Its a masterpiece. The graphic is good, and the music is really awesome.
The gameplay is unic and original.
Its the best RTS game ever made!
14 years and its still fun to play.
I love this game, i`ve played so may times with friends in internet and group battles. Its so great that this works in windows 7 without screen problems, thanks to GOG.com!
Total Annihilation is a really good RTS, especially in multiplayer. Perhaps the highlight is the resource management system: you don't have to send harvesters/peons/etc to gather spice/gold/etc in the middle of a battle - this aspect of the RTS genre always was a little bit dumb.
However, that is only half of the game and in single player mode TA does not shine that much. The game has virtually no story, it is like that the campaign is a tutorial for the multiplayer mode. The two sides are basically the same, I've completed the game with ARM and I am not planning to complete it with CORE any time soon.
The AI is not particularly good and it cheats, while you have to spend considerable effort to provide a good radar coverage of the map, it always seems to know where your units are. Since some weapons and units can cover more than half of the map, this can be really annoying - especially on the naval maps. The pathfinding is also terrible. If it were a standalone game, I would gave it 3.5 stars out of 5.
I've enjoyed Core Contingency much more. While it still does not have a real story it gives you some really clever new units and terrain types - which sometimes confuses the pathfinding even more, but I would still gave this game 4.5 stars out of 5.
Battle Tactics does not even want to be a comprehensive game. It is a set of missions focusing on the micro management which throws away the most important aspect of the original game. These "commando" missions amplify every problem with the AI to such an extent that I was often tempted to walk away from the game. Unlike Core Contingency and Total Annihilation, Battle Tactics had a number of bugs. After I've completed a map I often could not save on the new map until I did not complete again the previous one. Since I did not play the original Battle Tactics I do not know whether these bugs related to the Gog release or not - I only know that if it were a standalone game, I would gave it 2 stars out of 5.