Planetary Annihilation

Planetary Annihilation looks and feels underwhelming. Interplanetary combat might seem fun on paper, but gameplay-wise it's an absolute chore. And that's just it, Planetary Annihilation is missing all the FUN which was present on Supreme Commander - a much better successor to Total Annihilation. [Oct 2014]

A ridiculous learning curve hides a fun RTS.

Planetary Annihilation has layers upon layers of features that push the RTS-genre to the next level. The problem is: these revolutionary features are so well hidden that half of the players won’t even find them. There are also some crucial parts missing. The game remains playable, but less of a high quality product as we had hoped.

In regard to the real-time strategies there is one sure sign: if you defeat real opponents much easier than the AI - there’s something wrong with this game. If you ask yourself what’s wrong with this gamma-version pretending to be final release, you have to admit – anything bad with exception of engine. We are convinced that after the current gamma version the delta version will follow, then epsilon, zeta, and so on until the omega one. There will never be a final PA release because developers have no idea about the final state of their game. [Oct 2014, p.80]

Planetary Annihilation is a game full of wasted opportunities.

Despite its solid foundation this is not a good game. The techtree is too shallow, strategic finesse, cunning or defensive play is hardly rewarded. Add to that pathfinding problems, performance issues and even crashes and it becomes clear that the potential (or ambitions) were bigger than the final result.

Sadly, this is a game full of wasted opportunities.

I know that there's a great, massive RTS beneath all these issues. I've seen glimpses of it when everything works correctly, but at the moment I can't recommend Planetary Annihilation without a warning that it's bound to disappoint and frustrate, even if you do teach yourself to play it.

The whole idea of Planetary Annihilation seemed *too cool* from the very beginning, so it’s no surprise that some of the promises were later forgotten. The developers made the obligatory stuff (after all, you can’t have an RTS about giant combat robots without said robots), but failed to include some of the most basic things that were present in Supreme Commander and even in Total Annihilation.

There’s a great game in here, somewhere. Rapidly getting into jaw-droppingly huge wars spanning multiple worlds is brilliant - it really is. And there’s no other RTS that gives players so much destructive power. But the lack of tactical depth and focus on constantly rushing makes Planetary Annihilation tiring.

Strategy takes a backseat to speed, efficiency and swarming your opponents.