The critical points in the narratives of the early reviews don't seem to match the higher scores. Based on the review narratives this effort seems like a significant departure from what fans of the previous games loved. It sounds like a MP focused game with some MOBA elements, minus many of the hallmark features that made the first 2 so good.
I'm waiting on Karak to do the ACG review (hopefully he does one).
Unfortunately it seems reviews these days might seem to have a stance of "It's not actually
bad so i can't give it a low score" even if it's a terrible entry in a franchise. A similar thing happened with MGSV, where it got high review score despite the story being almost non-existent. Unless it's objectively bad, broken or just has so little effort put into making it, i don't think most games get below a 7 now from what I've seen. There's always a disconnect between the score and what they say.
From the start i was concerned about this game because of the art style they chose and
especially the super thin Space Marines in the trailer. The look and feel of things is very important with W40K, bright, colourful, clean graphics don't quite fit in with that and they tried to justify it with "It's like the miniatures!" which ignores the reason they look like they - they're supposed to represent something in-universe, that's not how they'd actually look. The Art Style isn't as bad as i initially thought but it still isn't overly good.
I wanted DoW3 for years but this just isn't what it should have been.
I hated Dawn of War 2's gameplay. I haven't played DoW 1 since it came out but to me this feels like everything I liked about that only with updated graphics and more "epicness", not less.
As a casual who just wants a simple RTS to play and cool WH40k shit happening, it ticks all the boxes for me.
I don't think it compares to DoW1 at all. It's a smaller scale, there are far fewer units, upgrades and buildings, map control has turned into MoBA lanes, cover doesn't make any sense in-universe and feels placed arbitrarily, no Relics and therefore no choice what to go for and defend, no morale system, sync kills are gone, no point building other bases, melee combat lacks any proper feeling etc. DoW3 IS a bit bigger scale than DoW2 and base building is back, but neither of those seem to be done in a way that makes them reach the same level as DoW1. Looking at the DoW1 steam store screenshots, that sort of thing and the feeling they give really isn't possible in this game.