I've played Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 4, and it feels like the sequel to the original that RTS fans always wanted

The last time I wrote a full review of a Dawn of War game I started throwing around terms like “a truth”. Admittedly I was trying to be ironic – it was about how fun it is to smash big mechs into each other! – but also admittedly, there is something about this series that just makes me get a bit over-excited. The original Dawn of War, which took your little villagers in from the cold and turned resource generation into a game of take-and-hold, is a legendary part of the grand RTS tapestry – and it’s also a personal, formative game of mine.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 4Developer: KING Art GamesPublisher: Deep Silver / PlaionPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 2026 on PC (Steam)

That makes it all the more baffling that, somehow, a good 20 years on, we’ve never actually had a classic, straight-ahead sequel to it. DoW 2 took things in a tighter, more tactical direction, which was perfectly good in its own right but offered little in the way of satisfaction for RTS-heads. DoW 3 was famously controversial, as Relic took a big, ambitious swing at mixing real-time strategy with a bit of light MOBA gubbins and got duly punished for it (I stand by my belief that it was good of them to try something new there; I also very much would’ve liked a good old RTS to go with all the stellar work that studio did with those massive Titan animations and visual effects.)

Which brings us to DoW 4, announced at gamescom’s Opening Night Live, which somehow feels both incredibly surprising and inevitable at once. Surprising in that, after the third, it felt like this series would be on ice for a while – especially as Relic, who you might’ve expected to still get a stab at the fourth, naturally had to fall back and regroup a little after buying its independence from Sega. And inevitable in that this is the way not just games but all of pop culture seems to go these days, eventually. You get the original, a classic, that aims straight and true at a clear idea and nails it first try. Then you get all kinds of sequels, reboots, gritty remakes and the rest, as the trends of the day inevitably prove too hard to resist. And then, when everyone’s suitably pissed off: the triumphant return, touting a revival of all things that made the original great (with mixed success).

Anyway, Dawn of War 4 does that and, let me tell you, this feels anything but rote. I’ve played one mission of it, but reader I’ve played that one mission about half a dozen times already because it’s brilliant. Picture the sequel to the original Dawn of War that you’d make if you could. Is it a classic, base-building, large-army-managing RTS? Yes. Is it grim and dark and full of wonderfully excessive gore? Yes. Does it still have those extra-large special units? Does it have customisable skirmishes, co-op, old school online multiplayer, and an army painter? Some very flashy visual effects? Some big ol’ guns that sound like thunder? Does it have Gorgutz? Crucially: yes.

As Dawn of War 4’s developers explained to me in our interview, naturally that’s been much more complex to put into action than it reads here on paper. But from that single mission I’ve played, the early impression for me is that their work is shaping up to be a resounding success. Dawn of War 4 feels like true Dawn of War, as hard as that may be to define.