Supreme Commander 2 (PC) Review

It's hard to sympathise, or get attached to, protagonists that look like secondary NPCs, have mediocre voice acting, and take part in a story so generic and clichéd that the main events are as memorable as the silly jokes and casual talk that these characters like to exchange. The worst thing about this futuristic war "saga" isn't really this, though; Supreme Commander had a lazily written campaign, too, yet it also had great gameplay, which is exactly what this sequel lacks.

Forget about the urge and necessity to expand and capture territories, and forget about a complex resource system where certain structures would constantly drain energy, forcing the one pulling all the strings to carefully think when to build, activate, or deactivate something. Furthermore, forget about tiered units, about the massive army-killers called Experimentals, and most importantly, forget the epic scale of Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, where battles with large armies, in levels larger than life, used to be the norm.

For starters, there is only one strategy here - especially in the campaign levels that tend to recycle the same, mundane battle scenarios over, and over again. What's this strategy? Turtling. Why risk capturing far away territories, or creating lightly-defended resource structures away from home, when it's unacceptably easy to remain in the base, and spam energy generators, which produce energy from thin air (and can be converted into another resource with the push of a button), or lots of research stations in order to unlock all available technology in a matter of minutes?

Human-versus-human skirmishes are, without a single doubt, the best part of this title, but only when compared with the lifeless main quest because even those seem to be nothing more than base-building races, with all players trying to create the strongest/largest army as fast as possible before unleashing it into the enemy "fort," with the second most used "technique" requiring the constant construction, and dropping of, troops into a certain key area, until the opposition finally wears out.

Another major flaw is the little differentiation between the three factions, with all units and technologies being roughly the same. Speaking of units, they are a bit of a let-down. First of all they are somewhat unbalanced, like, for example, some air units - such as gunships - that can dominate the battlefield, even when the enemy has a substantial amount of anti-air turrets and tanks. However, the biggest disappointment are the Experimentals; the gargantuan, but also very expensive, destroyers of Supreme Commander, which are now cheaper, but also so weak that a team of only 10 strong units can blast them to smithereens.

Generally, this isn't a bad game. However, it's only good when viewed as a standalone title, since it's just a watered down version of the original, which was far more complex, far more innovative, and far more entertaining. Some might think, "Okay, so it's not as fantastic as the first one… so what?" The thing is that there is a significant number or RTS out there that aren't just a lot better, but also unique. Supreme Commander 2 isn't. It's good, but it's just that. Good.