Earth 2140 Trilogy

Earth 2140 is RTS which is best compared to Command And Conquer. It did came out in 1997. And this version comes with two missions packs too, albeit it doesn't matter as you aren't likely to beat the base game due to how repetitive samey and bland missions are. Pretty much no plot, yo. The version you run by default is Windows one, known for being worthless due to broked down AI, completely. DOS one comes as bonus. Which is a proper version, yes, so have fun pressing Y until it finally able to initiatize sound on startup, have slowdowns at times, but don't just increase cycles of DOSBOS as it wrecks audio. No Mission Packs OST in-game. And well, for it's time, it was a nice effort. Two factions, seemingly same, yet quite different. No unit is universal, they actually counter each other and not in just "this weapon does better on this armor type". Actually, I don't think it has that. Instead it's all based on ability to fire while moving, slow fire grenades being thrown, or something powerful yet glass cannon, vehicles being too fast for some weapons, such stuff. Yea, you will have to micro. Albeit game sadly fails to explain this. Or to explain a lot of mechanics. It also has Generals AI where you can set some units to either go on defence or offence over whole map. It's pretty good. It's useful, but more due to default AI of your units not bothering to fight back if some soldier nearby is getting shot at from far away. So it's nice that you can set some units on Offensive General while you directly control key units, such as soldiers to take over important buildings. Yea, it works out great. But eh, controls. Outdated interface. I ended game early on because I couldn't bother to manually fix pathfinding of all the sea transportation units that transport tanks onto land with enemy base that doesn't stop producing. I would rather Dune 2 on Sega Genesis. That one is the best anyway. Eh, unique but it fails to grab my attention and controls heavily put me away.

Default exe is for broken windows version. Duplicate startup file and add DOSBOX.exe -conf "..\dosboxE2140.conf" -conf "..\dosboxE2140_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit

Writing this review makes me very sad because I really support what GOG does......usually. The original game was Europe's answer to C&C. The original game had a great selection of units, the original game had great AI, the original game had multiplayer. This version on sale here is not the original version. It does have both the mission packs and that is a good thing because it gives you those extra units, but it is the only good thing it has. All the other things I mentioned above are missing. This Windows version is crippled and unplayable in my view. If you enjoy building up an attack force just to roll over a nearly defenseless enemy, then go for it. Me? I like an RTS to challenge me and the original DOS (and Amiga-Mac ports) did just that. GOG must have been conned into buying the rights to this version. I am sure they thought they were getting the real thing, not the crippled mess this is. As such I can't recommend it to anyone. Go for the 2150 series instead.

This is probably the best version of this game I've ever come across. In addition we have DOS version with enhanced AI and it really works - you can check it yourself during the first missions where we really have to struggle. Unfortunately time has taken its toll in this case. Although the game works stable, and I can say nothing wrong about technical issues, nostalgia just wasn't enough to get back to it. Units can block sometimes (especially harvesters, which is very frustrating), you have to check all the map all over again just to find one soldier to finish a mission (old scripts, old victory conditions) but the biggest flaw is how the game works. FPS drops down drastically later on and it just takes too much of our time to finish each mission. In those times games like Dark Colony or Red Alert worked a lot better.

Imho Earth 2140 is one of the greatest RTS of all time. I strated on the DOS version in 1999 and in that time i knew this game would be my favourite for a life time. The game was well made, not too short (it may have been longer though). Difficulty was adequate. It forced me to think twice before acting. When I got my ass kicked in a mission I just had to start it over not getting kicked, but to kick the AI :) I am giving 5 stars to the old DOS version. The new one (as being sold here) is worth 1 star for missing the AI difficulty.