Fleet Command

Fleet Command

I really, REALLY want this game. Or what this game should be. I have been trying to find a pseudo-simulator for grand scale battles in naval warfare, and this is it. Sadly, I can’t recommend it for anyone. Too many things don’t work well. It’s hard to get working. It’s no longer supported by the developer. And even once you get it working, little things break in gameplay that make it hard to enjoy. At some point, subs broke completely; now they go on autopilot and refuse to engage or come to the surface (yes, I’m aware of the setting that supposedly fixes this; it doesn’t work for me). Missiles disappear on launch from destroyers or cruisers. Airplanes disappear on launch from carriers. It makes play kinda worthless.

Real player with 147.1 hrs in game


Read More: Best RTS Naval Combat Games.


Alarm chimes inside USS Nimiz CIC, the Admiral puts down his drink in the dimly lit room and looks at the enlistedmen seated at their stations and locks eyes with one, sitting before the radar as he speaks

“Incoming airborne contacts from the north-west, speed matching Backfire Bombers.”

“Lets get those F-14s off picket duties and have them vector an incept course with the Backfires, lets show em these Tomcats have claws and they don’t mess around.”

Another sailor, this one wearing a headset calls

Real player with 140.2 hrs in game

Fleet Command on Steam

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

This is the first review I have ever felt compelled to write. Then again, this is the first game in a long time that has made me this aggravated. The premise of the game is sound and the visual effects are appealing but in the end, the software is simply buggy and incomplete and its apologists paint a false picture of its nature. In my opinion, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation should still be in beta testing.

First, allow me to state that I am a avid fan of Supreme Commander. Like many others, I was enticed by the constant flow of comparisons between Ashes and Supreme Commander and decided to purchase Ashes and judge for myself. Please listen very carefully to me when I say that there is no comparison. In Supreme Commander, one may effortlessly conduct their bloody maelstrom of war in true strategic fashion on vast 81x81km maps. One may wield thousands of units in battle over sprawling plains, clear skies, and open oceans. All players are at the mercy of nuclear missiles, long-range heavy artillery, and titanic, robotic colossi designed to reach across the sheer expanse of the most popular maps and touch some poor, naive soul. All of this grandeur could be witnessed at once from a comprehensive, strategic overview replete with toggles for intelligence radii, weapon radii by type, unit movement queues and patrol routes, and locations at which units are taking damage.

Real player with 153.8 hrs in game


Read More: Best RTS Real Time Tactics Games.


A fun experience with problems.

The Good:

Large scale conflict that runs on my potato with few issues.

Fairly decent campaign with fairly interesting characters and missions.

Hover armies have grown on me.

Decent selection of maps.

Good selection of units between the factions, even if their roles are unclear in the text box.

Army system where units are organised into armies and will micro themselves accordingly (I never use the queue for brining in certain troops to an army however, I prefer to be using my factories at all times making a collection of units and counters.)

Real player with 100.6 hrs in game

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation on Steam

War Wind II: Human Onslaught

War Wind II: Human Onslaught

As a huge fan of War Wind 1, this is honestly quite disappointing. Controls are very confusing, much more so than in the 1st War Wind. Technology trees for each of the races is complicated and hard to get used to. The alien races now speak mostly English which doesn’t feel as authentic. The mechanics of hiring new units is a huge downgrade from the 1st War Wind in the sense that you can only hire from external villages that do not respawn new villagers. These villagers can be accidentally attacked. Overall, hugely disappointing and the only saving grace was the low cost to purchase this game. Perhaps players without prior experience playing the 1st War Wind would find this ok but for those like me who are expecting a game that improves on the 1st one would be terribly disappointed.

Real player with 3.4 hrs in game


Read More: Best RTS Real Time Tactics Games.


War Wind II: Human Onslaught on Steam

First Strike: Classic

First Strike: Classic

I love the game, but it has some issues that bother me. I’d love to see them fixed in an update at some point.

  1. Sometimes I start the game and there is some kind of bug that doesn’t allow me to click on anything and expand or build nukes/cruise missiles. I end up backing out of the game and starting a new one, then it just starts working and lets me click things.

  2. I can have a single warhead headed towards my country, but when I send up a missile to take it out, the missile instead goes after missiles heading to/from allies or enemy countries. This means that sometimes I have to send up three or four warheads just to finally hit ONE warhead that is actually about to hit my country. A lot of times I can’t launch that many in time to stop it from hitting mine. This is frustrating. Surely this could be changed so that missiles only target incoming warheads for OUR country only and not outgoing from some other ally/enemy country that aren’t even headed for my country.

Real player with 170.8 hrs in game

For the past 3 years I have been playing the mobile version waiting for this PC port.

The game has its flaws , but generally I am not disappointed.

-Pros:

+Nice arcade graphic

+Nice set of soundtracks

+Not too hard to master

+Decent replayability

+You get to nuke the world…enough said

-Pros compared to the mobile version:

+It does look much better

+12 unique superweapons , a significant upgrade from the mobile’s 6

+I felt more control of the game

+Savegame

+Diplomacy

-Cons:

+Few bugs here and there

Real player with 19.8 hrs in game

First Strike: Classic on Steam

World War 2 Craft (二战演义)

World War 2 Craft (二战演义)

The levels do not seem to have a reasonable difficulty. The first mission is nearly impossible to complete with the forces given before one of the three bridges explode. However, game has a lot of potential if some UI and balancing fixes are made.

Real player with 0.5 hrs in game

World War 2 Craft (二战演义) on Steam

Imperivm RTC - HD Edition “Great Battles of Rome”

Imperivm RTC - HD Edition “Great Battles of Rome”

This game has been out since 2005. The game concept is really good, you fight to conquer the map in real-time against your opponents in different modes from 1v1 to 4v4. You can also play against the IA, but it is so limited, after 5 hours you have already completed the adventures and scenarios that the game offers. The core of this game is the online mode. You can play with friends, members of the community, and even in tournaments organized by the community (the last one had $1200 in prizes). Sadly after the community gathered $74,000 (63,200 euros) through Kickstarter for the game developer to release the game through Steam and for them to FIX THE MULTIPLAYER, they released the game as it was, without any changes in the multiplayer. They promised to put some dedicated servers for the game, a matchmaking system, and even a small ranking system for the community, but they never did. Today you CAN’T PLAY ONLINE without the game lagging for 10 seconds every 5 minutes. The online experience is horrible and you can barely find players due to that issue.

Real player with 2376.2 hrs in game

Imperivm III is one of my childhood games and, in all seriousness, my favourite game ever.

The amount of hours I’ve spent on the game, playing online with friends and fighting in clan wars with one of the most active and dedicated communities I’ve ever seen, can only barely be summarized by my current playtime stated on steam.

Hence, you may ask, “Why are you negatively reviewing your favourite game?” in order to understand that, one must understand that this game, in the current state, presents a dissonance between the developer’s will and ideas, and the dedicated playerbase’s own ideas.

Real player with 1824.0 hrs in game

Imperivm RTC - HD Edition Great Battles of Rome on Steam

Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons

Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons

I have NOT played this game very much, but here is a quick review of my first session.

First impression is it’s just so so so clunky and slow.

So far it reminds me of playing through those first few missions of any RTS like starcraft or red alert stuff. You’re trying to grab helipad dropship checkpoint things to heal/resupply and little oil pumper things to earn command points to call down more of your stuff. You get your little group of infantry and go blow up things, have some floating female coordinator telling you random updates. But with only two unit types, infantry squads of 4-6 people and individual mechs. Each can have different loadouts or types.

Real player with 9.6 hrs in game

While I’m a fan of both RTS and Mech centric games this title flat out fails to deliver on either front.

  1. The primary complaint you will see anywhere, and that I will confirm myself, is that this game is painfully slow. Even the most mundane of missions will take you much longer than it needs to as your units move at a snails pace through the board. Firefights between anything but the lightest of units are boring to watch as they just sit in one space and chip at each other’s health until one drops.

Real player with 8.4 hrs in game

Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons on Steam

Ratten Reich

Ratten Reich

Ratten Reich is a grim and unforgiving world, where war has continued for many years. The war is fought between rats, mice, roaches and lizards alike. Slum like cities, burnt corpses, steam tanks, soldiers in imperial uniforms and armor. And the soil, the mother of all, full of bomb craters and battle scars. Millions upon millions of fates, dreams — nothing more than ashes from the fires now.

This is the story we are trying to tell in an RTS game with interesting and unusual mechanics.

The Tzar army of roaches, monitor lizards, dozens of mice led countries under the flags of the great Franx and Angul will clash against the might of the Ratten Reich in an alliance with the lizards, who live in the land of the rising sun. This is Ratten Reich.

*** Destruction of the surrounding world**

*** Technique customization**

*** Units**

Ratten Reich on Steam

The Bluecoats: North & South

The Bluecoats: North & South

The game is full of bugs, errors, AI should be improved a lot, keyboard commands are not always comfortable, the map is quite uncomfortable.

But it was my favorite game on the Amiga and that’s okay then

UPDATE

After 24 hours of gameplay the thing I find most annoying during the assault on the forts is the lack of footsteps in the enemies and the spawn behind them

Real player with 37.8 hrs in game

Not bad, actually. I read the controls were not good originally but that an update fixed it, for me they were working with an American keyboard. The new 3D shooter fights are not bad but I miss the original jump’n’run environments.

Real player with 5.0 hrs in game

The Bluecoats: North & South on Steam

Waronoi

Waronoi

Very fun, innovative and challenging strategy game

Real player with 6.5 hrs in game

A very nice wargame that pulls off interesting mechanics quite well.

Real player with 5.3 hrs in game

Waronoi on Steam