Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Nine years after release finally had a chance to play. No secret it was a spiritual successor to supreme commander / total annihilation and there are a lot of opinions about that. But personal experience is always the best, right? :) So here is my review for 9 y.o. game: What i liked: - The music and overall soundscape are awesome. - The controls feel familiar and does not asks you to learn much, at least after countless hours in supcom. - Not yet another starcraft clone. The next list going to be bigger. What I disliked: - The visuals. It looks on pair with original supreme commander from 2007, but this game is from 2016! Supcom-2 (overly simplifyed gameplay aside) In terms of visuals blows this out of the water. - Control of army formation is bad and barely usable. - How to select single engineer, not all of them? - In battle units drift like a s**t in a drain and seems like doesn't even have proper collision detection. - Explosions are bad: no definitive crack when something dies, no good visuals. - Order markers wanky and inprecise. Sometimes it is hard to click on exact unit and the marker itself is obstructed by 3d models. In a dense fight it becomes impossible to select particular unit nor give it precise order, especially when there are planes flying above. The battle becomes barely controlable. - No healthbars by default (can be turned on in menu, though) and even when they are on they are pale and hard to read. - Buildings are all looks the same: a bunch of sci-fi gribblings mushed together. Even some gun turrets looks bad. F.e. in supcom just by looking at the structure first time you instantly know if it is power generator, factory or a gun. - Leveling up is some weird mixture of starcraft and total annihilation/supcom: some stuff is unlocked by building structures, some - by upgrading or having higher level engi. You must learn this s**t and memorize how to distinguish buildings, there is no logic. - Capturable power nodes is ok from game design point (a way to control territory) but breaks logic. Super-advanced civilization who easily controls matter - can't build a generator?! - No navy. - No tactical/strategic missilies stuff? - No experimental / superunits. - No shields. - The total number of unit types is low compared to supreme commander. - After zomming out, can't zoom in at the bottom of the map without additional edge scrolling. - Using strategic zoom orders are not shown or skipped at all, f.e. ordering a pan (flying scout) to fly some route around the map. Very simple task is made painfull to execute. - When the number of units is hi, the game starts to ignore some orders or units may loose order and stop midway. - The game regulary hangs on startup unless run in "safe mode". - Base building is somehow not fun. All buildings are tilted and not form satisfying grid, almost no adjustment bonuses (except for refineries and repair bays), no reason to place buildings in some particular way. Just place everything somewhere and start producing units ASAP. - No range indicators for combat units. - No strategic artillery (on the other hand there are orbital abilities allowing to do nasty stuff right from the orbit). But I still think the game may be worth to play and hold it's own ground in some way.