By the time Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm hits the bargain bin and can be had for 20 bucks, it should be worth the investment -- chances are the game will have received a patch or two by then and the active mod community will have cranked out user-made content to beef up the artificial intelligence. However, as it stands, the final add-on to one of the best real-time strategy franchises of the decade is underdeveloped and overpriced.

The two new factions are the Sisters of Battle and the Dark Eldar. In the Warhammer 40K universe, the Sisters are fanatical devotees to the god-emperor -- sort of like the Space Marines, only female and not genetically altered. They?re basically used by the Imperium as Spanish Inquisitors, rooting out heretics, rogue psykers, and other malcontents, only these lovely ladies use collected "faith" as a weapon to kill bad guys by throwing flame on them -- lots and lots of flame.



The Dark Eldar are a lot like the regular Eldar expect they look evil, say evil things, and collect souls from the battlefield, which help to fuel their special powers. Lightly armored and very fast, the Dark Eldar are for the people who think the normal Eldar are just too enigmatic; there is no doubt about where the Dark Eldar stand. They?re basically Dark Elves in space.

The new factions are fun for the most part; they both look and sound great, especially the Sisters of Battle who sound completely fanatical when they scream, ?Behold! The Immolator!? when a new flame tank hits the field. However, despite the ?faith? and ?soul? mechanics, which basically work like magic spells, they come off as being a whole lot like other factions in the game. On the tabletop, their differences are readily apparent, but in Dawn of War it?s a bit too subtle. It?s a shame that a major 40K race, the absolutely alien Tyranids, continue to get the cold shoulder, because they would be a very unique addition that would change the way the game plays. The Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar are pretty much more of the same with a few twists here and there.

The other new addition to the core game is that every race now has a flyer unit -- well, all but the Necrons, who instead get an upgrade to the Necron Lord dubbed Essence of the Deceiver. This is basically another god form that the Lord unit may take.

The term ?flying? is a bit of a misnomer, because these units are more like hovercrafts; they can fly over water, which is nice; just don?t ask them to take to the air to fly over a wall. There is also a nasty little bug that causes the air units controlled by the CPU to ignore ground units located directly below them. The best way to hide from the Sisters? Lightning Fighter is to simply stand right under it. The flyers also drive home the fact that the camera is set too close to the action; you can?t zoom out far enough, and the air units get lost in the shuffle because the camera focuses on the ground units.

The AI in general is a major sticking point. In short, it?s terrible. Playing a skirmish game on one of the dozens of maps is a waste of time, because the AI refuses to build units past Tier 2 (and sometimes even Tier 1). You may spend time earning resources and upgrading buildings to construct the Living Saint -- basically a devastating angel that the Sisters can throw into battle -- but the CPU just fields a gaggle of grunts. While it?s admittedly cool to see these ultra-powerful units hurl basic infantry across the battlefield, it does get old pretty quick. The AI is especially weak on large, eight-player maps. Some of the CPU players sit idly by, doing a whole lot of nothing, while others get to work building bases and units. There are even times when the CPU units don?t even fight back, but instead sit there with a drool cup hanging from their mouths while your hand-to-hand units cut them to shreds. It?s painful to watch and terribly boring to play.

The big problem is that online play isn?t much better. Connecting to the servers (via GameSpy) is a nightmare, sometimes taking up to an hour to get into a game. Players will randomly get booted from a session or simply can?t join all together. Multiplayer is still a blast, when it works, as Dawn of War?s gameplay is absolutely perfect for this style of play, but as of right now the online portion is spotty at best.

The game?s offline campaign is almost exactly like the Risk-style campaign used in the earlier expansion, Dark Crusade. This time you have to conquer multiple moons instead of one large planet, but this doesn?t do much, other than make it more difficult to move your armies around, and make the smaller maps look cluttered and hard to decipher. The campaign screams for a more focused, concise design. Even a linear, story-driven campaign or a branching campaign -- something like the original Panzer General, would work better than this. The only interesting missions in the campaign are when you attack a race?s stronghold. The other battles are basically skirmishes, where a quick rush usually wins the day. Also, for a 40K fan of 20 years, it?s hard to get past the idea of the Space Marines, Sisters of Battle and the Imperial Guard fighting one another in this ?battle royale? campaign design, and the reason presented in the backstory doesn?t make a whole lot of sense with regard to why these factions would start slaughtering each other when Chaos, Necrons, Dark Eldar and Orks are on the loose.

Dawn of War was, and still is, a fantastic real-time strategy game, but Soulstorm isn?t a very good expansion. There?s an overall lack of polish, including graphical bugs that show multi-melta cannon blasts shooting in the wrong direction, and several basic spelling errors in the campaign?s limited cut scenes. It comes off as a rushed, incomplete product and is about $20 overpriced. Rumors are rampant that Relic is working on a true Dawn of War sequel -- and let?s hope so, because the original has been squeezed for all it?s worth.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game purchased by Crispy Gamer.