Features, units, buildings, maps. Facts. Read this for more than just an opinion on the game.
Supreme Commander feature three different races which can all be played, their structures and units are mostly similar, with a few differences. Each race has it's own specialties which makes them unique even though a lot is the same.
You can choose between the Humans from Earth, the Cyborg - half human half machine made by man (yes, that old cliché) and the Alien wannabies. All the races have different goals and objectives, all of which can be broken down to Kill everything which doesn't agree with us. There is no "nice race" they all have their own agendas and seek to whipe out the two other races completely in order to "restore peace to the galaxy".
The game will have you fighting on several different worlds, with terrains like snow, desert, and plains/forest, here is a lot of maps to choose from, except for the obvious lack of the giant maps, which only has two different options.
The units you can choose from in this game is the standard land units such as different tanks, light soldiers, Anti Air vehicles and so on. For the earial units you have bombers, fighters, scouts and more, all pretty standard. The naval units are no special either.
The buildings in the game have some pretty nice graphics, they are easy to use and can be upgraded as you progress through the tech levels.
The engineer is a major aspect of this game. This unit can be used to many things, such has constructing buildings, repairing other units and building, gather resources and support other buildings by lending "a helping hand" if it's needed. They can move through both land and water and come in three different tech levels.
A thing in this RTS which I have not seen in any other is the option to add several actions for a unit to do, you can for example set your engineer to build several buildings, then repair a unit, then gather some resources and when it's done with that it can go support the local Land factory with tank production. This makes it very easy to have several projects going on at once, you can set one group of engineers to build a wall, another to build defences, a third to collect resources, a forth to build structures all while you coordinate an attack on the enemy and use your scout to look around the map. This system is probably what makes this game stand out the most, as you can get so much done at once that you can even do whatever needs to be done in your base while you still do your best to wipe out the enemy.
The resources or "gold" used in this game is mass and energy. Energy can be provided by making power plants. Each tech level has different plants you can use. Mass is primarily gained from Mass Extractors which is a building you place on a spot rich with mass, it will produce unlimited mass and will only stop if you order it to, or if it's destroyed.
Other ways of providing mass is by having an engineer turning trees and destroyed units and buildings into it. You can also build structures which turn energy into mass, that is very expensive though.
The unlimited flow of resources makes it possible to build an extreme amount of buildings in this game, and you can virtually go on forever if you wanted to. The commander also produce a small amount of mass and energy, so as long as he survives you will be able to rebuild your base.
As for the commander, this is one of the big differences this game has from other RTS. The commander is a huge robot which can fight with severe precision and is able to defeat most enemies, it can also build buildings and functions like a king, if the commander dies, the mission is usually over. And if a commander dies you are going to want to stay away. It's not a good tactic to use your own commander to take out an enemy commander, even if the enemy has low health or your commander is superior. The reasons for this is simple, if a commander dies he/she turns into a nuclear bomb and destroys almost anything within reach, the explosion is so huge it usually take out the entire base the commander was defending, along with any units you sent out to destroy it. Any attempt to take out a commander is a suicide attempt even if you succeed.
The commander can also be upgraded, you can choose between a set of different arms and torsos which provide anything from higher firepower, shields, cloaking deviced to faster production, teleportation and higher tech levels. Each race has different upgrades available, but I still think the options you have with this is very limited and it could've been done a lot better with more customization options to hands, head, legs and so on.
As for the gameplay, controlling the game, moving the camera and issuing order it all feels well designed and good thought out, there is a few minor things which could have been done better, but this is still by far the best made RTS I have played, everything feels solid and it's easy to do complicated things.
The graphics in the game is pretty good, for a RTS it's excellent. The camera can be tilted down so you can see the game in full 3D, which is pretty useless, but still a nice feature. Units and buildings are well made and the explosions, and other weaponry provide a very satisfying experience.
When it comes to performance, you are going to need a pretty good computer if you want to run the game in full detail, I've had no problem running it on my computer, but older machines might experience some problems and I recommend you only buy this game if you meet the recommended system requirements set.
If you are a big RTS fan or someone who is new to the genre and want to try it out, this is a very good choice of game, it is very well designed and is good for both beginners and experts.