Decent but not what I expected.
First and foremost, this game is -slow-. I don't mean slow to run, slow to play. The first thing you'll notice is that if you try to move a group of units a long distance, they tend to go one at a time, and its not uncommon for the first one to arrive at the destination at the far side of the map while several have barely left the starting point, so if you run into any resistance on the way (or send them to attack) your force will get wiped out as the filter in one at a time. It can easily take 10 to 20 minutes to move a force cohesively to attack. Oddly, a computer opponent does not seem to suffer this problem. The massive size of the maps is neat, but really drags down the pace of the game, especially since none of the units are very fast to begin with. Transports can only move about 4 small units at a time, and 1 “Medium” unit and 0 big units, so if you plan to move a large force with them your either going to need a lot to move them all or a lot of patience. Maps also tend to be pretty flat, and can mostly be summed up as either green blue or light brown, and sometimes white if its snowing.
Units and buildings are slow to build as well. Some stronger units start out at 10 minutes to build, experimental units usually start out at at least half an hour for engineers, and I’ve seen buildings up to 6 hours…. 374 minutes to be precise. There are ways to speed up the process but that in itself takes a lot of time and gains are marginal. You’ll end up in a vicious cycle between trying to vamp up resource income to afford to build the units you need and afford the additional resource hit in speeding up the process. I’m not saying its bad to make powerful units slow to build but waiting 30 minutes for a single unit gets old fast. You can only build Tech1 unit production buildings, so every time you want to build a new high tech building; you have to build a Tech1 and go through the additional 10 minutes process of upgrading it. If you want the hundreds of units that are promised, expect to spend many many hours trying to get them.
The units themselves suffer a balancing problem. The early units can be built in just a few seconds, but they are beyond worthless, as any turret or higher tech level unit will utterly annihilate a sizable force. I quickly discovered in the first level as a Cybran the power of turrets. 4 Tech 1 turrets easily wiped out 40 of my Tech1 units before they could even inflict any real damage, and a single anti air cannon was enough to take out a dozen aerial units. The tech 2 turrets are about as effective on Tech2 units, but there’s finally a break when you get access to Tech 3 since there is no tech 3 ground turret. On the other hand, it takes several minutes to build a Tech 3 unit, so it will take a long time to make an army out of them. By endgame you will have artillery buildings with massive range that a while to build but can easily wipe out your opponents base and units from a safe distance, not to mention the experimental units.
The straight down camera angle of the game makes it hard to tell the depth of the battlefield, and I was running the game on max settings (so high shadows). But whether you have the high ground or the low you’ll notice your units firing into the ground a lot. When you zoom in all the way the camera gets some tilt but by then you can barely see more than a single unit. I’m inclined to believe the firing is a little buggy, because the Cybran Monkeylord would often charge his cannon only to do nothing.
The sound in the game is horribly done. While it sounds nice when you can hear it, if you’re zoomed out in the slightest, as you’ll spend the vast majority of the game, the sound effects go dead. It’s realistic in theory but makes for a silent battle. There is also no voice-overs for the speech in game, and sometimes the messages flash by to quickly to read. Expect to hear nothing but the music most of the time.
Last but not least, the strategy of the game. Despite what is promised by reviews about the size of the maps, it lends little to strategy, and wholly to frustration due to travel times. I beat the first three of six levels of the campaign with nothing but turrets, the fourth and fifth levels with nothing but destroyers (landwalking ships that have huge range and can attack land sea and air all at the same time), and the last level with nothing but turrets, 2 experimental units, and a couple artillery buildings. That’s right…the whole campaign required 3 units and 3 buildings to beat on normal. I played a skirmish match against supreme AI with similar results, I simply shelled up with turrets and used artillery to win, with a few experimental units to speed the process. A Tech 2 turret can be built in as little as 6 seconds by a sub commander, and is much more powerful and quicker to build than a Tech 2 unit, and since there is unlimited resources and no restriction on where you can build, you can see why I favor turrets so heavily. The long range of artillery makes them an easy way to wipe out a base, and a couple of experimental units held in check can wipe out any surprises. The unlimited resources make it pointless to attack unless you can win, because they can easily rebuild a base while you try to rebuild an army.
When I bought this game I expected to have battles of hundreds of units with low resource management, but just the opposite is true. The easy units to build aren’t worth building, so you’ll always end up simply building the power units that take a long time. Multiplayer might be a little better, but I suspect it will be much the same, a race to build the most artillery and experimental units. The land sea and air system has been done before (although perhaps air is a little more elaborate here). The units, buildings, and explosions are all nice to look at but that’s about all the game has going for it.