Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.

With these words on their lips, the Blood Ravens chapter of the Immortal Emperor’s Space Marines crash once again into battle against the enemies of man. And what bloody good fun it is.

Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising is the first full expansion to 2009’s strategy title. As a standalone title, it can be played without the original game, but to access all races and resources in multiplayer you’ll need both games.

I had three main problems with Dawn of War II: it focused mostly on small tactical combat instead of the massive, screen filling carnage that defined the original Dawn of War games; it shipped with four races, which in reality is a good number, but a bit of a letdown after being accustomed to the original’s nine (including expansion packs); and most of all, the story was just weak.

With Chaos Rising, developer Relic has address the latter two of those complaints. The forces of Chaos in all their demonic fury serve bump up the race count to five and serve as the primary antagonists of the single player campaign.

The story is also much more involving, mostly due to the fact that your opponents have names and motivations more interesting than that of locusts. You’ll find yourself connecting with the heroes on a much more personal level than the original (“original” will henceforth refer to DoWII) campaign ever allowed.

The campaign opens not long after the completion of the original’s. The Tyranids have been beaten back and something like peace has settled over the sector. Of course, this is a game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe – a snowflake in hell has a longer life expectancy than peace does here.

The planet Aurelia has been locked in the Warp — an alternate reality of sorts where nasty chaos demons live — for much longer than is healthy. Through the mystical power of plot devicing, it has reappeared, sprinkled liberally with the forces of Chaos who are hell-bent on killing anything that moves.

It’s up to you, of course, to put an end to conundrums of that variety.

If you played Dawn of War II, you know basically what you’re getting here: tight, focused real-time strategy game play that shares more traits with action RPGs than it does with more traditional RTS games. Base building, army management, and large scale battles are all spaced in favor of squad-based battles that require the micromanagement of a small number of troops.

So if you enjoyed the gameplay mechanics of the first game, you’ll get more of the same here; if you hated it, you can go back to your dark cynical little corner and stop bothering the rest of us.

Level design in the single player campaign has been vastly improved. That’s not necessarily saying much since 90 percent of the first game’s missions could be accurately compared to the state of North Dakota in that they both have roughly the same number of interesting things to see and do.

Chaos Rising makes use of set pieces and varied objectives to rise above that level of repetitiveness. Most missions are challenging, interesting, and fun to play through.

Things are lovely on the multiplayer side of things as well. The Last Stand game mode still shares many attributes with undiluted heroin, and is even tastier with the addition of two new heroes – the Chaos Sorcerer and Tyranid Hive Tyrant. Standard multiplayer has been fleshed out with new maps, units, and of course Chaos as a new playable race.

On the content side of the coin, it must be understood that Warhammer 40,000 is very dark fantasy. The game’s backstory is unbelievably dark, and its tagline “in the grim darkness of the future, there is only war” is no exaggeration. Sentient races, mankind included, are violent, paranoid, and deeply flawed. There are very few paragons in this universe — antiheroes are the name of the game.

That’s not to say that evil is celebrated — the story of the game is one of redemption and sacrifice for the greater good — but much of the context is quite dark indeed.

For my part, I find it a fascinating gameworld. It’s a setting so far removed from reality that there’s little temptation to carry any of the subtly twisted philosophies over into the real world, and it’s difficult not to get a chill of dark excitement when the psychic Librarian mutters that “an open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.”

Issues of sexuality and language are noticeably absent, which is refreshing. In their place is the Dawn of War series’ signature over-the-top violence. Blood flows freely in this game, often as the result of brutal finishing moves your characters carry out. The brutality is mitigated somewhat by the birds-eye, third-person nature of the game, but it’s still a visceral experience.

This is not a piece of entertainment that should be confused with anything family friendly. It’s dark, violent, and the spirituality and philosophy some of the factions espouse is quite twisted.

That said, it is extremely well put-together and entertaining if you are able to process the content. Picking up a Dawn of War game shouldn’t be a flippant decision – but if you’ve got a mature head on your shoulders, fire it up and get down to the business of defending the honor of the Immortal Emperor.

Jerod Jarvis is an independent gaming journalist and founder of Duality Games. He maintains gaming columns for The Washington Times Communities and for The Outpost. When not blogging madly about games, he freelances for the Spokesman-Review in his hometown of Spokane, Washington and attends school at Whitworth University. Check out his presence on Facebook and Twitter to stay up on Duality Games updates and the inside scoop on the gaming news you care about.