I loved Dawn of War.
Gonna pick this one up as well, loving the flamethrower
I had my "love Dawn of War" phase with the first game. And I loved it dearly, although I never was one for playing RTS online. Just the visceral feel of it compared to the other RTS games around was terrific. Close combat moves in a sci fi RTS? Hell yeah!
But ultimately, I had to concede at some point that it was just a decent to good game, compared to the other RTS behemoths. Especially Warcraft 3. Dawn of War had quiet a few innovations over Warcraft 3 in terms of game mechanics, being the newer game. But in the end, there were many little things where it became evident that Dawn of War was not as expertly crafted as game, as the competition. This started with the visuals for me, ironically. Technically, Dawn of War was pretty much ahead of Warcraft 3. But the cool units were contrasted with absolutely grating looking levels. Warcraft 3 achieved so much more memorable maps with its over the top comic approach, wheras nearly everything in Dawn of War was a grey-greenish-brown, rather indistinguishable mass of blandness. Not being a multiplayer focused player, the WC3 campaign also made Dawn of War look like low production value poo for me. The high fantasy WC3 drivel was so much more engaging than what Dawn of War offered, also in terms of game mechanics of the missions. I was still actively collecting and playing Wh40K back then (Tyranids ftw!), but even with that heavy 40k bias, I could see that other games beat Dawn of War handily.
It was a sad realization back then, because I had really hoped for an absolutely great 40k RTS, but Relic Entertainment just didn't play in the same league as Blizzard. No idea if it was down to budget or talent. Funnily enough, I have a similar feeling with Elite Dangerous. I love it dearly, to the point that I'd rank it among my favourite games ever, but there are so many little things about it, that I can't help but feel the Elite team is nowhere near the top of the game design food chain, whether it's just down to budget being the limiting factor or design decisions I find pretty incomprehensible. They have one huge advantage though: there is currently no released competition on eye level with Elite Dangerous.
Warhammer (40k) licensed games were rare back then, but none that I knew of was a really good high profile game. I can remember the Tau Fire Warrior shooter and a Warhammer mark of Chaos RTS game from the time, but both didn't seem to be that good either. Today, the Games Workshop licensed games seem to multiply rather quickly, but I'm not that interested in most of the genres anymore. Still hope, that there will be some great games in there! If ever I'll get back into a Games Workshop IP, it's probably going ot be a video game, rather than a tabletop game. ^^
