14 DAY TRIAL // I played my first campaign in Dawn of War II: Retribution using the Normal difficulty and I still regret that decision, especially given the fact that I first chose to complete the game using the Space Marines, and it might be a while before I forget about the missions so that I can try them out again.
Unfortunately, the Retribution campaign is very poorly balanced for Normal difficulty.
I played all the way through the Space Marines missions without once resorting to extra troops build using the resources gathered and only once I used an Honor Guard unit to see how they act in battle.
I also rarely took the time to find cover and protect my weakest heroes, choosing mainly to deploy health boosts when one of them was getting dangerously close to being incapacitated.
Practically, the only areas that posed real problems were the sections where large groups of enemies were garrisoned in buildings and that only because I failed to specialize my four heroes in taking them out.
Since then I started an Ork campaign on Hard and a Chaos one on Very Hard, yet I am still somewhat disappointed with how Dawn of War II: Retribution handles difficulty.
Unfortunately, even on higher difficulties, the game while harder to complete fails to provide significantly more of an actual challenge.
Because the missions are always the same, every one of them is tightly scripted by Relic and creating a winning strategy is a bit like creating a complete image out of puzzle pieces.
I die pretty easily on Very Hard while playing Chaos, because my units are so fragile when compared to the enemies I face, but once I develop a winning combination of heroes, troops, abilities and gear, it's pretty much game over for the computer, no matter how artificially powerful its troops are.
I still enjoy finding the key to an enemy set up and taking it apart, but I don't feel any more satisfaction in doing it on Very Hard over Hard or even Normal because the nature of the challenge does not scale in any interesting way.