Earth 2150 Trilogy

I will start off by saying that at first I was put off by this game. Earth 2150 felt shoddy to me at first, but then I started to actually play and began enjoying it more and more. There are a few nags, like the campaign is a bit oddly laid out and takes a bit to get used to with your main base being played on simultaneously as your current game, there is nagging pathing issues that occasionally annoy, and certain weapons don't seem as good as they sound and get owned by another unit with no problem. Get past these, they are valid cons, but if you just pay attention to building up your army and winning, then the true fun comes out because all those are minor things you forget about once you stop looking at them. They are that small of a nuisance. Simply pick an army you like and simply play, then you will be like me and get hooked on Earth 2150 after a good 4 hours of trial and error. By the way, before Impulse came out I had this game on another Stardock store and forgot what it was called, had red and yellow letters in the name though. Anyway they sorta went under and that in turn had me lose my first copy of Earth 2150, and I do not regret buying it again.

I loved this game as a boy, but I never completed it. After years, I approached it as an adult and was able to complete all campaigns on the highest difficulty. I liked the experience and would recommend it to others. Here are some strong and weak points of the game: STRONG POINTS: - Technology & Vehicle construction: It is so much fun to build your own vehicles from components researched in the labs or designs stolen from enemies. Some items, such as banners, took me some time to figure out. The appeal of building your own units is so strong, it kept me motivated to finish all missions just to see what options will become available. - A mixture of RTS and Turn Based Strategy: the ability to hit pause and make decisions without haste allows to focus on strategy. A great feature for those who are not into Star Craft-like fast paced games, where you act quick or you lose. - Main Base & Missions as events on the World Map: having a central base as a hub for all operations motivates to care about units and resources since they are transferrable between scenarios. You can develop your own striking squad and retain it. - Well designed factions: three sides of the conflict that vary greatly - Music and Graphics: it all aged well WEAK POINTS: - Empty World: more effort could have been put into map design. More often than not, the maps feel empty. - Abundance of resources: despite the storyline, there are enough resources for all three factions to build their ships. I managed to gather 2 times the needed resources and more in each campaign. If played aggressively, the game can be finished in a fraction of given time and in less than half the missions available. - The AI: it is easy to thwart all AI's efforts. Attack their bases early, target power plants and they are out of the game before they even managed to develop any force. The AI retains technological advancement between missions, which means that you can keep them at low level of development till the very end.

The ED civ has the best tutorial but it does not really prepare one to play the scrimish games or the campaign.The AI in both are persistant and take one out before you can get going. I was preparing defensive ground units as quickly as I could and could not make them fast enough to keep pace with the losses and the AI upgrading their units before I could. I tried the cheat code route but the only command that was recognized was the i_wanna_cheat. So no help there. And to further add to my misery, the unchangable mouse-screen view setup was backwards. If you wanted to move to the east on the map inset you had to go west yet when you are moving a unit you left-click on a spot ahead of the unit--as you get to the limit of the screen display you have to move your mouse in the opposite direction to see more of the screen ahead in the direction you want to go. Has potential to be a good game, but wonky control system and unfair AI stops that.

The fact that I tried repeatedly to win this game despite being killed dozens of times speaks volumes about how good it is. The fact that I've never gotten even 50% through, even with the help of a walkthrough should tell you how hard it is.

I honestly haven't played this one much. I'm an RTS addict, but this one doesn't do much for me. The campaign opens up very slowly with dull missions, and the technology restrictions are horrible. (I'm not a fan of tech. restrictions in RTS campaigns anyways, but this seems worse than most) So I left the campaign in favor of a skirmish. On to the skirmish: First of all, I LOVE the research system. The capability to manipulate your units and tweak them with various customizations. I like the fact that you only have to worry about 1 resource (al-la Command and Conquer). And the ability to have no unit cap. The limited number of buildings you need to worry about assembling is also nice. As is the capability to manipulate the terrain of the battle field. And the advanced AI options for your units is nice, too. Other than a platoon AI of "all focus on one" would be nice.. though it might be there and I'm just not aware of it. ... Now for the faults: First off, it's a semi-modern RTS, that does not use the standardized RTS controls. That doesn't sound that bad, until you actually try to play it (presuming you've been actively playing RTSs for the last 10 years). When you're not pressed, it's not an issue. But in the middle of heated combat, it's reflive to right-click to attack. Even the skirmish was so insanely slow! Starting off with 200,000 credits, and it still started low. And dear god don't get me started on the duration of research. Ye gods, even the most basic ones take no less than 2 minutes, and the advanced one take 4+ minutes. Not bad until you consider the massive amount of research there is to do. I tend to like RTSs where I can sit back and build a massive army and an indestructible base. But this one, fails to offer enough management on the build up of the base: Queue up all the research you want to do, set up multiple gatherers, set up multiple weapons factories auto producing good units. Beyond that you can explore the map, or send small assaults in to your foe every now and then. Or walk away for an hour, come back and queue up more research. Also the game wouldn't let me minimize it. I like to chat while I game. That pissed me off royally, but my rating isn't taking that in to account. Over all, this game has the feel of a Command and Conquer clone. Sure it has some unique elements, but unfortunately the main unique thing about the game seems to hurt it as much as it helps (the research. Awesome idea, poor implementation.) There are many better RTSs out there. But there are also a lot worse out there. It is one I intend to play more, some time in the future. When I have much free time, and no other game I feel more like playing. I would say for the $6, this one is worth a shot, as long as you're not looking for a Starcraft clone. (if you're looking for a faster paced RTS, go get Warlords Battlecry III, it's $10 here on GOG and worth every penny.)