13 replies to this topic

[Blodo]

First impressions?

List of things I like:
- Naval combat and the way it's done
- Gridded building system, easier to orient structures that way
- Coop campaign is an interesting thing, especially the way you get to give orders to the AI ally. Although I think it makes a few missions a bit easy though
- Music
- A lot of the actors there are awesome, Tim Curry, Peter Stormare and George Takei to mention the best

List of things I hate:
- Lack of continuity between the campaigns.
- Battlefield locations in the campaign are... ridiculous. You have the feeling like you're just bunny hopping all across the world without rhyme, reason nor tactical sense. At least RA2 had some sort of continuity regarding battle locations, here you find Empire attacking St. Petersburg (bypassing both Soviets and Allies god knows how) while the Soviets do the same and attack the Empire very capital then meet with the Allies on Easter Island of all places only to set a trap for the Allied Forces, who appeared to have consolidated the bulk of their forces there. Why? I dunno, do you?
- Transporting units over water (especially tanks)... TW didn't require that much clicking and micromanagement just to get a couple of tanks across a pond, especially if you have less transports than you have tanks and you have to do several trips. By the time you are done with it, the batch of troops you transported before might as well already be dead, unless you micro them in the process, but then you can't micro your other group into transports to reinforce the first one, considering that you can't just give an order for a group of units to load into a group of transports, but you need to individually order them into each transport. Ridiculously poorly done for a game where if your attention wavers for a second you might lose everything due to a sudden enemy attack before you manage to respond.
- To build on the previous point: Micro oriented gameplay despite the fact that units are still rather frail... means you turn your sight away from them for a second and when you come back they can all already be dead, meanwhile since the economy is so slow this time around, even the loss of one unit hurts you tons unless you are floating well in the tens of thousands in cash.
- Ultra-slow and oversimplified resource system, which revolves around either you holding it, or the enemy holding it, or it being unclaimed. This method makes for very few expansion points (which EA tried to circumvent by spamming ore generators across maps, but that only worked partially), and the lack of expansion points means no more fighting to hold ore fields, or creatively stealing your opponents ore when he's not looking (like in TW). One thing hasn't changed from the beta though and that is that you're either always out of cash or you float in thousands of credits (depending on the map).
- Lack of uselessness of oil derricks. You're gonna spend more trying to hold the frail things, than you're going to make money off them.
- Ultimate lack of any sort of repair in the field, despite the fact that on smaller maps your cash is almost perpetually zero. The match turns into a clickfest, and your focus needs to be godly in order to not unnecessarily lose units.
- I mentioned this before (not in this thread), but I am going to do it again: japanese school girls, supermechs and the general overdone technology of the Empire...

Conclusion: RA3 has a few cool things, but overall TW holds superiority... I now am of the notion that EA took a bit of a step back in certain fields, considering that TW was very streamlined for competitive gameplay, even despite the frequent spam of units. And the campaign in TW... no it wasn't realistic, but it was believable and the story made sense. It is a disappointment for me when the story in RA3 looks like it's been just taped onto the game itself and given the lowest priority during development, since it definitely could've been done better. Even RA2 was far superior in that respect. The balance of the game has taken a wrong turn the moment the game became unforgiving. I don't think even Starcraft (which is the king of all clickfests) is this dependent on minimal losses, and generally offers some way of evading damage using special abilities while RA3 offers none. This means that you're frequently caught between a rock and a hard place, or rather between lack of cash and you losing units due to battlefield attrition, since you need to withdraw them back to base to repair them. And then there is catering to cultural memes rather than writer's creativity...

In short: It failed to meet expectations. Some of the expectations were obvious fail (unit and tech concepts of Empire), others only disappointed in final release (direction of gameplay balance). EA should stop trying to milk the franchise, and hire some top dog writers for the next installment instead... and a balance guy that ain't intent on wracking the games' player base with frustration!

...

Phew, that's a big wall of text. Now that I got that off of my chest... what were your impressions after the first session?

[duke_Qa]

Its great entertainment on lan. Resources can be bothersome if you don't have at least 4 nodes, but if you play aggressively thats possible.

all in all i would say a C total, and a B on multiplayer. the game follows the resource/gameplay formula of earlier games, and I'm getting tired of that by now. Looking forward to DOW2 to see what can be done these days with RTS's.

[MadHQ]

In a way I kind of agree with you, TW/KW was a little better as far as game play goes... But I still happen to like RA3 better. If RA3 had ore fields and not those lame ore nods it would be better I think.

[duke_Qa]

Meh, i prefer the nodes, they take up less space of the map and can be tweaked once we get a map editor. The only difference on having something scoop up stuff on the map is that it has to drive around a bit and it looks somewhat interesting. But its ages since having something scrape up shit from the ground in a game was revolutionizing.

all in all, the multiple abilities on the units are a great idea. but as mentioned, if you arent microing well you will quickly lose your units no matter what attacks them. hordes of tanks is very 90s. give me a few lethal tanks and hordes of infantry and i'm pretty pleased. but i guess you can do more interesting designs with vehicles than with infantry.

[Mig Eater]

I can't find words to describe how bad I think RA3 is...

[Eagle_eye]

I can't find words to describe how bad I think RA3 is...

agreed

the idea's were there but, it doesn't deliver

TW is much better although EA killed most of the strategies in the book with their awful patches

[Rygar]

- Ultimate lack of any sort of repair in the field, despite the fact that on smaller maps your cash is almost perpetually zero. The match turns into a clickfest, and your focus needs to be godly in order to not unnecessarily lose units.

Neither Engi+IFV works? Is the Allied Engineer a medical too?

[Blodo]

Allied Engi can make a healing tent on the battlefield, but to be honest that feature aint really much use, it needs your infantry to stop in place somewhere, and considering that it is almost inadvertedly somewhere in the middle between your and your opponents base, it's gonna end up being shot to pieces faster than the healing tent can heal it. The reason this is useless is because it's immobile.
Engi+IFV doesn't repair automatically last time I checked. And both these are for Allies only, Allied vehicles being incredibly fragile as well so rarely do you get to use the repair ability anyway.

Empire has only factories and sea docks with those little repair robots, and the Soviets only have them from their crane thingy, which is funnily enough one of the most important structures in your base due to that (and the fact that it gives you an incredible edge in building structures over Allies and (less so) over Empire), since Soviet vehicles are heavy enough to be left on red health usually but surviving after an attack, so you're stuck with a unit with almost no health and the crane is a lifesaver then. Funnily enough even the AI appreciates the crane being important, and it gets bombed and targetted fairly often as such...

Either way it's not hard to figure the game out... I finished the campaign on hard, and it was quite easy... brutal AI ain't really that brutal either... TW was harder actually, even in skirmishes. Probably the bigger impact on macro was what made it harder, since like I mentioned earlier if you survive past early game in RA3 and you're harassing the other guy, you always end up floating in masses of cash. Expanding into 3+ refineries is easy as Soviets (who can easily hold ground) and Empire (who is fast enough to be where it is needed) and there are no penalties to it if your attention is good. The only challenging faction is Allies, since they rely on their special abilities and stuff while the Soviets and Empire can easily blitz their way everywhere...

Edited by Blodo, 17 November 2008 - 11:44 PM.

[duke_Qa]

Engineer in multigunner works like a charm automatically when i've played with them. when i attack they just run around healing my damaged vehicles.

I have to say I find Allies the hardest team to play with as of yet. The multigunners are weak, the guardians are relatively weak, the athena cannons are not as fire-and-forget as the v4 is. if you want a tank you have to take the boat up on land and use that as a tank. i havent tried it yet but i think combined with a few engineers in ifv's and the blackhole shield it can be nasty.

brutal AI is a big cheating bastard, took out 4 of us when we tried taking out one last time i tried to beat one. they've managed to take out one now but thats mostly because they took out it's CY.

[Rygar]

so, 1.06 patch is out, are your impressions changed a bit or the situation is stationary or even worse?

[Artas1984]

The game is a piece of trash in all aspects - gameplay, physics, graphcis, ain't worth it.

Edited by Artas1984, 09 April 2009 - 09:15 PM.

[Nighthawk]

... insightful.

[Ash]

Accurate.

[ambershee]

Fortunately, there is a much better alternative history world war 2 RTS on the way!

http://stalinvsmartians.com/en/

Trailer: