TheVaultDweller
Front line cannon fodder
A lot of my issues with those games have to do with how they kind of stomp on established canon (even more so than the first string of games IMO), both from a story and gameplay perspective. In fact, one of my main gripes with the DoW 2 series is that, from a narrative army balance perspective, they make little sense. Especially Chaos Rising. Because it's kind of ridiculous how a tiny crew of Blood Ravens (like portions of 2 or 3 companies IIRC) can literally steamroll through several hundred/thousand Black Legion Chaos Marines when, from a canonical perspective, that should never happen. Plus, the squad sizes were ridiculously small. Even Space Marine combat squads (which are reduced from full squad size) are larger than any of the ones you command at any point. 3 Assault Marines does not a squad make. And Jonah Orion's voice actor made it sound to me as if the Librarian was constantly trying to hold back from shitting in his armor. And not out of fear but out of constipation.
That being said, DoW 2: Retribution probably did give me my favourite character from the whole series, Kaptin Bluddflagg. I find the fact that he committed his entire Waaagh into a fullscale campaign against multiple other factions pretty much purely because he liked the Inquisitor's hat and wanted to have it highly amusing. It's just so Orky lol. And I did like the relatively fast pace of the games, where you often had to rapidly switch between squads and skills/abilities to effectively utilise everyone under your command.