Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Retribution

Ten years after the happenings in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising, the sector Aurelia is still the scene of heavy fights between Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, Orks and Tyranids. But now the Imperial Guard (the new faction) is fed up with this and has a permanent solution in mind: exterminating all life in the whole Sector... This is the initial situation for the 16 missions long campaign which can be tackled with any of this six factions. The missions itself stay the same in principle but the choice of faction changes how they proceed, e.g. a boss enemy for one faction may be a playable hero for another faction. The plot is told in dialogues and cutscenes in game graphics (plus a few render sequences).

Depending on the faction the player has up to four heroes to his disposal. Those have powerful special abilities which help to kill the enemies. Those give experience points and leave items behind: the latter can be given to the heroes between missions to improve their abilities and the experience leads to level ups. In contrast to the predecessors the player no longer gives points to the hero's stats after a level up but chooses one of 15 special abilities. Alternatively the points can be spent to upgrade regular units or unlock a new powerful unit. This can be important because the game features the new possibility to to play it more like a traditional tactics game: after a certain point in the campaign the player may choose to take more regular units instead of heroes into a mission.

Dawn of War II: Retribution also introduces an element known from regular real-time strategy games: producing units and researching updates. To do so the player needs to conquer certain buildings and have enough of the two resources. These are earned by searching boxes in the game world.