Dawn of War II makes one of the strongest cases against component scoring in a review that I have ever seen. You know those reviews – the ones that take graphics and gameplay and multiplayer and then either turn it into a composite score or throw out those numbers for a holistic measure. Those sorts of reviews use the illusion of precise categorical information to cloud whatever final judgment is rendered.

If I were take my checklist of “Things That Make A Good Strategy Game” and use it to evaluate DOW II, I would be forced to conclude that the game wasn’t all that good. But it is good. Very good.

Here’s the checklist. The campaign is fairly bland and only lets you play one side of the war, meaning you learn a lot about human space marines but not much about Orks or Tyranids or Eldar. This means that you will spend most of the multiplayer mode learning about the options available to you – there is no tutorial for each of the quite distinct races. If you want to practice in a single player skirmish, you need to go into multiplayer and set up AI bots; why isn’t there a simple menu selection for this? The AI is terrible, either unaware that it has special powers that can screw me up or completely unwilling to use them. The economy isn’t really about territorial control, like most good RTS games. It’s about localized control. This game has no epic scope in spite of its space epic pretensions.

Dawn of War II could be dismissed as Company of Heroes in space – it has the same emphasis on a resources scattered across the maps and using simple unit/power counters to whatever the enemy throws at you. There are limited maps and you will find that using cover is your best bet in pretty much every situation.

In many ways, DoW2 is a role playing game, especially in the campaign. You have missions to finish and a little bit of latitude in how you complete them. Your small army (never more than four squads until the final mission) will level up and get new loot. You can mix and match their powers and skills based on whatever you think is on the next map. And every now and then you will face a boss monster that will find ways to wipe out your forces. Like many modern RPGs, there isn’t much chance for failure since your Commander unit has a magic Mass Heal button and there are reinforcement points dropped along your path.

Some of the campaign maps are actually quite interesting. Choosing one route might secure a foundry or more supplies but also run you through a nest of evil. Your scout proves to be the most useful, if fragile, member of your squad. Even though none of the missions are particularly difficult, failure is tolerated; you can lose a battle and still win the war.

The game works because the core design is so pared down. Red Alert 3 forces you to build dozens of fragile units and then manage their special abilities. DoW2 does everything it can to keep your armies small so you can focus on using their skills properly. In a skirmish game, you sometimes have to choose between upgrading your hero and making a new squad – the hero is almost always the best choice. Though it would be much nicer to have some tips on what unit is for what purpose – the four sides are very different from each other – the weak AI at least gives you some time to explore the possibilities before you venture into the wilds of the multiplayer world.

The principle of scarcity continues down to the map design. Like Company of Heroes, you will want to grab some strong points or walls so you can use them to mow down a Pickett’s Charge of Tyranids. But many of the maps have very few truly safe spots and buildings come down relatively easy once a grenade or satchel bomb is tossed in. There is a race to not just secure cover, but to maximize its use. Many CoH maps were littered with places to hide; DoW2 forces you out in the open much more often than you would like.

In one of the big silences in the first Three Moves Ahead, 40K nerd Julian Murdoch was talking about how the game also emphasized a connection to the units and their place in the Warhammer universe. Unlike the first Dawn of War game, with its base-building and traditional mass army approach, Julian thought DoW2 (especially the campaign) worked better as an introduction to the mythology and setting. Maybe I can get him to explain it again next time. Familiar licenses do matter. People rip off Dungeons and Dragons for a reason.

Ultimately, Dawn of War II works as a system, as a package whose parts could lead to a disaster in less skilled hands. Sort of like a Picasso painting; when I paint a crooked nose with eyes in the wrong place, it just looks stupid. It has the sort of immersion that comes not necessarily from being absorbed in the world it creates but from an evolving awareness of what needs to be done in a specific situation. Suppressing enemy attackers and then approaching with a stun grenade. Deciding whether an Eldar melee rush will delay the Tyranid swarm long enough for you to get that first giant thingmajig out. And since there are fewer decisions to make, every one carries some weight.

I’m not convinced that the design is all that original or a new-way-forward for the RTS. The way that it uses limited units with minimal base building is reminiscent of a series of World War II games that came out of Eastern Europe four or five years ago. DoW2’s big addition, frankly, is the experience system and we’ve seen bits of that before too, especially for hero units. Maybe one of the reasons that all the parts seem a little peculiar is that they are largely echoes of other design ideas or other game settings. (Is it just be or are the Tyranids just another Zerg race?)

These parts are assembled to give life to a compelling setting. This may not be the future of the RTS, but it is a design that will certainly be copied and butchered by lesser developers. Relic could still break it – they’ve done that before with patches. And then they might fix it again – they’ve done that before with expansions. But Dawn of War II is so different from the first game in the series that it really needs to be played by any serious RTS fan if only to see how a game is not just a system of moving parts, how you can be simultaneously annoyed and enthralled.