Reviews - Raynsideways

Tiberium Essence is a mod that imagines what C&C3; would be like if the main factions retained some of the technology they dropped after Tiberian Sun.

GDI regains its walkers (including the Mammoth MkII), the Hover MLRS, disk throwers, the sonic Disrupter tank, and more; but also keeps some of the epic vehicles introduced in C&C3; like the Mammoth Tank. They also have gained a new mobile warfare and defense focus, with Rig battlebases being air units now, and Firestorm Shield generators returning as a large scale bubble shield. GDI's air arsenal has been massively expanded, with Orcas being more versatile with a selectable loadout, Orca Bombers being reintroduced, and transports being manually buildable. The Kodiak command ship has also been introduced as an airborne epic unit.

Nod keeps much of its stealth tech, and also regains its burrowing focus, with Devil's Tongue flame tanks, Nod APCs, and the new Montauk epic unit all being capable of burrowing and reappearing for surprise attacks. Scorpions have been remodeled and have regained their ability to dig into the ground and become a stationary turret. Nod overall is a bit less capable of brute force rushes than in the vanilla game, requiring more trickery and guerilla tactics to be competitive.

Scrin largely stayed the same, but with many of its units getting new models and abilities--including all of its air units aside from the Stormrider. Notably, they have gained a new unit that functions like a mini-Mastermind, allowing the Scrin to more easily use mind-control abilities without it being specific to a unit you can only build one of. They also have a more heavy tiberium focus than before, and their power plants can be upgraded to emit a healing aura, encouraging weird and unique base building. They are a little bit overpowered in the player's hands versus AI, as the AI is not super great at building anti-air for some reason, so just keep that in mind.

In the alpha for TE 2.0, the Forgotten have been introduced, the second time the faction has been developed in a mod for C&C3;. The Forgotten are a mutant and tiberium focused faction, with many units having tiberium-based weapons and others having magic-like mutant powers. They reintroduce a few vehicles from past games as well as new and unique ones. Right now in my experience they seem a little overpowered, and the AI for the Forgotten hasn't been implemented, but they are still quite fun.

All new models are very detailed and fit in perfectly with the vanilla C&C3; models. Nothing stands out as significantly worse looking like you might experience with other mods. There are even completely new visual effects, such as a reworked sonic blast effect that is reminiscent of the one in Tiberian Sun.

As a small side note, all factions have gained the ability to build walls around their bases, which is a great addition.

Overall, this is a very solid and very complete mod that changes the game down to its core. It does suffer from some balancing issues, particularly when playing with AI. Carnius seems to be working on an "ESSENCE" AI personality for each faction that tries to take advantage of the new abilities, but it isn't perfect yet, and I have noticed that Nod AIs tend to struggle against GDI AIs, and Scrin AIs tend to overpower both due to the GDI and Nod AIs not building much anti-air and not really responding while Scrin air units slowly destroy their base. Aside from that, and aside from a couple bugs in the Alpha 2.0 version, the mod works well, and if you can tune a match to try and balance the difficulty (such as playing harder Nod AI against a lower difficulty GDI), it can be quite fun.

Bear in mind that this mod updates very slowly. Carnius is just one guy working on this mod in his spare time, so don't expect daily updates, and don't hype yourself up for the next big update too much because you may have to wait a long time. It may take a while, but the quality is worth it. All in all, I have very much enjoyed this mod, and it will continue to be my favorite for the foreseeable future.