective, and efficient in every defense. I even timed the encounters to see if I could defend a territory in under 5 minutes. Nonetheless, as quick as I could be in defending a territory, it did not prevent the fatigue and tedium of having to do it over and over again.

Attacking

The early stages of Dark Crusade allow you to be a little looser with your strategy when it comes to attacking a territory. Since everyone is just starting out, the armies aren't supposed to be as big and the territories aren't as fortified. By the end, however, you had better figure out how to take the territory effectively and prepare for a strong defense, or you're going to be wiped out, even on Normal difficulty.

For the first couple of attacks I led, I simply did my usual, basic (bad) strategy: collect a couple of points, build up a big army and base, and attack all at once with my horde. This works the first few times. Once the enemy starts the battle with more than one base, though, you aren't allowed to take your time anymore. In the end, I found one strategy to work the best.

I started each battle by building a barracks and making sure I had 3 squads of marines available almost immediately, along with any of the extra units I had gained from the meta-game. I'd have my cheap, nearly useless units capture strategic points close by, while I'd move my mini-army out to the middle of the map. Then I'd send my cheapest unit out as a scout, on a one-way trip to find the first base. Once located, I would just keep building units, as my mini army would target the main building. Once that main building was destroyed, everything else would disappear and I would only have to worry about the remaining enemy base. From there, I would place my units at choke points around the remaining base's location to prevent any forces from leaving their area, while I went through the process of conquering the rest of the map and building bases elsewhere. This would take about an hour almost every time.

Combat Redundancy

So, with 20 territories to claim, 6 other armies competing, and the fact that you have to constantly defend your own claimed territories, you're probably able to figure out that Dark Crusade's campaign ends up being insanely long. It's like they were making up for lost time with Winter Assault. By the end of the game, you are guaranteed to be defending at least 1 territory every turn. If you succeed in defending the land, you keep the territory for the next turn, but if you lose, the attacking army claims it and its rewards. With the constant ebb and flow of the game, you can quickly find yourself in a stalemate without the proper strategy. Mine almost always assured victory, but it also required a significant chunk of time for that assurance.

I really enjoy Dawn of War's gameplay and I think that it's still immensely satisfying for a strategy game. Strategy games, for good reason, tend to create a significant distance between the player and the action, but Dawn of War's mechanics manage to make it feel exciting and involved. However, Dark Crusade can take it out of you. You have to attack and win over 20 territories. You have to defend them after you win them. Each territory takes about an hour to attack. If every attack is a success, you're still looking at 20+ hours of skirmish matches in addition to all the defending you'll have to do.

They try to break up the tedium of having the same blow-up-the-base scenario again and again, by making the assaults on the home bases for the different species more unique. Whenever you attack the home territory of an enemy, a cut-scene plays and there is an objective that is slightly different. That is, so long as the enemy you face is the original owner of that territory. When I played, the Orks and Necrons had wiped out 3 of the opposing armies and had claimed their territories. So when I finally got around to claiming the regions of the Imperial Guard, the Tao, and the Chaos Marines, the objective remained the same for the map, but without any context. It was weird.

Unfortunately, these special missions don't end up being much fun. The objectives are more complicated, so the variety is nice, but the maps take even longer to complete—the Necrons were perhaps the most tedious. After finally beating the game, I found that I enjoyed the meticulous but simple method of conquering regular territories far more than trying to assault an enemy's home region.

Story

Every race in the game supposedly has some reason to be involved in the conflict in Dark Crusade. Everything that happens takes place on a planet called Kronus, with each army having its own objective in mind. These objectives are summed up in the opening cutscene, and that's about it. After that, the story is pretty much just background noise. Once you start playing the game, there are cutscenes for the various special territories and then whatever you get when you complete the game.

As I said, I completed the game, but only with the Space Marines—no way was I going to go through all of that with every army. I do not know how the others play out, but I certainly didn't feel like I knew anything more at the end of the game than I did at the beginning for them. If there is a story, it's delivered poorly. What you get out of Dark Crusade is mostly just gameplay and a lot of it, so don't be expecting an involved narrative experience.

Presentation

Dark Crusade is still only an expansion to the pre-existing Dawn of War, so the presentation rules of Winter Assault still apply here. Not a whole lot is different or improved in terms of the music or physical presentation, but there is at least a lot of variety.

The maps themselves differ significantly from one another in terrain and detail. You'll play maps like the planets from Star Wars: desert, snow, jungle, forest, and volcano variety, The home base regions of the map are especially unique in their layout and design with some elaborate routes to fit with the character of the location.

The other thing that's different about this expansion pack is the addition of the commander customization. When you purchase an upgrade for the commander, their stats improve, but they also change in appearance. Every upgrade you get for him or her is physically visible on their body, and it's true for every species. It's a small touch, and it doesn't really matter, because you won't likely be zoomed in very close to see your commander look so damn good. Nonetheless, each item is something that actually exists in the Warhammer 40,000 universe and something that these people would wear, so it fits.

The last thing that I'll mention about the presentation is the voice work. Voices in the Dawn of War games have always been more miss than hit, with minor exceptions here or there. For every good voice actor, there was a bad one hamming it up or completely out-of-place. The voice acting of the various characters in Dark Crusade is fine, but I cannot stand the narration they chose for the cutscenes. The developers obviously thought he was okay because he apparently reprised his role in Soulstorm, but I couldn't disagree more with that decision. Rather than getting someone would can actually deliver lines in a dramatically epic fashion, they got someone who thinks he can. His pronunciation and cadence are grating to me on a profound level and I just wish they had gotten someone who reads the lines for movie trailers. Or, at the very least, they could have just had someone read the narration a little less dramatically so it didn't feel so forced.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

While I will say that I like Dark Crusade more than Winter Assault in terms of the overall fun I had with it, it was not without its flaws. The combat is relentless and forces you to think and react quickly and appropriately, and I enjoyed the feeling of conquering a world through the different skirmishes. Yet, even continuous winning can become a huge slog of tedium that will wear anyone down over time. I'm fairly certain this took longer to complete than the original Dawn of War and Winter Assault combined, and since the final expansion pack, Soulstorm, is the exact same gameplay as Dark Crusade, with two new armies I don't care about, I won't be playing that any time soon either.

Do you agree or disagree? Tell me what you think in the comments!

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