@boss
Very hard to not read posts sitting there in the thread as the thread refreshes. Doesn't this forum have spoiler tags?
@Shroom
Ah right, I see what you mean. I mean, I disagree (even though I still prefer DoW II's SP format), but I get where you're coming from.
The issue here is that the quality of a game, or indeed a Single Player mode, isn't defined by the number of features or when they were invented. The new Tomb Raider series has sold very well considering the core gameplay loop (solve puzzles -> shoot things) hasn't changed since TR1 back in the 90s.
A lot of people liked Dark Crusade / Soulstorm - I didn't, personally. A good attempt, but it got stale very, very fast (unless people liked the infinite defense missions you had to play because autoplay cost you entire provinces). The HQ missions were the best part of it, and they necessitated some form of wargear upgrades and Honour Guard to even think about doing (on the higher difficulties at least).
Still, even accounting for all that, I don't get why DoW III is "heresy" when it's a good linear RTS campaign. Nothing heretical about that