This is one of the most important RTS there is, from its unique dynamics to its fleeting esports stint, although time has not been very kind to it and its legacy. Dawn of War heavily informed the production of the more successful Company of Heroes while its own sequels sought to reduce the scale for a more tactical focus. But the series would never reach the heights it did during the final years of RTS dominance.

The campaign is the easiest in the DoW 1 series and the missions are not necessarily ordered by difficulty. After a little familiarization I was able to blow through it without saving or loading. What I find most annoying is that one of the commander characters is present and playable a lot earlier in the campaign than he should be, which messes with the vibe a bit.

Very much because of its extremely low lethality, but also because of the way reinforcements are handled, DoW is one of the most aggressive RTS ever created. You are always, always fighting, and the more independent units you already have on the field, the faster you can reinforce them. "Defender's advantage" is barely a thing at all, and keeping your numbers up is everything. Eldar is the most challenging army to use, but you don't need to be very skilled with them to destroy every army, especially Orks. The stand-alone expansions can all be considered better-balanced, although they change enough things on a paradigmatic scale to feel very different, especially Dark Crusade.

Units can be freely and semi-permanently set to stances to prefer particular targets and melee or ranged attacks. Buildings can be set to produce units that initialize in any particular combination of stances. If set to Ranged, you can override to attack in Melee with a single button press, maintaining your stance. Stances are a big part of why newbies have a lot of difficulty adjusting to the controls, and their armies get tangled up and sluggish as a unit's longest-range attacker continues to hold up the group to snipe at a distant unit. Whenever ordering units, you generally want to think more in terms of repositioning and less in terms of attacking than in an RTS with tighter controls. You cannot critical-mass your way to victory - you need a balanced army to deal with a variety of threats - and the reason for this is not the counter system but the way melee and ranged units interact. After melee units close with your ranged units, you ideally want your own melee units to step in and mash them to a pulp while your ranged units are tied up in the scuffle (or otherwise running away).

There is also the Overwatch mechanic that greatly simplifies macro: most options can be set to automatically be purchased in the event of an empty build queue and sufficient floating resources. Games are primarily won through unit control, and through familiarity with the flow of the match, which is just as much a matter of broad strokes as it is well-placed active abilities.

There is an essential camera fix which can be installed on any version of the game, although it didn't exist when this game was "of the year". As of writing this review, Quick Match is permanently disabled and lobbies are serviceably functional, as with the expansions. Some resolutions may badly warp the interface. Don't forget that there is a tutorial for each individual army. The worldwide DoW community mostly plays Soulstorm and is dominated by Russians, though this wasn't always the case.