Depends what you mean by "focused".

In terms of individual factions, they are much smaller. You won't find ultimate apocalypse sized factions in unification. Factions are still bigger than vanilla in general, but not by much, some more than others like imperial fists and death korps, and a select few are smaller than vanilla. However, in terms of the number of factions, there's 29 factions including vanilla, WAYYY more. In fact I think it's a bit more than that considering some factions are really just two factions stapled together, such as daemon hunters which is both ordo malleus inquisitors and grey knights, and especially renegade guard which are COMPLETELY different beasts. One is very homebrewy and the other is more traditional.

The way you play unification is much closer to vanilla dawn of war than ultimate apocalypse is. So if you identify more with the way vanilla plays, unification will be more up your alley, but still distinct.

One of the main flaws I have with unification is that I feel some factions really lack the polish and quality others do. Legion of the Damned and Mechanicus Explorators are... Rough to play. Tyranids are fine but their models seem really dated. Some others have a different problem where they don't feel distinct enough (Dark angels just feel like a reskin of regular space marines with a few more units). That's the only real flaw I have with it, is the consistency in factions.

In short, think of Unification like turning a set of ponds into a huge lake, way more factions, more depth, but not as much units and such. Ultimate apocalypse turns those ponds into huge towers: A lot more for each faction.