Recent reviews by Alex06

Absolutely fun party game, you can play this anywhere as well! It's solid, straightforward and not over-designed, while also having a clean visual style that ages well. It also has a certain charm and doesn't take itself too seriously. Considering this was created entirely by 3 people, this is nothing short of impressive and spectacular.

Superbly fun game of a stellar RTS franchise. Red Alert 3 has it all.

Pros:
- Clean, crisp visuals that look great even today (2021). Units and buildings are extremely readable, which is a must and very hard to execute properly in an RTS game.
- Unique factions with unique and varied play styles and themes.
- Solid game mechanics and somewhat balanced gameplay.
- The unit quotes and quips give personality to each unit and add an extra layer of readability to them.
- Absolutely bombastic soundtrack.
- Level design is unique and fun in each campaign mission, plus the multiplayer maps are very well thought out.
- Amphibious units and structures add an extra layer of gameplay and make sea-based warfare far less of an afterthought than in Red Alert 2.

Cons:
- Campaign/Story is short and the cinematics are way too cheesy, the oversexualization of certain female characters stood out a little too much for my taste and kind of turned me off on the story. Most of the characters are also a bit too stereotypical and one-dimensional.
- You need a third party app to play multiplayer and I ran into some issues trying to set it up and getting it to properly launch the game.
- Once you get a hang of it, the AI gets very predictable and easy to defeat.

If you're an RTS player, I highly recommend this game!

Maelstrom is a great example of a game that is full of solid ideas, but poor execution. The gameplay is slow and shoddy, there are a ton of bugs and the visuals sometimes get messy (I blame the water mechanic).

On paper, the water mechanic makes sense, but when you mix it up with 2 other factions that cannot use water, it becomes a problem.

The best designed, best executed and most playable faction is the Ascension. Some great game design and mechanics and a lot of extra love and attention was put into designing them - backstory and all. I wish the same could be said for the other two factions. The aliens are somewhat original but still fall into the generic biological science-fiction alien tropes, with no clear visual identity for them (they're a mix of different things - not just insects or reptiles or calamari, but all of that mashed together). The Remnants faction, AKA "The Humans", while not bad, are still pretty generic scrappy scavenger-survivors, who use a just-as-generic mix of modern vehicles and weapons from the arsenal of different countries. Not only that, but the footprint of their buildings and vehicles means they're very clunky and that it's very hard to place their buildings properly, which leads to lots of time wasted. As an RTS designer, you should never seek to have all of your players' units play against their ability to micro them properly, unless they can do something to change that, or unless it's a very specific gimmick of one faction that has a bonus to it (IE - they're OP but hard to maneuver) - and even then, it's best not to do it unless you have a clear vision and can execute perfectly on it. It sounds more like the game was just sloppily-designed and not enough time was spent on factions other than the Ascension.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this game unless you really wanted to try it or spend money on it. The Ascension faction is worth a try, but the game is still very slow and clunky in and of itself. If you want a game that takes what Maelstrom does, but executes way better on it - I highly recommend getting Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, StarCraft 2, Age of Mythology, Rise of Legends, Supreme Commander 2 (the first one is good, too) or Dawn of War (the original). Even less than spectacular games like Dawn of War 3, Earth 2160, Universe at War and Grey Goo execute better on the "three unique factions" concept than this game does.

Superbly fun classic RTS game in the "Age of Empires" series and style. It's a little more standardized and adds new mechanics, while also diversifying the existing base civilizations, with different mechanics each. The style of having several civilizations that are like each other is retained through having 3 Major Gods per civilization, so for those who want a slightly different take on a civilization, you still get that. This is one of those games that either brought and/or popularized many modern RTS mechanics, such as top bars with "God powers" that we see in StarCraft 2 Co-Op or Sub-factions that we see in Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath and Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour. If you love those games and also love mythology, then definitely get this game.

Pros:
- Unique civilizations with unique gameplay mechanics each.
- Using mythology offers an original and refreshing take on the Age of Empires formula that doesn't limit gameplay as much.
- Lots of variety and flexibility in terms of playstyle (you can tech up in different ways by favoring one Minor God over another).
- Fun campaign and story.
- Really catchy soundtrack.
- Rewarding and well-designed gameplay mechanics. This game has some solid game design.
- Most of the new features from the Extended Edition are a welcome addition.

Cons:
- The Chinese civilization is a little broken and feels much more like a parody of Chinese mythology than the other civilizations do in relation to their respective mythologies - It was added with the extended edition,
- Graphics can sometimes break (when you activate the day/night cycle, notably) or have glitches, but nothing gameplay-breaking.
- AI is not terrible but still not the best.

This is another game that deserves the "Definitive Edition" treatment from Microsoft. It could really do with another coat of fresh paint on the visual department and some bug fixing (and rebalancing/reworking the Chinese civilization to some extent). And new civilizations/mythologies would be more than welcome - Aztec, Celtic, Hindu - and so on!

Absolutely amazing classic RTS game. While the game might show its age, it still plays amazingly well.

Pros:
- Star Wars locales, factions and technology.
- 8 original factions/civilizations with unique technologies and units. Unlike Age of Empires, each of them have their own visuals and designs, which helps make the game (as well as each faction) feel less generic.
- Really good and expansive scenario editor.
- Lots of variety and replayability in general.

Cons:
- Limited unit selection (Like in older RTS games, although for some, this might be a pro)
- Silly goose AI by modern standards, although it handles itself well and for 2002 standards, it was pretty good.
- Limited screen resolution (Like another user said, this can be fixed by installing the Expanding Fronts mod)
- Some issues with desyncs in multiplayer using GameRanger. I experienced this mostly with the GOG version. Ever since I installed Expanding Fronts and used the Steam version instead, it seems to work fine.

If you want larger maps, more scenario editor features, new terrain sets/locales, extra civilizations (of which there are 8 unique ones) and new units, I highly recommend getting the "Expanding Fronts" mod from HeavenGames or ModDB. It adds a few new civilizations (Geonosians/Confederacy are split into 2 civilizations, there's also the Resistance, First Order and Zann Consortium, with a few more coming soon). If there's one other "Age" game that deserves to get the Definitive Edition treatment from Microsoft, it's this one, especially given that the EA exclusivity deal has now ended. The Expanding Fronts team really deserve to be SWGB's version of what Forgotten Empires are for AoE2.

Anyways, if you're a Star Wars fan, Age of Empires fan and/or fan of RTS games in general, I highly recommend getting this, but I also recommend installing the Expanding Fronts mod, as it adds a whole new slew of features and fixes some of the issues with the original game.

P.S. - The game currently stands at 1.1 hours played on my Steam account, but I have played it for over 100 hours on the GOG version in the past year and even more than that as a kid.