It feels different than the original, but Dawn of War II should not be the original all over again with better graphics. I myself am a huge fan of the original (including the expansion packs, of course), and I play it almost every day, the battles feel epic, the units choices is great (but we didn't have much to chose from in the original, if any of you remember, we've seen more units with the arrival of the three expansion packs).
I will be honest with myself though, I will buy and play and enjoy Dawn of War II for its single-player campaign, I want to see what Relic came up with (I loved the original story and I never liked the fact that all three expansion packs never followed the events of the original). I still like Dawn of War II overall, but it is very difficult to adapt to the changes, and some of them are simply bad choices in my opinion such as removing the units statistics and only being able to select one hero type, I do hope that selecting only one hero only applies to multi-player, if not that will be one heck of a disappointment for me.
I would dare saying that indeed Dawn of War II has a consolized feeling to it which I really don't like, but technically speaking the game-play style of the game isn't all that bad, it has good points, it makes it different, not necessarily "better", and perhaps worse, but that's subjective of course, some people really like it, but I know that the majority of players out there especially those who own the original feel that the scale and pace of the game feels small and slowed down even if the focus of Dawn of War II is to make it more action-oriented than its predecessor, which obviously fails flat. The removal of base building must have been a very difficult decision to take for Relic, they certainly knew what it would imply for many of us, namely making the game not feel like a "normal" RTS game, they took the risk and did it, well I like that decision to some extent, but it makes it SO different than the original that I am not sure if I will play that game regularly after I beat the campaign really, all I want to see is the story line, the cut scenes and after that... I'm not sure.
I think I will stick with the original and play my epic 4+ hours-long skirmishes there. And, I should add, that as long as the Chaos isn't included it really won't feel complete to me. I like all races in the Warhammer 40K lore, but the arrival of a playable Tyranid force isn't exactly what I expected for a first release to be honest. I'm almost persuaded that Relic gave the "fans" the Tyranids because we've been crying for them (well, not me though) in general, and now we have them. Well to be honest I would have preferred to have my beloved Fell Powers tempering with the destiny of the rest rather than having those horrid creatures. I like the Tyranids as I said it's "okay" I guess, fine, but really I would have preferred if they included them in the expansion pack (which we all know there will be one, it makes them more cash, that's a given).
I can say without a second thought that I do prefer the original Warhammer 40,000, yes, but Dawn of War II has its good moments, despite the numerous flaws. It is quite a decent game, it's not "bad" per se, really it isn't, but it's certainly not as good as I wanted it to be, but I will buy it, I will play with the single-player, and then we shall see, maybe the final product might differ a little, but chances are what we have in the Beta is the complete features, if they hidden a few things from us then I can't wait to see the extra/modified content from the Beta in the Final, otherwise it's just a "ok" game to get, it's nothing mind-blowing, actually Company of Heroes is quite superior to Dawn of War II in so many ways. And about air units... I for one think it's a good thing not to have them. They sucked in Soulstorm, and that's exactly why they didn't include them in Dawn of War II, it's a simple reason isn't it, they sucked, so why include them?
