ugh.....

Much has been said about this game. Mostly negative. I always thought that the outrage about it seems a little exaggerated, and a lot of it truly is. I mean, a lot of people are freaking out about the Space Marine commander being able to jump, others complain that the units look too clean and colorful, etc. Most of these complaints sound silly to me.

I jumped into it with an open mind.

Played three campaign missions. They taught you basics of each faction, but were still actual missions. I can't say for sure whether the campaign would continue to feel like these missions, but they felt kinda boring to me. They were mostly linear, usually giving you no more than two ways to solve each situation, and the enemies were very passive.

The Space Marine one was the simplest, you just keep going forward and attacking the enemies. The Ork one forced you to defend this gun, which I thought was lame. The Eldar one was a piece of cake. Why? You're pretty much not getting attacked, so you're free to develop at you own pace. Then once you get the aviation, just build a giant squadron and send it over to each tower you need to destroy. I've said this before, but why do we need aviation in Dawn of War? It ruins the whole dynamic of inching your way through the map, capturing strategic points and fortifying, when you can just fly over everything.

I will say that there are many things I really liked about DoW3. I think it's cool how Orks can upgrade their units by finding scrap and how the Eldar are very reliant on staying within the fields of their web ways. I really liked the maps visually. They convey the sense of scale and depth really well. I like how the new cover system too, it makes the covers more valuable as advantageous spots on the map that you compete with the enemy for. I also like how you can build requisition and power generators alongside each other on the same spot.

However, the campaign is really the last thing I'm interested in (unless it's Dark Crusade's campaign). I was much more curious about the skirmish mode. And this is where things went to shit for me really quickly.

I don't really have any fundamental problem with the gameplay in theory. I think it works more or less similar to the original DoW, except the big things is you can't replenish your forces unless you're near your main buildings. But I was getting my ass handed to me on casual difficulty. Why? Because my units kept acting like retards. And this is to me the one problem that absolutely handicaps DoW3. I can't leave my units to defend a post and then focus on other things. Because they will either: A) Follow the enemy through half the map. And then they won't even try to return and just stand there like idiots. B) The other units will watch their fellow soldiers get slaughtered nearby and do nothing.

I had pretty much a wall of three strategic points gets assaulted non-stop by the enemy, and I had to keep sending my forces non-stop because they kept dying. I had to bind my three unit-producing buildings to 1, 2 and 3 and set each of their rally points to each of the strategic points. I didn't have any time to micro-manage each individual unit because, while I'm doing that, all the other units are dying due to their own stupidity. And I'm sure I'd probably win that battle in the end because I had managed to take over more strategic points. But what does this turn the game into? There's no strategy anymore, just spam your forces until you overwhelm them. This could've been remedied somewhat if you could build turrets, but you can't.

I consider this game basically broken, purely on the basis of the bad AI. The campaign is probably playable because it gives you more advantages and is built around progressing through the map like in an RPG, instead of taking it over. But I don't care about the campaign on its own merit.

Also, no sync-kills is a major bummer. That was invented by DoW and made it unique.

Also only three factions. Can't even play 2v2 properly.

Also, what's the deal with automatic unlockables? I opened the game for the second time today, and there's a notification that I unlocked some new skins, as if this was an MMO. And the notification wouldn't close, so I had to kill the game and relaunch it. Can't help but feel like they were planning to turn it into some kinda MMO.