How do I even start reviewing Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance? I think I'll start by telling about something that happened earlier today while I was playing a multiplayer match, an experience that quite well describes several of the qualities of this game. It was quite late into the game, about 30-40 min in and everyone had grown quite powerful. My Armored Command Unit, your most important unit that you use to build your whole army and whose death means you're out of the game in most cases, was under heavy attack from a swarm of Gunships and a Heavy Artillery Installation firing away from the other side of the map. I managed to bring my fighter planes in to take care of the enemy Gunships but the ACU was really low on health, another devastating artillery shell was incomming and if it hit I would be out of the game. The shell was going straight for it's target, I was going to lose. But I did not, straight above the ACU the shell hit an unfortunate fighter passing above and destroyed it. An artillery shell from the other side of the map hit a ridiculously small and fast moving fighter plane, I could hardly believe my eyes.

There is an unbelievable attention to detail in this game, every projectile is calculated individually which adds great tactical depth. Good micro and smart use of the lay of the land can have a significant effect on the outcome of a skirmish as shots might miss, impact hills, rocks or units they where not intended for. This combined with the games truly epic scale brings one of the game's few minor drawbacks, seven years after release even the fastest computers have to slow down when literally thousands of futuristic aircraft clash.

The scale is another thing worth mentioning, the size of the maps range from quite small 5x5km maps to the enomous 81x81km battlefields that it take several minutes for even the fastest units to cross. So no matter if you want to wage war for hours against 7 opponents or if you're interested in intense StarCraft styled matches Forged Alliance will provide.
There is also a great variety of units, from small land scouts that take seconds to build to colossal experimental units that could take hours for a single engineer to construct but are able to singlehandly defeat huge armies. The balance between units is good, all four factions are viable and almost all units fill some role during some part of the game without any unit standing out as particularly overpowered which is quite impressive as there are hundreds of them.

To summarize, this game is a polished gem. The gameplay, both single- and multiplayer, is great, the design is amazing, the sands of time hardly seem to affect the game at all and the replay value is close to infinite. I'm a huge fan of real-time strategy games and I honestly believe that Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is the apex of the genre.

YES I DO RECOMMEND THIS GAME.

One of the most under-appreciated games of all time.

The most positively user reviewed game tagged with RTS on Steam.

Mediocre campaign generally speaking, but containing the BEST real-time strategy gameplay... ever.

When you have learned how to play it properly (50+ hours at least), you realise that SupCom FA does real-time strategy better than any other RTS in the world. An RTS should allow the player to use all the systems he has at his disposal, and use those systems -and his excellent knowledge and wisdom- to make TOOLS in which he uses to complete the objective. Let me explain.

In other RTS games, you get resources, you put those resources into aggressive units, and you attack the enemy.

In Supreme Commander, you have a basic start, and then the rest is completely up to you. There are many resources: Mass, Energy, Time, "Build Power", "Micro", but it is completely open so that you can choose exactly what to do with your resources, to execute some strange and excellent strategy that YOU created just now on the spot. You have so many units available to you to use in new ways. These units are not limited to merely 'aggression'. The magnificent unit diversity allows for all sorts of strategic applications. And not just units, but buildings too.

You could send an engineer out right into enemy territory, get it to build a Stealth Generator, construct a Tactical Missile battery, and snipe the enemy commander. This is a logical combination of only THREE units, and none of them the typical 'go and shoot stuff' aggressive units you find in other RTS games. You could teleport a Support Command Unit into the heart of the enemy turtle base and destroy the Strategic Missile Defense in his three seconds of life so that your nuclear missile can do its job. You could send a decoy squadron of Interceptors along one flank of the enemy's base so that your transport drop of an army can get past his horde of Air Superiority Fighters and do damage to the base. You could choose to put your resources into Mass Extractor upgrades and engineers, so that your engineers can focus their build power on speeding up the upgrades one by one, and so run away with exponential increase economy. Actually, that last one is done by all good players anyway. But you can do it as much as you like. There are endless combinations.

The situation is never 'I have x resources, I can put them into y firepower' it is 'I have x spare engineers - I can put some on reclaim and use those bonus resources from reclaim to go into ecenomic upgrades', and 'I have x spare resources that are being wasted sitting in my storage instead of being aggressive units that could get me more ground and Mass Extractors or shields that could give me better hold of what territory I have already claimed', etc.. Your Mass resources can take the form of strong and heavy turrets. Your Energy resources can take the form of air scouts.

But they do not have to stay in those forms. In SupCom you can reclaim those resources by dismantling structures and units through your build power. This unlocks massive intuition, adaptation, and freedom - aspects that encourage strategy. It feels right in an RTS that you can switch up your techniques so easily. You cannot go back to the cold dark RTS games where dumping resources into the wrong form dooms you.

Reclaim is certainly not the only thing in SupCom that makes it so outstanding. It gets everything right. It is the combination of unit variety, resource conversion, scale, and control that makes up so great strategic freedom. I cannot put into words how perfectly Supreme Commander gets strategy. Everyone needs to enjoy the satisfaction of having such freedom of strategy.

Admittedly, it is quite a learning curve for the first few hours, and then you think you've got it, but then you find you got the basics, and you need to build complexity on those basics so you can unlock more learning curve. It's hard to do, but you can expect so much from such freedom. And if you can't grasp it, just play it simple: get the economy right, and turtle. Lots of players do this. They pick a map with one thin line or gap so that the two teams can hold the line or gap against the other team while everyone gets a superpowered economy and shoves firepower into the middle. Not much strategy, but enough to satisfy many.


(This paragraph: some re-iteration and self-explanation; skippable.
Supreme Commander features the most streamlined control options I have ever seen in an RTS, and a unit/race balance that is far more dependable than other RTS games. Though this may limit the diversity of faction units and maps, it is for the benefit of having a clean canvas on which the players can work fair and beautiful strategic destruction.
Personally, I find the mathematical artistry of strategy war gaming to be more greatly rendered in Supreme Commander Forged Alliance than in any game in the world (apart from chess). This aspect is what captures my interest. The breadth and depth of strategic warfare are greater in Supreme Commander than in the tens of other RTS games I have played. Behind the steep learning curve and the very small scale match start lies pure strategy that is more refined and accessible. Supreme Commander does better in enabling the player to develop their strategic brainstorming and application without restraint, achieving their own art of war through the perfect mechanics of Supreme Commander.
I know this is all wordy and may not carry much solid fact, but it is a difficult understanding to explain. For me, where other RTS games seem to sit on the same strategy of rush with the right mix of different unit types, Supreme Commander opens Real-Time Strategy to what it was always supposed to be: the set-up necessary to allow the players to continuously evolve their own strategies in matches that are as much of the mind as of the mouse.)


(This paragraph: more re-iteration, skippable)
(Comment from YouTube video AKAN8KMtB7k)
Supreme Commander can be challenging to get into, but features the most fluidly interweaving mechanics for strategic invention in all of real-time strategy gaming.
Each match is a field of tools waiting for the player. Resources -both hard and soft- are convertible, increase exponentially, and recyclable. Units are diverse, effective at their purposes, and highly manageable, with order queueing, queue ordering, formations, patrols, assist, and synchronised execution. Tactical combinations are nearly unlimited, and the unit limit is complementary. Factions have styles and military doctrines which feed into their unit designs and strategic weights.
All these carefully tuned, ahead of their time gameplay features combine to form freedom of strategy. When you explore the options, struggle back and forth with a worthy opponent, and invent your own technique to achieve a perfect check-mate, that is the pinnacle of strategic experience.
And that's to say nothing of the giant robots, super lasers, nuclear explosions, murmurations of fighters, booming cannons, smoking wrecks, sinking battleships, parallel missile trails, shimmering shields, clanking factories, trampled trees, calculated projectile physics, and the noble yet invigorating militaristic soundtrack. Watching this pretty game is satisfying enough, and years-strong casting channels are full of community support.


Short story: grand scale of war, control of your forces, freedom of strategy...

BEST RTS EVER. Get it. Or at least watch some casts by Gyle on YouTube. Be warned, many of them are epic, that means potentially hours long, and yes, skirmishes do last that long because SupCom is epic. And then get Forged Alliance Forever - the community lobby, which I could write another entire review for.

Get the FAF client
https://www.faforever.com/

https://www.faforever.com/

This is the best RTS ever made. It is so good that the company who made it went broke. It was so good it could only run on a handful of PCs at the time. Now it is more than 10 years later and we, the ones who have not forgotten are still out there playing. Here on Steam and on FAF. There is so much detail, so much to know. Just the navy in this game has more polish and diversity than whole other games. This game was the highest point, before developers pulled back and started making RTS games for the unwashed masses. Every shot was calulated in real time. There is no magic, no fudging. Just gritty simulation with zero forgiveness. It is the most beautiful, the deepest, the game that even after all of these years is really the only thing I want to play.

People told me this game was good, but I never expected THIS.

- Great graphics, especially for a game from 2007.
- 4 unique factions.
- 4 tiers of technology! 4!
- A very good intel system.
- 4 TIERS. 4!!!
- A good campaign with a good story.
- Interesting characters. Oh yes.
- Your commander is actually useful, even later in the game.
- T1 units stay pretty relevant. Building 20 factories to unleash a swarm of T1 tanks is funny.

This is hands down the best RTS ever made.
Pros:
- 1000s of units
- Simulated projectiles can hit other things. (I've seen an anti-air turret shoot down a nuke)
- Bubble shields
- MASSIVE experimental units
- Explosions
- Massive scale, the battleships feel impressive next to the smaller T1 units
- Scaling economy, you don't "buy" units like in SCII or a lot of other RTS games, you build them, draining your resources over the course of their construction time
- 1000s of units

Cons:
- The unit movement is a bit weird sometimes
- If you're reading this review you probably don't own the game yet, luckily this con is easily fixable

Update a decade later:
FORGED ALLIANCE FOREVER! This catchy slogan is also name of a fan-made client with a thriving community that shows no signs of slowing down.

*Strategic Launch detected*
*Watches helplessly as 72 missiles slowly approach*
*Teleports into enemy base as a final stand, dies but causes a nuclear reaction*

Forgive the lack of hours put into the game - I've put hundreds, if not thousands into the game, but steam hasn't tracked my progress due to using an external program known as 'Forged Alliance Forever', aka FAF. I'll go into why shortly.

Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is, by far, the best SupCom game around. In fact, it is one of the best, if not THE best stratergy game around. It has just about everything you can imagine it it, ranging from tiny robotic units the size of houses to huge megabots that'd dwarf entire cities.

The game is very different from other stratergy games, which for some can be it's downfall, whilst others just an incentive to play. It plays on a huge scale. Or on a small scale, varying from map to map. If you have a good processor (which I sadly do not), you can have massive battles consisting of thousands of units - and oh my, such battles are always glorious.

Maps also vary in size, some being a few kilometers squared, whilst others are much, much bigger (forgive me, but I can't actually pull the max map size out of my brain at this moment for some reason).

The game has and supports naval, air and land warfare. It has and supports stealth based warfare as well as 'conventional' warfare, fought between huge armies. It has end-game weaponry that can be disabled via options or left enabled at will, such as nuclear weaponry, heavy artillery, certain experimentals such as experimental artillery - so you've got a turtle against you and that stuff is enabled? No problem! Turn them into the wastes of the Fallout series.

I cannot stress how good this game is. It truely is a masterpiece, and though graphically dated, you really won't notice the graphics half the time because you won't exactly be zoomed in close, or the sheer amount of units moving around will distract you from the low resolution and lowish poly models.

But with the age of the game comes performance issues. You really need a good processor to handle this game with lots of players - 1v1 with 2000 units active at one time is generally not an issue (at least with people with processors like mine, and AMD FX 4100), but larger battles consisting of 2-6 players will result in slowdowns so the user with the weakest processor may catch up.

Overall I recommend this game. I really, really recommend this game. If you like RTS games - get it.

*NOTE*

This game is heavily multiplayer orientated. You can play via steam through skirmish modes and campain, but there are issues (or so I've been told) with multiplayer within the game after purchase. AFAIK you need to use applications like hamachi to play.

So most people will use FAF - Forged Alliance Forever. FAF is a lobby system that allows downloading of custom maps and a large selection of mods on the fly, without fafing with applications like hamachi which have potential security issues.

The game is awesome on multiplayer. There are many different ways to play this game - I myself and those I play with play this game at an extremely slow pace, with games ranging from thirty minutes to many hours in length. This is unusual, but fun and perfectly playable. You can literally play it how *you* want to play it, given that you play with others with the same view.

Or you can go competitive - competitive games are fast, quick and require quick thinking. Or you can play something in between - whatever suits your needs or tastes.

If your FPS drops when you move the mouse here is a fix:
Task manager > Services > NvDisplay.ContainerLocalSystem -> disable

Thank you Avocado in the comments.

This is what peak RTS looked like.
It deserves a 4k remaster, like what was done with Homeworld.