Have you played an RTS within the past 10 years? Then you probably have seen everything worth seeing in Etherium already. The biggest issue with RTS games nowadays (and other "dead genres" being "revived" lately) is that they try to get away with being just "good enough". There is nothing groundbreaking, nothing creative or inventive, no new game design ideas present here and, despiteHave you played an RTS within the past 10 years? Then you probably have seen everything worth seeing in Etherium already. The biggest issue with RTS games nowadays (and other "dead genres" being "revived" lately) is that they try to get away with being just "good enough". There is nothing groundbreaking, nothing creative or inventive, no new game design ideas present here and, despite having its release pushed back multiple times, feels like instant bargain bin fodder during a genre drought.
Outside of the mandatory multiplayer, you have a campaign with convoluted rules (with each side having their own secondary victory conditions) and a skirmish mode. The campaign is very frustrating because of simple oversights, like not being able to save during your opponent's turns and a star system UI that doesn't provide enough information. I spent easily almost two hours defending my territories during opponent's turns simply because quitting the game meant restarting the opponent's turn. This is of course on top of all the issues present in the actual gameplay...
...of which there is little to mention. The main objective (and single game mode) is to either destroy the other player's main base or deplete their tickets by bombarding their mothership with turrets high in the tech tree. Regions of territory are strictly defined and can have only one base inside for adding upgrades onto. The problem with the territories having a fixed size is that smaller territories only allow smaller bases. This creates claustrophobic maps, with clearly defined chokepoints that force you down a corridor to your opponent's base. Most of my campaign victories were from converting the neutral factions on the map and attack-moving them into the enemy's main base.
The absolute bare minimum went into Etherium's factions and their unit design. Units for each race have creative names like Standard Infantry, Siege Vehicle, and Bomber. Races share all the same units (!) with each having only 4 unique units. This might be acceptable in a turn-based strategy game where you have 20+ factions or dozens of units, but here you only have about 6 different units for each unit type. Each race also shares 3 of their 6 faction skills, similar to Dawn of War's faction ability system. Everything about the races just feels very cut-and-pasted and bland and makes me wonder why this game's release was pushed back multiple times.
I am ashamed to have fallen for the hype for this game. If you are thirsty for a good (or great or amazing, whatever) RTS, then revisit an old one instead of wasting money on this. This game couldn't be any blander or generic if it tried. If a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter could eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare, then this game is proof that they can code a video game too.… Expand
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