Recent reviews by ducbian

I haven't really dipped into Multi-player at all so this is a review exclusively of the single player campaign.

Summary:

Blowing up spaceships feels weighty and is addictive and fun. I've probably not been this hooked on an RTS since Command and Conquer, I love the fact that a campaign fits into bite sized scenarios of 5 minutes a piece. This fits much better with my schedule these days, yet you can still binge on a bunch of missions in quick succession.

I've made it to chapter two so far, in about 30 hours of play time. I suspect I've still got quite a lot more to see but even if what I've discovered is the entire depth of the game I feel like it was value for money.

Overview

The structure of the single player campaign is pretty simple, you get a map showing several different systems. You start off with a couple but quickly ramp up to 5 or 6 in chapter 2.

Each system has a number of planets you must defend and these planets are attacked at random by the various forces arrayed against you; Eldar, Orks, and Chaos.

You have to take randomly generated missions to reduce the threat, with most mission types being playable from the point of view of the attacker and defender. A few examples of such missions are: a straight forwards fight to the death, stealing info by boarding a capital ship, assassinating an admiral, running a blockade, and laying siege to a planet.
Failing a mission generally increases the difficulty and whilst you have the short term effect of the loss of the world you were defending it also increases the likelihood of that particular foe stepping up their attacks.

Also n any given turn you also might have a story mission. Failing these have long-term effects beyond just making the game harder, so far artefacts I've rescued have proven valuable, although how valuable would be a spoiler :-)

What I didn't like:

I'd have liked the option to play as different races in the campaign, even if it was just a generic campaign without the story missions.

What I think needs improvement:

It would be nice within the vanilla mission types if you could get a twist occasionally that changed the objectives. It'd keep this from getting too same-y.

Explosions sometimes look a bit disappointing.

Short range warp jumps can't position the ships on exit and seem pretty short distance.