Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation Review - A really massive RTS
gaming·@madviking·
0.000 HBDAshes of the Singularity: Escalation Review - A really massive RTS
Do you like a good Real Time Strategy (RTS) game? Then, keep reading... **Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation** started as a standalone expansion for the original Ashes of the Singularity game, but in 2017 it was merged with the base game. This game allows you to control thousands of individual units across large maps and wage war on a tremendous scale. But you really need a good system to run this game smoothly, as these characteristics require a lot of processing and graphics power, and it was designed to take advantage of modern 64-bit multi-core processors.  The plot is set in a future where the human race has advanced so much that it has develop capabilities to control large semi-autonomous armies from other locations light-years away. Those that are able to achieve this kind of power are called *Post-Humans*. You will play upon many planets and moons in our universe, waging war in such large scale battles like the ones that Supreme Commander first brought us a decade ago. In the story, you start as a *Post-Human* general sent to take control of the planets that rebelled against the human race. Right after regaining them, you find some vessels of unknown origin. They are called *The Substrate*, a robotic swarm like race that rapidly becomes your nemesis throughout the game. **Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation** has 4 campaigns, each with their own interesting plot, twists and scenarios that will make every mission more engaging than the other.  The battlefield feels amazing, with it's supply mechanics and impassable terrain, making every battle enjoyable when you use the right approach. Each map has different areas that need to be captured so you can increase your resources. The base you start with has these thin white lines going into the distance. These are supply routes that go through resources from one area to the next. This way, the game kind of helps you to have a good defensive strategy and reaction time, so you continuously have resources coming in, otherwise your ability to advance will be greatly affected. As for the terrain, as referred, some maps have impassable terrain, except for aircraft or units that can land on them, which is important for quick raids and good defensive positions. Having maps designed like this and resource connection the way it's implemented, controlling and defending every part of the map is very important.  In *Multiplayer* and *Skirmish*, **Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation** focus is on holding onto resources around you, and 3 objective points that when held, start scoring an overall winning progress bar, that increases or decreases as the battle goes on. This mode encourages a quite long and huge build up of resources, buildings and units, and can easily last more than an hour if it turns into a back and forth objective hold kind of battle. However, this mode can be toggled on or off, and so it's not mandatory to play on this style. If you want a quick battle, the standard *Total Annihilation* mode is there for you. Each unit in the game counters another specific unit, so you must have a nice amount of varied units in your army. Each unit is also divided in distinct classes like *Frigate*, *Cruiser*, *Juggernaut*, *Light* and *Heavy*. *Frigates* are weak and are best when used in numbers. They can also serve as support vehicles, used as scouts or providing buffs such as shield and health. The *Cruisers* are the main unit in your army and also the most unique. They can act like a swarm, artillery, anti-frigate, anti-cruiser, anti-air, etc... Quite versatile. They can be quite expensive in the beginning of the game, but soon you'll have them more frequently as more territory is taken and controlled. *Dreadnoughts* are quite big and are the largest regular ships in the game. They give lots of damage, countering other *Dreadnoughts*, *Cruisers* and *Frigates*.  *Juggernauts* are absolutely huge and are also the super units of the game. They give huge amounts of damage and have huge defensive stats also. These tend to appear later in a game, when a large army is already formed. Building one of these at the same time as other units will slow down unit production across all buildings. Finally, there's the aircraft units, divided into *aerial scouts*, *light* and *heavy fighters*, and *light* and *heavy bombers*. Any army worthy of it's name must have aerial units to provide aerial support. *Bombers* are very effective against *Frigates* and for air raids, while *Fighters* are the best mobile anti-air units.  The economy encourages active spending due to the supply limit and the positive/negative surpluses. When building armies it's equally important to expand resource gathering: *Metal* and *Radiation*. *Radiation* is actually the most important resource and will be the cause for many combats. As the game progresses, this resource will be what dictates *Cruiser*, aircraft in general and *Juggernaut* construction. Since these are the most important units in the game, controlling *Radiation* zones should be the biggest priority in any battle you play. **Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation** take on technology is very interesting. The game "evolves" technology by building a certain resource building that is unique to each faction. You gain bonuses to your technology each time the resource ticks and they are spent in population upgrades, health upgrades, damage upgrades and faction abilities. These can also be spent in other technological buildings to do orbital scans, fire super weapons and deploy turrets, all of this depending on the actual buildings you have on the map.  Despite all this variety and mental strategy, the game doesn't have that great of a User Interface (UI). The unique way of progressing technology has a considerable risk when it comes to managing it's locations. The main UI has 3 tabs: *Production* tab, *Technology* tab and *Ability* tab. The last one is where you issue your commands for the special support and offensive abilities. After playing around with the game for some time, I still find it confusing using these tabs... Is it just me? O.o Another area I don't like in the UI is the key bindings. The game doesn't tell you the default keys for many of it's functions and pressing the ESC key in a game will show the list of controls for cycling through items, tabs and idle workers. But unlike other RTS games, I feel that the units' hot keys really make this game feel more responsive, and I much prefer them to tab cycling or clicking on individual units.  Despite these minor quirks, **Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation** is a great RTS game, with great content and great DLC. This one is a huge and intense RTS with very nicely done and laid out maps and unit strategy. With all the choices you have, ranging from different unit types, technologies and styles of each faction, you will have to play for some time in order to understand how all of this works. This might be overwhelming at first, as if the huge battles were not overwhelming enough... But this is the point of the game. This game was made for those who like a big strategic and management challenge and it excels at that. But with time, things get a little easier to understand, what makes it a strategically fun game to play. The game costs almost 40€ but you can find it many times on sale on Steam for around half the price, making it a real bargain for a very good RTS game. If RTS is your thing, you gotta try this one!  ###### If you liked this, please upvote, comment, follow and subscribe my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/besg666/videos ###### Get More Upvotes by SteemFollower! Please use this referral link and help me out. Thanks! https://steemfollower.com/?r=6423
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