Reviews - MediaMix1

I love this mod, but my main complaint is that it's a bit buggy. Sometimes, in Black Day, air units will be completely invulnerable to damage and won't attack. In Meltdown and Mind Games, the opening cutscenes just awkwardly skip to the combat right away and you have to hold spacebar to move the camera around and get it right. Meltdown in particular is really weird because Dostya gets swarmed with units all the way until she dies after you destroy the jamming array. She still takes damage, but her HP won't go below 1, virtually. I'd prefer her base be better defended so we don't have to see the Seraphim preemptively destroy everything she has before she has to go out in a blaze of glory.

If it weren't for this website's 5,000 character limit, I would happily go quite in-depth about this game. I've played this game for hundreds of hours on Steam, and I hold it very dear to my heart. I'll just cover the things I love about this game the most. <3

The scale of the game, for starters, is unlike any other RTS series I've ever played (aside from the original Supreme Commander and its sequel). To compare, a Siege Tank from StarCraft is probably as big as a Cybran Rhino at best, and Thors are probably as big as Loyalists. Don't believe me? The game's foliage is microscopic compared to that of other RTS games - because your units are absolutely huge!
Every unit and structure you build and train adds a point to your unit cap (up to 500 in the game's campaign, up to a maximum of 1,000 in vanilla multiplayer/skirmishes). I personally find this to be a bit of a killjoy mechanic, so I recommend downloading mods from the Forged Alliance Forever community to compensate (I highly recommend "Unit Cap x4" - which only adds 1 point to your unit cap for every *4* units you have, thus multiplying it by 4 as the mod's name states).

Speaking of which, this game in particular has a very active community (not a whole lot of multiplayer games made between 2000 and 2010 can say the same). It's called "Forged Alliance Forever". They host their own games, create new maps, have their own competitive ranked system, and even create their own mods! They use their own unique client ("Downlord's Forged Alliance Forever Client") which can only be downloaded from the community's official website. If you're at all interested, don't be afraid to join! <3

To save myself characters and time, I'll just summarize my thoughts on each of the four factions in Forged Alliance with small lists. :D

[United Earth Federation]
+ Owns the strongest land units in the game. For example, their Fatboys are gigantic tanks with shield domes, long range rapid-firing artillery, can go underwater (and has torpedoes), and can produce any non-experimental UEF land unit faster than a normal factory. Contesting mid against the UEF is a nightmare in the late game.
+ UEF has the Mavor - a unique artillery structure with global range, doesn't miss its target (assuming said target is a building), and deals terrible, terrible damage.
- Adequate navy and air support, but the UEF has no Experimental air units. Also, the UEF ACU has no good weapon upgrades (on the bright side, it can serve as a mobile nuke launcher in the late game).
- "United Earth Federation" is a ****** sci-fi nation name.

[Cybran Nation] (My personal favorite army)
+ Cybran units are cheap, versatile, very mobile overall, and are great at map control. Most of their units are useful enough to be worth building even into the late game. Their T1 Medusa artillery units can stun most enemies and turrets, their scouts can turn completely invisible (and can be only seen if in range of an enemy scout or enemy radar), their T2 Salem warships can walk on land, and their T3 Loyalists will explode on death, stunning any enemy that's in its blast radius (including Experimentals!).
+ If given the chance, fully upgraded Cybran ACU can teleport into your base to snipe your ACU with its overwhelming chest-mounted laser beam cannon. You'll be dead before the enemy can say "I'MMA FIRING MAH LAZAR!".
- Units require micro to maximize their effectiveness.
- Favors offensive gameplay over defensive gameplay.

[Aeon Illuminate]
+ Has the best air units in the game. Hands down, no discussion needed. Nothing will make you **** your pants more than seeing two or three Czars filled with air units coming right towards your base. We're talking about a traditional "alien mothership" that can store a shitload of air units at once, can make new air units at will, and can fire an energy beam powerful enough to make Independence Day look like child's play.
+ Also has the Paragon - a unique resource structure that provides limitless resources. It amplifies its own resource production to ensure you never lose resources (specifically, you'll always have at least +20 Mass per sec and +1000 Energy per sec) - allowing you to spam Experimentals (hell, anything really) like the world's going to end!
- Reliant on shields and air support.

[The Seraphim]
+ Takes many of the characteristics of the other three armies. Don't know much else about them, though, because I haven't played them enough to form an opinion. I will say this though: the Seraphim are not a race for beginners.