Rogue Command Early Access Review - A fresh take on the RTS genre

I’ve always had a soft spot for strategy games, especially real time strategy like Starcraft, Command and Conquer, Warcraft and the age of empires series to name a few. So it’s been genuinely exciting to see that one of my favorite genre’s has come back to life, getting much more love over the last few years. Yeah, RTS fans have been eating good and I’m very excited to recommend your next course, Rogue Command.

Rogue Command is an early access, classic single player RTS with a roguelike twist, think slay the spire meets starcraft 2’s co op missions. If you’ve played a roguelike before then you’ll be right at home here. You start with a small selection of units, tasked with building up an army and taking out the target enemy on procedurally generated maps. With every victory you unlock more buildings, units, upgrades, global buffs and powerful one time use abilities that can really turn a battle in your favor. While sure this all may sound like your standard roguelike fare, this two developer team at feneq expertly combined it all with that classic RTS gameplay in a way that breathes new life and innovation into the genre. Units are varied and unique with clearly defined roles to fill within your army, upgrades are just as impressive offering surprising synergies or completely changing your approach to army composition. Games are fast and visceral, you very quickly get right into the action while still having to balance your attention between macro and micro play. Combat is kinetic and responsive, with several different approaches to take at any given time depending on the unit deck you’ve put together. There’s truly something for every RTS fan here, whether you prefer Starcraft’s micro heavy compositions, Warcraft’s heavy usage of spell casters or Command and Conquers mass tank deathballs. Rogue Command has achieved successfully combining the best parts of these classics all while emphasizing one of the genres core principals, player expression. There’s so many options available to explore with tons of synergies to discover that no 2 players will look the same, even with identical decks. Finding your play style while unlocking a steady stream of new toys to use is an addicting loop that keeps you engaged throughout, tapping into that coveted “just one more turn” mantra that’s so hard to escape. There’s already a staggering amount of build variety through unlockable content providing hours of replayability and it’s only just recently launched into early access. It’s been a long time since I’ve had so much fun and been this excited with an RTS in this style and I cannot wait to see where else this game can go, because I truly believe there’s some genuine innovation here and I think these developers are onto something great.

Let’s start with the technical side of things by saying first and foremost, I’m playing on an old gtx 1080 and an i7 67k, so yeah I’m sneaking into most modern releases these days with my 10 year old hardware. Still this game runs relatively smoothly only dipping below 60fps in the later game when big armies are clashing and down into the low 40’s in the late game on higher difficulties when the screen is fully engulfed in war. Even still I don’t feel it impacting my experience in a negative way however I do wish there were options to tweak the graphics settings. While the options available are serviceable enough, they leave a lot of room for improvement with basically no video settings and while I do appreciate custom keybinds, there’s still some fundamental binds and options missing, more on that later. Besides all that the only other options you’ve got are straight forward basic features, like switching profiles and viewing the massive database of unlockables.

Moving on to the overall presentation, the game takes no shame in wearing it’s inspiration on it’s sleeve and it’s all the better for it. Units range from slim robotic walkers, mechanical spiders, militaristic tanks and vehicles with utilitarian design language sporting missile pods, turrets, plenty of big wheels and lots of treads. Yet at the same time there’s the whimsical retro sci fi motifs like slapping a Tesla coil onto a teleporting stealth tank. Even the buildings mostly convey what unit they produce through shared shape design, which is something I cannot praise the team enough for achieving. The environments are colorful and vibrant, ranging from dark alien planets with unique bioluminescent plant life, green grasslands, snowy fields and arid deserts. It’s like you took Command and Conquer, dipped it in Starcraft and topped it with Warcraft sprinkles. There’s even weather events that effect gameplay like a sandstorm that limits visibility or rain that can put out fires.

Where the design really shines is during combat, which feels tactile and impactful thanks to the excellent visual and audio feedback. Lasers leave bright glowing tracers, projectiles spark and smoke upon impact, lightning zig zags to it’s target and missiles streak across the field, exploding into the satisfying plumes of fiery smoke you crave. It just never gets old seeing everything get reduced to sparks, smoke and salvage. All this accompanied by some solid sound design provides a strong sense of feedback for every action you make. Whether it’s units burning, missile pods emptying or bombs falling from the sky, the visual and audio design together make for some highly satisfying combat.

The soundtrack is, you guessed it, very reminiscent of both Command and Conquer and Starcraft, with a healthy dose of lofi beats. I very much enjoy all the music and find that it goes well with the gameplay, though I do wish there were a few more tracks. But hey, I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard Terran or Zergs theme over the decades and I still enjoy those so it’s hardly a complaint.

The UI is minimalistic, but informative in providing most crucial information at a glance, though I do wish I could move the minimap to the bottom left and have a larger top bar with keybinds for all the drop down abilities. Besides that the devs have cleverly taken and combined elements from the most popular RTS games so anyone that has played any will feel right at home while still remaining intuitive enough that newer players can learn the basics on the fly within a few games.

Let’s talk about starting a run. There’s no modes other than starting up a new run or continuing your previous. You’re given a choice of your starting loadout including your engineer which constructs buildings and acts as your lose condition if it dies 3 times. Crystal harvesters to mine those minerals and a specialist that has a unique ability. In the beginning you’ll only have access to the basic loadout, but you can unlock more as you play. You also choose your difficulty in the form of mutations, if you’ve played Starcraft 2’s co op missions then you know what to expect. Each one doing things like enemies spawning more units or increasing their tanks splash damage. You also unlock more mutations with each victory up to an ascension level of 10 as of now. Right away you recognize the roguelike progression in the form of branching choices, always starting with a blueprint that adds a new unit or building to your deck. There’s also upgrades, coins, global modifiers called hacks, an increase to your starting crystals, random one time use abilities and of course the shop where you can buy all of those things with your coins. Once at the top you begin your mission to take out the target enemy, do this 9 times and you’re winner.

Finally we’re at the best part, that sweet sweet classic RTS gameplay. You start off with just your engineer and a patch of crystals in a randomly generated map. The engineer can attack and construct buildings, but every time it dies you lose a life and it’s game over when you’re out, so it’s best to keep it safe at home. Buildings don’t have a construction time and always come complete with a unit, while your first resource building called a refinery comes with a set of harvesters. This keeps every game fast and active right from the start, there’s not a lot of early downtime while you wait for your economy to build up. You can choose to hang back and build up your forces while scouting for good expansion locations or go on a quick offensive, looking to shut down any enemy expansions before they can get up and running. With crystals being the only resource and there being more than a few ways to jumpstart an early game economy like your workers ability to create additional temporary harvesters, a one time use crystal infusion, rock formations that drop crystals, these towers that grant crystals for controlling them or a units ability to generate crystals when killing an enemy, you’re always going to have an active and exciting game from the very start, with several different ways to approach depending on your personal playstyle.

Building your army is very straightforward and streamlined, there are no complicated tech trees or build orders to worry about. So long as you have a refinery your engineer can construct any building you have a blueprint for, with higher tier factories costing more crystals. Pressing tilde selects your engineer while pressing tab selects all your factories, with all buildings and units assigned to their own hotkeys at the bottom of the screen. You also don’t need to worry about constructing additional pylons, instead the factories themselves provide the supply needed. Though there is a limit to how many factories per unit you can have, with higher tier units being more limited, you can also increase these numbers through upgrades. With crystals being the only resource and no tech tree to speak of, I was initially concerned there may not be enough depth here to keep me engaged after a few runs, however I quickly learned that by streamlining the build order and making crystals the only stop gap, the game gets to instead focus strictly on play style.

I touched on player expression earlier and I think we can all agree it’s perhaps one of the most important core foundations in a good RTS game. With so many options always available to the player at any given time, there’s an insane amount of moment to moment decision making at play. You have a game plan, your opponent has their own plan and you’re both adapting your approaches in response to each other. It’s this tug of war of attrition, trying to keep up with your list of tasks while also controlling the front line of an offensive or defensive position. When you also throw in the often asymmetrical unit rosters, you’re essentially giving players a blank canvas on which they can create whatever they please, or just go mass carriers again. What I’m getting at is, there’s no linear path to victory, no real rules to follow. When you look at games like Starcraft 2 or even Brood War, you’d be surprised to see that even now there’s always new strategies emerging or new ways to utilize a unit. Now even though Rogue Command is a single player game, I feel it absolutely captures the magic of this experience, only it manages to create an entirely new experience every run.

With such a large roster of randomized units, I felt myself addicted to discovering all the possible compositions while also adapting to what kind of tech tree I ultimately ended up with. I couldn’t rely on going roach hydra or marine tank medivac over and over again, instead falling back on my fundamental play, learning how best to utilize new and unfamiliar units. This created a new loop of constant discovery, many times in the higher difficulties I’d have to adapt my play style both mid run and in game. Sometimes I’d get an upgrade that pairs well with a unit I wasn’t utilizing, like diverting damage to spawned creeps on a unit that attacks by spawning creeps. Or making my weak cheap units buff surrounding units on death while also having a chance to reanimate, encouraging a more wasteful style. With every unit having 2 upgrade slots and there being 70 total upgrade possibilities, you’ll always discover new play styles to explore. Then you also have 170 of the global modifiers called hacks that can help round out your tech tree with effects like, when a unit dies it heals it’s allies or burning enemies can become panicked and flee. On one run I may choose to turn my rush beacon, which is essentially a creep tumor that increases the speed of all units within range, into a defensive asset with a turret, while the next run it acts as a teleporter for my army. All these options can definitely feel overwhelming at first, but after just a few runs you’ll see your own play style emerging as you piece together your own tech tree and I’m certain if I watched others play I’d see synergies and tactics that I never even thought of. With so many unique units many of which also have the familiar abilities we love from our favorite classics and so many ways to alter how they interact with each other, I don’t think I’ve played such an expressive RTS before and I’ve played a lot. There’s just so many possibilities within the foundation they’ve laid here that I’m truly blown away.

Of course all this would be nothing without a decent opponent and I’m happy to say the AI is surprisingly competent. It actively scouts, expands, responds to your attacks by moving out to defend or initiate a counter attack on your base. I’ve had it flank my base to harass workers or try to go straight for an engineer assassination. It casts spells, flees, presses the advantage and is just overall a solid fair match up. It’s not until the higher difficulties that I felt it was starting to show the obvious crutch of spawning in massive waves of enemies to overrun the player, but at these end game difficulties that’s to be expected. I was actually surprised how often I’d have to adjust my unit composition after the first engagement or split my army up to defend and attack simultaneously. Many times it felt like I was just barely pulling through to a victory, reinforcing that tug of war dynamic.

Now it’s honestly hard for me to judge how difficult an RTS is since I’ve got decades of experience and the fundamentals really do carry you far, but I think with unlocking one unit or upgrade at a time and then immediately playing with them, the game eases you into slowly controlling a max supply army consisting of 10 unit types with unique abilities. Plus you will again lean more towards selecting units that fit closer to your play style on subsequent runs, like building an attack move death ball or a caster heavy hero type army. There’s also the option to slow time down automatically when casting spells, kind of like Total War Warhammer, or you can also slow it down any time by pressing space which is a nice way for newcomers to get their bearings during intense moments or just to catch your breath and read what air drops or abilities you have available. Bringing up a unit or building card also pauses the game so you can take a moment to read what it’s stats are, overall I think there’s plenty here in the way of accessibility, though the game definitely needs a proper tutorial. If you’ve played any of the games I’ve talked about before then you’ll drop right in no problem, but I can see a newcomer to the genre being a bit confused without some trial and error and not everyone will stick around for that. There’s also a lack of the standard meta progression you’d expect in a typical roguelike. Most roguelikes give you flat tangible buffs with each run, like straight up making you stronger or giving you more health. Often times it’s required in those games as you’ll eventually hit a wall like a boss that’s clearly too powerful for your level. Rogue Command instead gives you more tools, like units, upgrades, hacks and eventually the ability to reroll a choice. Personally I quite like this because I think the spirit of an RTS is about improving yourself as a player and as I’ve mentioned RTS fundamentals will carry you far. I didn’t start having too much trouble until ascension 6 for example and didn’t even lose until 9, but I do think there should be some sort of flat linear meta progression for newer players be it more unit health or more damage. Just give us the ability to disable it if we choose.

Speaking of requests I’d also like to see more options, besides obviously giving us video settings, I think we need to be able to keybind the air drop abilities and change the mouse scroll and pan speed. I’d like a way to select all of a unit type besides having to double click it, like instead control clicking a unit. We need a way to easily add or remove units from a control group like Starcraft 2 has, please let me move my minimap to the left side of the screen. Let me issue orders through the minimap. Also I think the pathfinding is surprisingly polished and responsive, however melee units often all surround the same target which requires more micro to split them up, I’d like it if they’d prioritize a new target once their current is already surrounded. Maybe just make it so the key target cannot be targeted instead of this invincible state, sometimes it’s more work than it should be to stop units from firing at an invincible target. Overall though this game feels very polished for an early access title let alone an RTS, bravo to the devs, seriously. If you’re looking for some more random ideas then I’d of course like to see new play styles through more specialists and units. Give us more modes like maybe one where it’s completely randomized and we cannot choose what we get or one where we can choose exactly what we want from the entire database. I think a long term survival type mode could work well, maybe unlocking blueprints by taking out targets while defending waves, think dead of night from Starcraft 2 or they are billions. But I’m just spitballing now because you guys have absolutely nailed the core gameplay fundamentals and I cannot wait to see the game improve further.

Rogue Command has gotten me excited about the future of the genre again, it’s a highly innovative, super addicting gem of a title that I feel not only veterans would enjoy, but is a great entry point to anyone that’s looking to get into the genre. It is in early access, but I feel it’s already more than worth your money with a low price of 20 dollars, as it already easily contains dozens of hours of content. If you’re at all interested in this game, do not hesitate to pull the trigger, these developers deserve all the support. It should go without saying, but I highly recommend Rogue Command.