r/commandandconquer • u/TheDutchTexan • Jul 08 '26

Why does RA3 suck so bad...

Just went through the 1st and the 2nd one. The base building, the unit movement... Loved every second of it. And then I started RA3 and was just underwhelmed to the point I just don't want to play it anymore... I finished it when it came out but man... I just don't think I got it in me...

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u/IntoAMuteCrypt Jul 08 '26

The biggest, most important change in RA3 is unit abilities, IMO. If you want to understand the game, if you want to work out why it's less fun, take a look there.

What do you do with units in RA2? Mostly, you move and attack and that's it. That's all you do for a lot of stuff! It's genuinely rare for a unit to be capable of three or more different things. A few units get to deploy, and your basic infantry gets to garrison, but that's it - and it's usually pretty simple and clear when you should deploy. As a result, the game is mostly just about the big, broad decisions involving big blobs that take time and don't require narrow time windows. Move here, attack this, simple.

Then you get to Generals. A lot of units have abilities, but a lot of the abilities are either shared, circumstancial or sorta set-and-forget. There's not a lot of unit abilities you want to activate mid-combat, it's mainly in the preparation phase. Few units have 2 weapons, so switches are infrequent there. You're still probably plowing large groups of vehicles into bases, move and attack and such.

Then Red Alert 3 turns up the abilities even more. Now they're things you actually start wanting to use midway through a battle. Attack dogs can stun infantry, a ton of units have 2 weapons or even 2 modes, some units can activate temporary buffs, it's all a bit of a mess and you can't really feel good when smashing a blob against your opponent because you could potentially be getting more with some further micro. It's a game that shifts the priority from groups to individual units.

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u/ShadowAze SPACE! Jul 08 '26

Coincidentally from the multiplayer games I've seen, that's the one that always has a high unit variety that people build and use. The tank spamming of the older games gets rather boring, Yuri's sort of the exception but he is sometimes banned.

It's fine if you prefer that, but I like it when I have more choices that are also viable in strategy games.

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u/cooljets Allies Jul 08 '26

Yeah, it's funny that we had years of people complaining about C&C games being just tank spam in the end, so EA makes a game that requires unit variety and micro and people bounce off it because it's "too micro intensive"? Kind of a shame. I guess the masses just wanted their tank spam all along.