Relic Entertainment clearly had two agendas at hand with Dawn of War II, its latest Warhammer 40K strategy title. The single-player portion of the game plays like an action-heavy, party-based RPG with persistent units who level up and equip loot. The online game, however, takes a more traditional real-time strategy approach with higher unit counts, field upgrades, and some light base-building. Although players might not welcome both sides of this coin, both are polished to such a degree that it's hard to fault Relic for trying to open the game up to two similar but notoriously fractured groups of PC gamers.

Although the main story arc is a structured affair, the game allows you to choose some optional missions in any order, with the caveat that these optional missions themselves are only available for a limited time. Because every mission has some form of loot reward and planetary faction bonus tied to its completion, time can be an important factor, and you'll need to make some choices about what missions you're willing to take on, and when. It's not going to provide a drastically different experience through replay, but the choice is a nice touch that at least lets you avoid portions of the game you might not enjoy.Though there are a few epic scripted sequences during your fights, the mostly forgettable story is told between missions before deployment. Your involvement in the Blood Ravens' fate will likely be more influenced by your attachment to the Warhammer 40K source material than this game's specific narrative.