Customer Reviews

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (Prima Official Game Guide)

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This book is absolutely useless. The only worthwhile hint in the entire book is to program specific hotkeys to certain squads to access them quickly. This is a good hint, too bad the book doesn't tell you HOW to program said hotkeys.

(Hot keys are also not explained in the Dawn of War manual, either.)

I finally learned the Zen art of hot-key programming from my brother, an ubergamer who figured it out because DoW is similar to another game he played, and I will now go the extra mile and share the secret knowledge Prima does not. (Save your money, the book is worthless!)

With the squad, or building, or whatever you want to access the hot-key with currently selected, hold the CTRL button down and then press a number. That number key will then be the hot-key for that squad or building. For example, you select the Marine Chapel Barracks, and hold down CTRL, then the "1" key. From now on, if you press "1" once, you'll get the menu for the Barracks, pressing it twice will center your map on the building itself. Voila, more strategy advice than the entire Prima guide.

This is not a bad guide. I wish it had a bit more detail in terms of multi-player and skirmish strategies. A lot of this guide focuses in the campaign. Normally, that would be OK, but since the campaign in this game is so short and basically a no-brainer, I would have appreciated more skirmish and multi-player info.

None of that is the author's fault however. It just results in a strategy guide that is OK, but not crucial. Buy it if you really like to play the game and plan to play it a lot. Otherwise, you can probably do without this guide.

First off I should say this book is all black and white. I hadn't bought a guide in a long time and bought the Prima Doom 3 book. I liked the color in that book and thought it would be great for DoW but it has none.

Anyway, the content of the book is typical. First it covers the four races in detail, then gives walkthroughs for the campaign missions and finally multiplayer tips.

I did not find the walkthroughs necessary at all but I suppose if you get stuck they might be helpful.

The portion that covers the four races is useful with tips and a nice overview of all the weapons, buildings, and options. One note though that some of the weapon icons are not quite correct (heavy bolter for a storm bolter, etc) but this isn't a real problem. This section has s few tidbits I didn't pick up in the game's manual.

Overall a solid book but nothing exceptional or particularly necessary.

Okay, if you play computer games, you have more than likely have used a Prima Guide before. The reason why I bought this one was because the original instuctions on Dawn of War did not go too much into detail about the units and not much explanation of the tech tree which in my opinion, is a little trickier than the average RTS.

The basics of this guide are a walkthough portion for the single player campaign which I only half-assed used for the reason that I don't like to spoil it too much. After finishing, I would review the guide and maybe see something I didn't see before.

There is alot more detail about the units and buildings so you can figure what will be useful for your style of play and what won't.

The best thing about the guide is the maps for when you decide to do single or multiplayer skirmishes. It tells you what style of play they are good for and also they are the only source to find out about the details like how many strategic points, critical locations and relics there are. You can't even find that on the game until you are in the mists of playing it.

Over all, a good basic guide. But like I said, if you have bought a Prima Official Game Guide before, you should know what to expect.

If you like the 3rd person looking down view on your war games... (and I do) this game will provide you alot of entertainment.


over all it is just another revamp of the starcraft / war craft era... If you liked them yuou will like this