The Drunken Lizard Pub

Okay, I know I'm really late to the party on this one. Generally I'm not much of a RTS gamer, largely due to the fact that I just get overwhelmed by having to manage base building, defending my perimeter, exploring, and attacking enemy bases simultaneously. Squad-based games, like Jagged Alliance for example, are right up my alley. The Warhammer 40,000 games were on sale on Steam over the weekend. When I discovered that Dawn of War II did away with base building and instead focused on leading a small squad I decided this was right up my alley and took the plunge, snapping up the complete bundle (DoW2, DoW2: Chaos Rising, and DoW2: Retribution).

I've been playing the original campaign since Monday and I'm falling completely in love with this game. As I had thought and hoped, this game plays a lot more like Jagged Alliance, albeit real-time rather than turn-based, than a traditional RTS. The emphasis here is on strategic placement of your troops, cover, and wise use of your special abilities. Much like in Jagged Alliance or X-COM, I've grown really attached to my soldiers as they've grown. There are some RPG elements with skills to increase when leveling up, and random loot drops on the battlefield a la Diablo. I get a lot of joy having my small elite squad progress through the battlefield against overwhelming odds. There's tons of good times to be had setting up a line of gunners in cover, flushing out enemies with a grenade and luring them into a crossfire, sending my melee troops to hack apart suppressed troops, and scattering when a grenade comes bounding into my midst and scrambling on the fly to find new cover and get into a good firing position. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun playing a strategy game.

Thank you for your recommendation of Dawn of war II. I think that I am very much like you and so your comments are worth listening to. I, like you, do play RTS but only because that is about all there is out there. But it is rare to find a satisfying one.

Just checked out Dawn of War and it requires Steam. I have no Steam account and cannot get one. When I try to sign up all I get is an error message. I contacted Steam support and they responded quickly. After a quick transfer of info they came up with this brilliant statement " I dunno, just keep trying". I have been trying for months now. You would think that they could manually sign me up. After all, a new customer, right? But they don't seem to be interested, too big I guess. Whats one more customer out of the hundreds of thousands or millions they already have. Yes, I am cynical now.