Random brain farts on tech, games and gunpla: Supreme Commander 2 Review

Overall-8/10

Boomz~

Gameplay-8/10
Win
-massive battles with unit cap of 800/player
-milder learning curve
-research tree replaces cumbersome tier system
-gaming speed streamlined
-faction is now more diverse
-grunt units no longer obselete in late game
Fail
-experimental units lack their original firepower
-economy dumb down significantly
-campaign just as retarded

Visuals-7/10
Win
-plays large battle smoothly
-factions has its own distinctive art style for all units
Fail
-visually inferior to its predecessor
-some weak texture in some maps

Making changes to a venerable franchise is a risky business and sometime you end up with a failure like C&C4. Furthermore Gaspowered games doesnt invoke that kind of trust valve or blizzard evokes.
So here it is, supreme commander 2 , 3 years after the first spiritual sucessor to total annhilation franchise. Promising large scale robotic warfare complement with shield, nuke, artillery and last of all, massive experimental weapons. However the first game is plagued by crashes, poor performance and steep learning curve to name a few major flaws. This turn away many gamer, even some vetern RTS player that couldnt grasp this complicated game.
Therefore, making this game accessible is high on the developers' agenda. First off is the economy that doesnt build units or structure as a one time payment, but require constant resources during the process. Some structures even requires energy during operation and additional benefits having adjacent resource generator close by. All this is removed in favor for the one time payment model as many new players over spend some point in the previous game, causing economic meltdown stalling their war machine and losing their battles. Second is the long construction time of experimental machines and introduction of mini experimental to speed up the process of getting these behemoths into the theatre but result in them being nerfed and lost much of their former glory.
However the faster experimental units do speed up the game significantly which have its own benefit. Next up is the technological tier removed to give way for research as another type of resource crucial to victory. Rather than having the previous tier units obselete, they are constantly upgraded using the research tree. Dont get me wrong, this game is still one of the more complicated variant of RTS out there that is every bit satisfying in its own way. But even previous fans of supreme commander have different views and liking so above changes may break the game or granting your wishes.
Next up is the game performance. Previous game suffer in the performance department badly with 8 players matches close to unplayable even with flagship system of its time. To solve the problem however, the developer streamlined the waypoint caculation although naval and larger units still seems to have problem manoeuvring around. To further improve performance, they dumb down a 3 year game in the visual department. I mean optimising for lower end system is a sound decision but reducing the high end settings? When current single GPU crossing 2 teraflop in single point precision? Not that it totally breaks the game for me, but still something i am deepely unhappy about since i was looking forward to join the fray in a world that at least look just as good as the previous game.
The campaign of the game is forgettable and skirmish with cheating AI dont really do this game any justice. This game is meant to attract new players but if you are stil skeptic, you could go over and try the demo at steam online store. With you are not new and after reading the changes, you probably have decided.

Death from above