Ashes of the Singularity

This is a game which looks spectacular, sounds downright amazing, implements engaging systems and ticks all of the What Makes A Good Real-time Strategy Game boxes, however its true beauty comes from the moments I’ve experienced that you never will and vice versa. With more campaign episodes due further down the line, not to mention modding and Steam Workshop support, it seems Ashes of the Singularity can only get better.

Addictive RTS fun for both MP and SP skirmish. Looks, sounds and plays like a smooth jazz. The AI is almost a groundbreaking step forward. Borrowed sector based concept from Company Heroes 2 keeps battles tight and thrilling. Bit more meat around the base constructing and Supreme Commander can be blown to ashes. [May 2016]

Ashes of the Singularity may be a technical triumph, but it also delivers an experience we’ve not seen in this genre for at least a decade. The single player may lack a bit of personality, but the skirmish mode and seven AI levels take RTS to the next level.

As it is now, Ashes of the Singularity is a solid RTS game that will only get better with age. The game delivers large scale battles but falls a bit short in the personality department.

Once you break free from the tactics-focused mindset of most RTS games, Ashes of the Singularity is a challenging, engrossing, and cerebral exercise in strategy that has me mentally iterating on army compositions, build timings, and board deployment schemes even when I’m not playing it.

Ashes of the Singularity delivers thoughtful real-time strategy with tons of units in play, but drab maps and a poor story.

This could have been one of the truly great RTS games. The sheer dimension of the mass battles is impressive. And while pathfinding and AI deliver, the game design, campaign and diversity of the two fractions disappoint. It’s a shame.

Ashes of the Singularity is an RTS that dares to do things differently and mostly succeeds. Spectacular, yet deep and interesting, the experience is only marred by a subpar single-player campaign and some quibbles in the user interface.

The problem is that sometimes that huge depth feels a little empty. I can’t put a finger on why, but maybe it’s because it’s predecessors had buckets of personality and that the concept here isn’t completely original. Nevertheless Ashes of The Singularity is not to be missed by anyone who has ever played any RTS game. It is larger than large and exciting to play, ushering in a new benchmark in real-time strategy.

Ashes of the Singularity is a good entry into the RTS genre. It has solid building blocks to grow into something even better over time with more content or mod support.

Swift gameplay and massive battles catch you quickly. In addition, artificial intelligence works great, so you can rely on AI during the campaign and even during the multiplayer. We pray for more such RTS experiments.

A rock-solid RTS with mass battles, but only for fans of multiplayer and skirmish. The campaign turns out to be a sad affair.

Ashes of the Singularity is a solid title, but ultimately too unambitious in areas that matter. It demonstrates it can do amazing things with tons and tons of units on screen, but fails to provide compelling reasons to play beyond that.

It’s a competent game but it won’t show you any tricks you haven’t seen in the genre. [06/2016, p.46]

There’s no time to bother with tactics and individual units when entire armies are dishing it out: you have to keep your control points, expand your production capacity and methodically push back enemy. Warring sides are well-balanced, but that’s because they’re more or less mirror images of each other. Some diversity is brought only by upgrades and commander’s abilities like calling nuclear strikes or teleporting entire divisions. [Issue#209, p.62]

Ashes of the Singularity is a beautiful game, but that's sadly the best that can be said. It's just shallow. It will offer some enjoyment, but the game just doesn't hit what it wants to be and stumbles too much along the way with even the basics, even punishing you for doing what the developers tell you to do.

The choice of the node system is regrettable and without super units and super weapons, the end game doesn’t have the same sort of pop and excitement that it should.

If you are a competitive RTS player, I recommend you play Ashes of the Singularity and decide for yourself if it’s the game for you. There is certainly a lot to dig into for a hardcore player. However, if you are a more casual player, Ashes of the Singularity probably won’t engage you for long enough to learn the ins-and-outs of all the systems at play.

Ashes of the Singularity is a game for veterans, people who love real time strategies and tend to improve their tactics over and over again. It's similar to Supreme Commander and offers a reasonable amount of fun but it won't be as popular. All the positive feedback comes from multiplayer - the single player is flawed and quite boring. All in all the game feels unfinished.

Ashes of the Singularity, like a time machine, brings us back to the era when every RTS clone wanted to look unique and innovative.

Game that could only be recommended to players who are nostalgic for overly difficult strategies. Other than that, Ashes doesn't offer anything new or different from other games in the genre and spectacularly falls flat.

It's not actually painful to play. It's a little broken here and there, with one of those perma-map-scrolling bugs that seem to plague RTSes, and a couple of other small niggling technical issues. But what really stands out is the lack of anything interesting or novel.