Dawn of War II inherits plenty from critical darling Company of Heroes, Relic's up-close-and-personal take on World War II combat. The environment is heavily destructible; terrain, cover and lines of sight are of critical importance; there's a definite sense of physical connection to combat. There's a strong emphasis on active and credible AI for the units, and an effort to give those units some personality, something for the player to grow attached to.

Relic has gone even further in uncompromisingly axing the resource-management and base-building side of real-time strategy this time around. Dawn of War II simply doesn't have that side. "No more starting over" is the developer's motto. No bases, no resource gathering, no building units, no dithering over force composition. Instead, there's a continuous sense of progression from the RPG-like levelling of squad commanders, and tactical choices come in the form of customising your skill-set before starting a mission.

These per-session skills are called Accessories and actually drop as loot, alongside War Gear. A rare example might be an orbital bombardment beacon that can be used to annihilate a tricky outpost, leaving just the cleaning up to your squads. You can collect a pool of Accessories, but only equip a very limited number; you can swap them out between missions depending on preference and availability. This sounds like an excellent, compelling system for tactical variety, without forcing you to work your way through a tree of force-composition choices at the start of every map.