One of the worst RTS games I think I've ever had the displeasure of playing. The balance is bad and the AI is just downright stupid. Your soldiers will just walk into bugs half the time with attack move if you don't babysit them.

Thoroughly enjoyed the main campaign, sadly lacking replay value. Glad the devs have committed to adding a mode specifically designed for replay.

Starcraft helldivers :), though i'd recommend waiting for a sale

The game itself has potential but where it falls down is how outdated the game design feels and the AI control over your units. It harkens back to an era of micromanagement of unit abilities which we really should have moved beyond. I don't find it personally enjoyable to have to babysit my infantry units telling them when to use their grenades or other such basic combat abilities. Realistically that sort of micromanagement should be toggleable or in cases where it's not limited by resource but is time delayed by cooldowns should be automatic.

I've also come across serious AI issues in which sometimes I would tell three rifle units to attack move and on seeing the enemy well within range they will continue to move rather than stop and fight. In those cases I mention their firing lanes were not blocked. On other occasions where their firing lanes were blocked they did indeed stop and contributed nothing to the fight. This has led to me losing pushes when I was counting on that to function properly in taking an area I knew they only had warriors while I focused on retaking a bigger fight. The end result being the fight which should have been a clear victory instead resulted in my troops being annihilated because I could not micro manage two fights simultaneously.

If these two key things are improved - AI and the abilities - I can see this being much enjoyable and a recommend for those interested in this sort of game.

Gameplay is shallow. Missing standard features like shift click order queing. Unit pathing is poor, either the routes are bad or units become to mixed to fight due to block LOS. Commands can be inaccurate i.e. attack move locking onto units that are not anywhere near the cursor or not visible due to fog of war.

Edit, missing even basic hotkeys such as enter to accept prompts and such. Unit balance is bad. Rocket troopers are useless with the same range as the units they are supposed to counter and taking multiple squads to take down in a timely manner. Defensive missions/stages are garbage when there are multiple bug units (that spawn, not like a fixed mission asset) that can sit out of range and bombard you to pieces

The game encourages you to create bottlenecks to more effectively kill the bugs. The problem is there are nearly no opportunities throughout each mission to actually do this. There is no active pause while trying to issue commands. There is no way to group your soldiers into smaller squads or companies to more effectively strike from multiple angles. So, to move your troops you must select them all.

How do you use the special abilities? Well, you generally can't unless you select each soldier individually. Otherwise, your choices of special abilities are very limited. because you have to select all troops at once to do anything with them.

With so many different types of soldiers with different abilities, I found myself often clicking through different soldiers trying to find the soldier I needed to fire whatever special ability. With no active pause, you're screwed while trying to find it.

Back to creating bottlenecks. The game creates natural bottlenecks for your own troops to get ambushed. The most egregious example of this is the last Hive you must clear in mission 12 called "Razor River". Your troops must go through these narrow gaps between pillars to reach this hive. They get massacred with this forced bottleneck.

Then I found an overlook nearby where I could pick off many of these bugs from a distance. Problem is only the snipers can effectively hit anything that really mattered, but even their range was limited in what you needed. So, that became useless.

So, I threw different combinations of troops at the bugs for about 2 hours. It was a constant bloodbath. Meanwhile I would call down reinforcements, wait for the measly 3 shuttle you're given to finally replenish your troops. And then I realized how utterly unrealistic any of this crap was and how lame the game in general was as well.

Unrealistic how? You have an unlimited supply of troops you could call for reinforcements. Where are those troops? Supposedly in orbit in battleships, cruisers, whatever. And you mean to tell me they couldn't rain down fury from orbit on some of these hives? Of course they could if it were realistic. Yeah, I know it is SciFi, but good SciFi has some aspects that are believable. This just isn't believable. And don't tell me the game is like the movie. Everyone knows the ONLY reason anyone likes that movie is because of a certain shower scene.

No optimization, no normal AI and extreme difficulty. Plus constant crashes. For those who want to relax and kill bugs, this is not the place for you.

i was so bored.

Difficulty played is 4 star with a focus on achieving the secondary missions before moving on to the next mission. The small nuances of the game really drive me mad because I can never tell did I lose the match because of just mechanics, pathing, or did I really not play it well.

I will own when I screw up in this game it becomes pretty obvious, but there are mission triggers in the game that make you feel hopeless after a great push that ultimately force you to find the random autosave from 30min ago because that is the best pivot point to try and win or just fully restart.

I really like do like the systems added here, but the each major mode or campaign feels like it was designed by completely different teams and expected play styles. I hope Territories mode doesn't fall to the fixed lane play the campaigns force you down at times and actually lets you build up mass armies and the "CC: Generals" ranking system actually provides different game play instead of just unlocking what you already know from the campaign and getting slowed rolled to you while the enemy escalations increase rapidly. Always being on your back foot can be fun, when you know you have a fighting chance. Currently the only fighting chance you have is just to restart.

Pros:
Starship Troopers!
Line of site is a really cool concept for navigating your troops
Leveling up your characters and ranking them is well done
Command and Conquer General star rating system that allows you to select specialties
Defense missions can be fun if designed for you to win with turtle strategies

Cons: (Brainstorm for a fix)

Troops:
Having to micro the line of site while also ensuring you activate all of the troops special abilities is not so much fun. (Can the troops have their specials set to an "Auto" in tandem with the priority target system. When you select a priority target and it is within range can you auto activate the units special?)

The response time of giving a command and the units reacting is so slow. (I get it the mobile infantry is expendable, but can the response time based on input be sped up so I don't get the feeling that my infantry just want to die?)

All major range enemies are never in range for you to actually do anything you will always have to push your front to get to them (Knowing snipers can hit them can we bump up the damage taken or at least get the scorpions to come in range of the rocket launcher troops and defenses before being able to attack?)

Base & Eco:
There is not traditional base building if you want resource gathering and sending mass troops to overwhelm this is not it. (Not an overall issue just want to make folks aware of this.)

When you select the type of supplies you can't sell of your choice you are stuck and can't undo your decision to help you pivot your strategy when you lose a front or lane. (Maybe I missed a setting/tutorial, but trying to experiment with different openers and knowing I'm stuck till I capture another base doesn't feel good always just having to restart. Can this be changed to allow you to swap your type of supplies?)

All of your defense turrets will overheat and never have enough fire power to clear a basic warrior wave. You will need to always have 2 turrets or 1 turret and squad dedicated to ensure you cover the overheat mechanic. (I selfishly just want to turtle up and destroy waves of bugs and build a mobile infantry that Rico would be proud of.)

No matter what you want to do the game will force you to play a specific way and you will always be resource capped and population capped. (The campaign is fun, but being forced on certain missions to play a certain way is irritating when you are introduced to other troops and their capabilities. I'm sure that is part of the challenge just my personal issues I suppose.)

You will not have enough defenses to protect all of your captured points. You can do your best to choke point with defenses, but as soon as you withdraw your troops all of the defense built can be over run. The maps are design to have multiple paths so choke pointing and focusing your defenses is not an option. (Why can I never have enough defenses to actually mitigate smaller waves? Why am I always stuck base swapping with the enemy because I can't cover my back line or I can't cover a bug hole from being recaptured and then growing in strength almost immediately. Can the resources for defenses be adjusted to be greater? The defenses are already super weak for the most part with the overheat mechanic, low health, and being out ranged. At least let me spread more defenses across the map to give myself a fighting chance.)

Too bad I played Helldiver 2 before I played this game. I expected a Helldivers 2 top down view experience, but instead I got a point and click game with extremely boring corridor battles. Besides this people praise the game for looking good, but to me graphics looks at least 10 years old. Maybe it's just me, but still refunded.