Let me start by saying that I have been following this game from the beginning as a backer. To put this simply, I would not recommend this game in it's current state (release build 71544). To call this a final game is absurd and borderline insulting. Features are missing or not flushed out at all and I don’t just mean I don't like them. For example:

There is no way to play this game in offline mode. This was promised from the beginning to be included "When the game is released". They lied. Also You cannot save a game so either be prepared to spend at very least 30 minutes of uninterrupted time on here or waste it when you have something unexpected happen.

Single player is useless, boring, and flavorless. Many of the games only redeeming features are not even included with galactic campaign, no super weapons here folks. And maybe I am in the minority here but I like singleplayer usually, there just isn't anything worth playing.

The games are hard to follow after you leave your first planet. Most of the time will be spent navigating the UI trying to make sense of the battle while you literally leave your other forces idle.

OPTOMIZATION is nonexistent. I have a high end rig for windows and a top line IMac and neither of them can run this game without major lag, graphical tears, or in many cases crashes/screen blackouts. This is acceptable for a beta but not a final release. And honestly the graphics are pretty boring to look at and I'm a fan of the cell shaded/cartoon look but somehow they managed to make that dull and not vibrant.

There are some small gripes I have with the game as well. First is the lack of "flavor". I feel like all the units are so bland and basic, and to make it worse everyone is using the same ones. I wish there was some way of differentiating the units per leader, or even take some cues from the terrible single player and limit the techs for each player to 3 or 4 cards to make games more exciting. That brings me to my last little gripe, bots vs land vehicles. There is almost no difference between the two gameplay wise, honestly what’s the point, maybe I am missing something here?

So unless something drastic changes don't waste your time or money on this game, I know I wish I hadn't.

My internet connection at time of review was roughly 7mb down 2-3 up, actual. Best I can afford and I would say better than avarage. Note: This is my actual number not the "estimate" that providers give you. (Welp, I'm an idiot. Actual numbers are 31 down, 12 up.)

I will Update the review if anything changes.

(UPDATE Oct. 7th)

They have announced a patch coming Oct. 9th that will bring offline play. I will be testing it out and update the review accordingly.

(UPDATE Oct. 10th RELEASE BUILD 73737)

So far with the update they made adding offline support everything has been going smoothly (at least as much as before). There are still plenty of major bugs that can be really frustrating and even make the game unplayable at times. I am glad that so far they have stuck with PA and turned out this update. As of right now I still cannot reccommend the game, however.

Some people have complained that my review doesn't take multiplayer into account much and honestly they are right. I dont like multiplayer in games like this, it all comes down to who can click faster. I thought it was pretty clear from my statments that this review is more for singleplayer or casual multiplayer people. Also once you are entreanched in seperate planets there is really no way to invade eachother so it ends up being who can make the most nukes first (or activate the deathstar-esc metal planet).

I really hope this game grows on me, I love the concept, I also really want to back their new project Human Resources but I think I will hold off since this game left such a bad taste in my mouth, not only for Uber but Kickstarter in general (Kickstarters really dont have to provide the product to you at all, and that breaks no kickstarter rules).

October 2014 - Very Important Update:
WARNING, AVOID
Corruption, Money Scam

Im a big player of Total Anihilation and especially Supreme Commander-Forged Alliance, im a huge fan and loyal long time player, this is my view of the game so far.

Is this game worth buying right now? No
What about later? No

Why? It's unfinished, claiming to be a completed work when we all know this is still a beta. There's missing effects, units, customization and more. Saying that the game is ready to be sold, is rubbish, its not, they just needed another bulk of cash to carry on developing. Read on for more info. Remember all this is just my opinion but it is based on facts that even recently have come to light.


In-depth information.
Graphics: 3/10
To allow for many amounts of units on the screen at once, polygon-count has been shredded, where most units and structures appear extremely square-ish, textures also greatly simplified to a huge extent. It looks really bad. I think i appreciated Supreme Commanders dramatic wars a lot more because of the quality of the image and units. Advantage is, you dont need a mega-computer to run this game smoothly, but i still feel like the quality has been destroyed too far. Many negative points for many effects being completely missing from the game. Remember a planet colliding and blowing up in the trailor? theres no effect for that in the actual game...it's unfinished. Too much, is missing from the game.

Sound: 3/10
The repeated low quality sounds become very overly repetetive, with all units in the game having nothing to say but a mechinical noise, where only the Fabricators (engineer tank/plane) make any unique noises, and the weapon firing for all units sound effects feel completely impactless, there's no OOMPH! or quality.. The orchestral music isnt so bad, but it is short lived as there is no variation or multiple tracks. EVERY game features the same, SINGLE interchanging track based on wether youre incombat or drinking a beer etc.

Gameplay: 2/10
After all the wait and all the multipl intakes of cash Uber Entertainment conned out of us, we got scraps. Where in short, the person who acts the fastest AND wins a Decision based Dice-roll, rather than the smartest and most strategic player is going to be the winner of the game. You cannot speed up and slowdown gameplay (like in Supreme Commander) to allow for real strategy, instead, the winning formulae is to build as much as you can, as fast as you can (mash that mouse button! yeeaah!) of something to Zerg rush your opponent in all games. The entire match is a Rock-Paper-Scissors game, with no strategy whatsoever than 'Send units directly to enemy'. The ability to smash moons and planets together is currently very flawed, where even some games end with EVERYONE losing, because early in the game, your planet 'naturally' (not caused by players) smashes with another one before ANYBODY including hard AI has a chance to leave the planet...meaning the entire game was a pointless waste of time right from the beginning.
With Land > Sea > Air > Orbital >Artillery > Nukes > Forced Planetary destruction giving too many things to possibly build to defend against all of them, the whole games boils down to who plays the fastest from the beginning, and what choice or units you build at the beginning, in a Rock-Paper-Scissors-Stapler-Pencil-Rubber-Glue-EverybodyLoses style gameplay.
In short, it feels pointless to play a game where you know who's won in the first 5 minutes. THERES NO STRATEGY HERE WHATSOEVER, it's all about mashing the mouse button.
Terrible.

Overall: 3/10
The idea of what this game can become, is fantastic, but it is greatly undermined by being unfinished, unbalanced, and not anywhere near ready for consumption, and currently not worth that asking price. My advice is to play Supreme Commander - Forged Alliance against AiX (super hard cheating AI) if you want 'actual' large scale war that involves STRATEGY in order to overcome a tough challenge. It breaks my heart as a massive fan and lover of the other 2 games to say it :( I do not see how this game deserves to be called a strategy game in it's current state, its more like a RealTimeButtonMashZerg game than a RealTimeStrategy. AVOID.

Feedback?
1. Give people the option like in Supreme Commander to SpeedUp and SlowDown gametime. We all have different physical playing speeds and bodily/mental fingerclickin limitations. It's not skill or strategy (i cannot state that enough), Planetary Annihilation is just speedclicking in it's current state. Its like giving a button-masher the championship-title in a Street Fighter tournament, it just aint how it goes. Wars are won with Strategy, and formulaic Strategies are made by THINKING, not by HOW FAST i can tell a small group of weak tanks in the first 5 minutes to go destroy 3 commanders like they are paper against water.

2. Scale. Planets, are so small that it takes away the ability to create strategies on the ground level, aswell as cause Camera annoyance spinning it all over the place more times than should be needed.

3. Defenses. Most turrets are pointless, they cannot stop much, and are too squishy. The most concerning defensive structure you gave us...is the wall...It is too easy to shoot around and many air units, orbital units and launchers and artillery and (long list of other things) simply ignore Walls. Remove these pointless walls that dont do anything, and replace them with Shield technologies. Bring back limited shields.

---VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE - 2014 OCTOBER---
It has been announced that Uber are teaming up with the creators of Super Monday Night Combat (another piece of unfinished junk) to create another strategy game, when this game isnt finished by a huuuge mile.

At this point i can sadly say that this is all just a money scam at this point, to rush out a crappy game, using kickstarter even though they already have the money because they will use all methods to get more undeserved money from the people. This is just greed, and full corruption even below EA standards. THIS COMPANY IS SCAMMING YOU , AVOID ALL GAMES.

Uber Entertainment have gone very low into corruption.This game is nowhere near finished, and we the people are now being stabbed in the back after supporting their game with an unfinished product, and being shaked for more money on a new kickstarter for another game when they already have the money they robbed from you the fans.

There has been a great deal of drama over the internet on this, and i (once a hugely loyal fan) am saddened to have to agree...All trust has been lost, take my advice and do not do any further business with these swindlers. DO NOT FEED THEM MONEY ON KICKSTARTER. Its a scam, they already have taken tonnes of YOUR cash to be able to afford development of the next game. They want cash, for nothing.

Discluding the crappy campaign mode which only consisted of copy/paste skirmishes, this is what Uber Entertainment have done:

-Stolen over $1.1 Million in Kickstarter Fraud.
-Stolen (by leaked rumours) around $12 million from Steam/Game fans in sales of a broken & unfinished game that does not meet the Kickstarter declarations.
-Abandoned the game to a small team to do patchwork, breaking their Kickstarter contracts.
-Instead of using the stolen cash to develop the new game 'Human Resources' , setup another Kickstarter so YOU have to pay for it.

Expect further fraud and broken contracts. This is large scale fraud that deserves headlines in every game magazine (where the hell are you guys...you call yourselves journalists?)

Uber Entertainment should be Boycotted.

I'm just going to say this right off the bat: The core game is fun.

Now comes the problems. The game releases on the 5th, 1 day after this review was written, and the game is unoptimized garbage. Now it's not that it's unoptimized for our computers. I mean my laptop runs this at 60fps maxed out and my desktop at 144fps, but the servers are by far some of the worst I have ever seen. The entire game is essentially streamed to you since you cannot host a client-side match no matter what you do. Even singleplayer games are server-side, and the servers suck. Even if you only have two planets (and where's the fun in that?) you will constantly slow down, freeze, disconnect, and crash to the point that the game is entirely unplayable. Furthermore, the unit variety is absurdly low compared to its spiritual predecessors and the Galactic War mode is absolutely horrendous. The fact that they're releasing the game in the unfinished, broken state it's in now puts these devs in my top 10 least favorite developers and they don't deserve a single damn dime from your wallet.

Now if they ever fix these server issues or add client-side hosting, would I recommend this game? Absolutely! It's fun when it's not frozen for 30 minutes straight!

This is a review of single player so called Galactic war.

-Gameplay is boring and repetitive!
-Sterategy element is not present! spam more unit than A.I and step over it.
-all the factions are the same! just different basic colors.
-all factions units are same! there are still balance issues! some of them frustrating and gamebreaking.
-commanders are only skins! no different abilities here. ludicrously those little ugly skins cost 10-20€ on the DRM store!
-nasty bugs are present. Gamebreaking ones like not allowing you to select or command your units.
-performance issues with the latest gaming machines!

Honestly... i cannot recommand this game to my friends and family.
don't waste your time here and don't let the hype take over your logic.

Not even close to a finished product. I support this game, but it shouldn't be out of early access.