Being a grizzled veteran of the Warhammer 40k universe I feel it is my duty to make my views accessible to everyone rather than the hardcore fans who have either an Imperial eagle or 8 pointed star tatooed on their chest and have a life size suit of power armour complete with boltgun.

In terms of gameplay, Souldstorm is more or less identical to its spiritual predacessor, Dark Crusade. For those of you who haven't played DC, there is pretty much nothing but 'Destroy HQ' skirmishes occasionally broken up by a cut-scene followed by a more story relevant stronghold mission. The only dramatic changes Relic have made are:

1. The maps are larger- This useually results in you spending a good 20 minutes looking for the enemy base. While this did make single player games seem like drawn-out torture, this would probably enhance any multiplayer games (just a guess there).

2. Two new races- The Sisters of battle and Dark eldar (more on these guys later).

3. Aircraft- This would have been an interesting addition if they had allowed you to posess more than 5 air units at any one time, this useually means that you'll have to either spread them out across the map (where they will easily be taken down) or concentrate them in one place (given the size of the maps this location will probably only see one conflict). On the bright side, air units don't unbalance the game since any unit with a ranged attack can fire at them (this will come as a relieve to anyone who kept suffering defeat because their Red Alert 2 conscript didn't realise there was a rocketeer above them).

4. A solar system- This time around, the focus of the campaign is centred around an entire system rather than just one insignificant planet. At first this may make the game sound grander, but thats just it, the campaign has about as many territories/missions as DC did, the only difference is that the campaign map looks larger and more complicated (emphasis on the LOOKS).

Onto the plot, it is a great shame that they turned their back on well thought out plot lines and well rounded characters after Winter Assault (this is a prominent side effect of having a non-linear campaign, what was so wrong with being linear anyway?), the story here is a joke and a bad one at that. The opening film for DC was about 2 minutes long which seemed fair enough to me, gives everyone a reason to be in the game. Compare this to the ungodly opening of Soulstorm which lasted at least 7 minutes (I left my room to make a sandwhich, came back and it was still going on about why we're still interested in this crummy planet). The plot of soulstrom is not really revealed at any point outside of the opening, ending, stronghold missions and the archive pages (if you get around to reading them), considering how the first DOW almost brought me to tears (in the good sense) when Isuldur died...this is a pretty big step down.

Final dig at the plot here, bringing back the Eldar as guardians protecting everyone else from a sinister mystery because they feel we can't do it ourselves? This'll be the fourth time they've pulled that plot device out, it seems that the writers have thrown in the towel now and have lost interest in DOW...probably best if the developers took this to heart and stopped making expansions (to be frank).

Soulstorm (as I mentioned earlier) introduces two new races into the already pretty extensive list of factions avalible. Unfortuneatly, neither race is ground-breaking with the Dark Eldar being centred around raiding (fine in theory, complicated in practice) and the Sisters being primarily equipped to deal with masses of infantry (which will serve you well...until the bad guys start deploying vehicles). I overlooked the Dark Eldar since hit and run tactics aren't my thing so...nuns with guns...the only thing that kept me useing them past the first mission was the fact that I personally find something unuseually attractive about women who resemble lingere models in heavy power armor. The campaign is drawn out even further because of these new editions, in DC you only had to wipe out six factions (which took long enough in itself) whereas SS requires you to obliterate 8 (I have not the will, time or supply of Dr. Pepper to keep me sane through that).

Graphics are good (more or less the best I've seen so far in an RTS...not that I've played many), sound is above average...not much I can say technically since I don't understand a large amount about that technobabble (ask someone at PC World if you want to know more).

Overall I would have to say that this game is alright (above average), if you liked Dark Crusade but felt it was far too short then I would reccomend Soulstorm to you. Otherwise, I would say stick with Dark Crusade.

EDIT- If you do think this was or wasn't helpful, could you possibly say why (otherwise I don't know what I should add/remove/edit etc.) which will help me improve the quality of my work in future.

-Iron Mal

How's the modability? From your review (voted yes) and pretty much everyone elses impressions on the game, this one is not so great but a lot of repair mods can change that.

No Tyranids seems to be a big concern for a lot of people. I don't know why but I thought I'd mention that.

Iron Mal:
Final dig at the plot here, bringing back the Eldar as guardians protecting everyone else from a sinister mystery because they feel we can't do it ourselves? This'll be the fourth time they've pulled that plot device out, it seems that the writers have thrown in the towel now and have lost interest in DOW...probably best if the developers took this to heart and stopped making expansions (to be frank).

My knowledge of the WH40k universe is far more limited than your's but isn't that what the Eldar do? My experience with the universe leads me to that conclusion (that experience being Dawn of War, a few Black Library novels, and Wikipedia).

Overall a good review, comparable to proffesionals (not Yahtzee though, he's worse than you but more entertaininig). Keep it up.

I voted yes, as it will give those unfamiliar with the game a good headstart, however lemme shed a little more light onto the matter.

1. The maps may be larger, but the new maps are shocking compared to the old maps, they really haven't thought out any new design of great intrest that makes maps fun. I used to love playing on "meeting of minds", hell even "into the breach" found reknown and that had a (believe it or not) a breach that you could fight though.
Nothing from the new line up is even remotely intresting and those selected for automatches (multiplayer random games based on ranking) are terrible.

2. The two new races, i'll say nothing other than the sisters are far too limited by the fact that they need their faith powers and aquire them slowly. The Dark Eldar on the other hand get soul all the time, and ultimately, don't need it.
They got that wrong imo. (They also haven't fixed the rescource bug)

3. Some of the air units are near useless when compared with others, the only time the sister are good pulling a lightning fighter out is when others choose aircraft, since it only has anti aircraft capabilities.
Yet against Chaos, well...the hell Talons will roll your troops, buildings and bring down your fighters in good sted.
Honestly, they haven't gotten these right either.
Imperial bombers were used simply for gen harrassment, entire farms can go boom with one skill.

4. The plot and game, where both half baked in the eyes of those that play it. Most of the community viewed it as a mod onto DC. Too little has been advanced upon from Dark Crusade and those who played Dc and found it enjoyable may well find soulstorm fun, however if you wanted a more balanced game SS isn't the one in the series you should choose.

Soulstorm is by far the weakest title in the entire Dawn of War franchise, and the campaign is nothing more than a grindfest. You lose all of your buildings except for a tiny collection of garrisoned ones at the start of every defence, which was Iron Lore's way of saying "We want you to spend more time on each battle, thus artificially increasing the length of time you spend on the campaign by handicapping you."

Add that onto the problems that the game has always had with the AI - or rather, a lack of it - and the solution has always been to throw more and more units at the player. The Honour Guard system is a joke when the computer can refill theirs instantly - for free - and with units you will never be able to get in yours... *without* needing access to territory in order to do it.

And with eight opponents on such a small (And laggy, apparently) metamap, you could be fighting up to eight defences a turn against odds designed to punish you.

Add to that the balance issues, the SoB "infinite resources" bug, the Necron "infinite Monoliths" bug, the Eldar "no resources" bug, the lack of polish and actual content, not to mention the mishandling of what content was added, and you get a shit game. Seriously, there's no reason to buy Soulstorm over Dark Crusade. No reason at all.

When creating Soulstorm, IronLore simply just ctrl + C Dark Crusade than paste it and edit how it looks. Whats even worse is that they failed many times. The Soulstorm campaign some times shows the names of the commanders from Dark Crusade and it takes ages to load on computers with only 1 core.
Soulstorm is just one big epic fail after another. On the upside though; people who bought soulstorm get a chance at playing the Dawn of War 2 Beta.

Blayze has it in a nutshell

I have every other DoW game, but I definitely won't be getting Soulstorm. It seems to me that the few faults in the DoW system have been gradually getting worse and worse, until culminating in Soulstorm. However, I have high hopes for DoW 2 because the series needs a complete overhaul. Unfortunately, right now it looks like the only thing which is different is the graphics.

At least show us some new sync kills!

My knowledge of the WH40k universe is far more limited than your's but isn't that what the Eldar do? My experience with the universe leads me to that conclusion (that experience being Dawn of War, a few Black Library novels, and Wikipedia).

The Eldar do what's required to ensure the future survival of their race. They don't give two shits about anyone else beyond how useful they can be in ensuring the survival of the Eldar. Sometimes that means squashing emergent threats before they get out of hand.

Indeed. From the Wikipedia entry for the Farseer Eldrad Ulthran...

Eldrad Ulthran was the mightiest and most ancient of the Farseers of the Eldar Craftworld of Ulthwé. Also, he was a dick. Among Eldrad's accomplishments are supposedly igniting the Second War for Armageddon so as to spare the lives of ten thousand Eldar[1], the Sanapan Scouring, the Mortis Annihilation and the Third Coming of Orian, as well as warning Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children of Horus's treachery[2] (though he failed, realising only too late that Fulgrim had already been corrupted by Slaanesh).

I like how the bit about him being a dick made it past the Wiki editors. Anyway, yes. Eldar do everything they can in the name of the Eldar, but reserve a special hatred for Slaanesh - since it was their hedonism that created that god in the first place (Constant furious masturbation, no doubt) - and the Necrons. Humans are nothing to the Eldar.

Soulstorm is by far the weakest title in the entire Dawn of War franchise, and the campaign is nothing more than a grindfest. You lose all of your buildings except for a tiny collection of garrisoned ones at the start of every defence, which was Iron Lore's way of saying "We want you to spend more time on each battle, thus artificially increasing the length of time you spend on the campaign by handicapping you."

However, this is balanced by the fact that in Dark Crusade the computer started every map with a Tier 2 base, so you really had to fortify every territory beyond rational sense to stop it getting rolling when you were playing a defensive map (especially the larger maps, where the higher resources gave it a big leg up, I find the DoW AI generally gets better the more resources it has).

Soulstorm defensive maps could generally be fought by sending your garrison force out to do it's job and defend the area, taking out one or two of the enemy's bases before they really get rolling, unless you take a massive honour guard rush in the face, which generally only the last race will do.

Blayze:

I like how the bit about him being a dick made it past the Wiki editors. Anyway, yes. Eldar do everything they can in the name of the Eldar, but reserve a special hatred for Slaanesh - since it was their hedonism that created that god in the first place (Constant furious masturbation, no doubt) - and the Necrons. Humans are nothing to the Eldar.

Actually some believe that Slaanesh was created when an Eldar 5 starred Through Fire and Flames on Expert. :P

The review was pretty good. I agree with many of your points, especially on story mode. Though personally I really like playing as the Dark Eldar (though I tend to play normal Eldar online. They're my best race and people don't quit when I play them, >.< Reaver spamming) There are a few healthy additions to the game; a few of the maps I enjoy and the races worked out alright except for a few issues, especially with the Dais of Destruction. Overall a good review

Eldritch Warlord:
Overall a good review, comparable to proffesionals (not Yahtzee though, he's worse than you but more entertaininig)

To be honest, Yahtzee's reviews as reviews are terrible. There are so many games he hates and bashes on. And also, he reviews games through cock jokes, and imagine Gigantor doing that. He's funny and entertaining, but the reviews themselves are not very good. But I kinda think that is what he strives for.

so you really had to fortify every territory beyond rational sense to stop it getting rolling when you were playing a defensive map

Not really. All you really needed to do was to put a bunch of turrets down in a chokepoint the enemy would reach before gathering steam. Then again, I mostly played DC's campaign as Necrons, so all I needed beyond that was a Monolith and that was it.

I really just recommend anyone wanting to get into the game series to just get Dark Crusade, at this point.

I liked the campaigns of the first 2, but Dark Crusade is just the most fun.

The problem I have with the original campaigns in DoW and WA is that there are really only a couple of challenging missions on there. The only mission that ever felt like I might be in danger of losing was mission 4 of Winter Assault for each side.

Dark Crusade actually does ramp up the difficulty though, especially on larger maps where the AI has lots of resources (I find the skirmish AI's performance is tied to the amount of resources it can draw on, larger maps tend to mean you face higher level units earlier in the game).

Soulstorm, to me, feels like a mild shuffle sideways from Dark Crusade, rather than a step forwards or backwards. (Many of it's bugs and problems are actually holdovers from DC, though they did manage to make the campaign Daemon Prince Ascension even worse than it was in DC (never mind that it still says it's Eliphas, rather than Metal Boxes), as you lose the warp fire, as well as the DPS, regen and Banner of Chaos).

Good informative review, nice work!

I have played the original DoW and the 1st two expansions but have never gotten around to buying soulstorm.
Too bad they haven't included tyranids yet... :(

It was a weak expansion for an excellent game, so it's hard to say if it was good or bad, the gameplay was enjoyable, but not so much because of the expansion as for the game itself. Risk style campaign was fun the first time around but unoriginal and dull the second. The game is really worth it for the two extra races, nothing else.

Good review. Also, Iron Lore just copy-pasted the Space Marine building tree and tweaked the Space Marine units for the Sisters of Battle.

Not quite. The buildings are similar to the Chaos/Marine tech trees, but the units are very different. Sisters of Battle are built around morale breaking to make up for their fragility and narrow weapon choices, and they really have no core MBT vehicle like the Predator (the Immolator with multi-meltas has the DPS, but only half the hitpoints, so it can dish it out but can't take it back). They've got very poor vehicle handling in general as well, only Celestian squads and Penitent Engines are solid vehicle killers.

^^ You're right I suppose, I just hate the fact they gave them jump infantry that are better at shooting...

I tend to agree with you on your review, especially dealing with the plot area. I preferred the linear well planned out stories back in the first two DOWs. The new addition of multi-race campaign would be better if the plots unfolded as you progressed through territories. other than this i liked the game quite alot. I just can't wait till DOW2 comes out (e3 trailer was freakin' sweet)

NinjaDwarf:
^^ You're right I suppose, I just hate the fact they gave them jump infantry that are better at shooting...

That's what Seraphim do though, jump jets and short range shooty. Iron Lore/Relic don't invent these units, they just adapt them from the tabletop game.