The perhaps biggest surprise at gamescom 2025, at least for all fans of Warhammer 40,000, was Dawn of War 4. Out of nowhere, a German studio announces the successor to the legendary strategy game series. MeinMMO editor and Warhammer fan Benedict Grothaus played Dawn of War 4.
Dawn of War is the highest-rated Warhammer game on Steam and since its release in 2004, one of the best, for me personally even the best strategy game of all time. The balance of base building, battles, and especially the animations and the voiceover kept me occupied for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours in my youth.
Even today, I regularly play Dawn of War and since the remaster even more often. When the Definitive Edition was announced, I thought the year couldn’t get any better.
Then Dawn of War 4 came along. No matter who I asked: every Warhammer fan was surprised and totally thrilled.
At gamescom 2025, I now had the opportunity to see Dawn of War 4 live. The devs let us play a demo mission, which I took about 25–30 minutes to complete. That alone was enough to excite me.
One Mission, 30 Minutes – This is how Dawn of War 4 plays
Dawn of War 4 actually comes with four factions at release: Space Marines (specifically: Blood Ravens), Necrons, Orks, and the Adeptus Mechanicus as a completely new faction in the franchise. In the mission, I played the Space Marines.
The task is to assist a small garrison of the Astra Militarum that is being attacked by Orks. To do this, I need to destroy a base with some side and secondary objectives such as:
- Stopping the production of large Ork units
- Destroying a secondary base
- Taking down Necrons that suddenly appear
As already seen in the trailer, there is base building, which in my demo version had to make do with placeholders, i.e., building models without textures. The units are already there and diverse: Terminators, Interceptors, Scouts, Heroes, Tanks …
Already by the middle of the round, I had a small squad of Tier-2 Marines that destroyed everything. Problems only arose in the quite well-fortified main base. There, I had to bring in heavier weapons, Terminators, and my ally, who came in with a Knight Castellan – wherever he got that from.
Dawn of War 4 gives me exactly what I have been waiting for 8 years
What now sounds like every other RTS made my eyes sparkle from start to finish. The building system is exactly how I wanted it, and at least Space Marines build without a building unit – which makes sense. They drop everything from orbit.
However, I saw many elements from earlier parts that I have bitterly missed in other strategy games, such as:
- Requisition and energy as the two resources obtained through specific spots on the map.
- Unit upgrades that allow me to give my units abilities or specialize them in certain things like anti-tank.
- Mobile reinforcements, which means I can easily refill damaged units on the field.
Global abilities like an orbital strike or a Thunderbird bombardment, which – as a dev revealed to me – can vary depending on the chosen commander. He probably shouldn’t have told me that, based on how he reacted afterwards…
Of all the journalists present in my group, I was the only one who completed the mission within the given time. I’m not saying this just to flex – but also for that reason – but also because I now know: the campaign will probably take around 30–35 hours.
Because we already know that all four factions will have a single campaign with over 12 missions. In total, there are to be 70 or more missions. If they all take around 25–30 minutes, we are looking at roughly between 30 and 40 hours of playtime.
One thing is missing for the perfect new Dawn of War
The only thing that I absolutely missed were relic units – the superweapons from the first part. Every faction had the opportunity at that time to call in a unique unit with a captured relic: a Living Saint for the Adepta Sororitas, a Land Raider for the Space Marines, or the Squiggoth for the Orks.
Currently, exactly those are not available in Dawn of War 4. Maybe I just haven’t seen them, but the dev unfortunately couldn’t give me an answer to my question. Maybe it works like in Dawn of War 3, where certain commanders had the option to call in corresponding units, as was the case with the Imperial Knight for the Space Marines in part 3.
I haven’t been able to check the other three factions either, so I lack information on whether and which other mechanics they have. Necrons, for example, were special in part 1 because they could be resurrected on the battlefield and only needed energy. The Dark Eldar simply summoned their buildings back then and built automatically.
Although I don’t know everything about Dawn of War 4 yet, the game has already impressed me greatly and is the highlight of gamescom 2025 for me. Dawn of War 4 is set to be released in 2026 for PC. A specific date is still pending, but you can be sure that I will annoy you sufficiently with it. However, I am sure that the new Dawn of War will impress even those who didn’t play much back then – just like the DE: The remaster of Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War put me back into my childhood after 21 years, even though I had never played it
