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Great video - thanks! If I were to add something, I would certainly stress the amount of quality of life features BAR has. From mouse drag formations, to area commands to hundreds of keyboard shortcuts - if you can think of a thing to make your life mechanically easier, it's probably already in the game :)

Thanks for making this video. Never heard of Zero-K before. Downloading it now. Should tide me over until I can get a new PC and buy Sins of a Solar Empire 2 =D

Мне не нравится что при приказе "движение" юниты сбиваются в кучу в одной точке. Хотелось бы сохранение и вращение формации по умолчанию с возможностью выбора скорости передвижения - свободная или со скоростью самого медленного. Можно конечно и среднюю скорость добавить. Можно и кнопки формации придумать чтоб например по дальности стрельбы становились. Или по здоровью

Thank you for bringing this to attention.

this kind of look like beyond all reason.

I wanted to like it, but when the enemy were perfectly kiting on the easier difficulties, I quit. Let me learn the game first before adding very high level stuff like that, that the AI can pull off perfectly. Plus, I hate that everything dies so fast.

Hey this was great stuff! The rabbit hole goes deep, here's a few(?) random additional notes: Campaign can be played in coop mode with shared control. There are heaps more maps that can be played just by clicking on them on the website. A lot of maps are used across games on the Spring engine (now renamed to Recoil) and haven't necessarily been specifically made for ZK. There are a few mods that radically change the game into something else like Zero Wars, Arena Wars, Future Wars, etc. There is a truly *staggering* amount of options and powerful commands in the game and I was still learning new stuff after years of having played the game, like you can effortlessly have structures built on a perfect terraformed spire or hole for instance. There occasionally are regular type tournaments while it's been a long time since we've had a round of Planet Wars. I've in the past played as the leader of one faction and it was a ton of fun! Doing diplomacy with another faction, agreeing to a temporary truce, planning strategy, planning who will take offensives where, etc. The resources gained are spent on various infrastructure on the planets (each planet representing a playable map) that show up in battles taking place there. One of the downsides with PW was that having bad players in your faction taking the slots for attacking/defending in a battle was a liability and you were better off having a handful of great players stay awake a long time hogging as many of the battles as possible. There's been design documents and whatnot for reworking it all to a better system it's just a ton of work that takes several ages, again it's been a long long time since the last round took place.

Free? Sweet! Blessed by the algorithm today

Something that should be noted about the impact of Total Annihilation is that it came out in 1997 and was so revolutionary/dominant that it topped all the polls of best RTS game for years, beating newer titles like StarCraft, Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires. In fact it was still winning major "Best RTS" polls as late as 2004 when the users of GameSpy (the largest online gaming community at the time) voted it the greatest RTS of all time. This is the kind of legendary status that lead to an entire fan made game to bring it back with improvements :)

When will the third faction being added?

>> no campaign goodbye

Are they planning to make a single player campaign?

Kingdom was a major let down for me

Good analysis, and history. But there is 1 thing i did not hear in this review, that strikes me at BAR, in comparison to TA and PA which i played a lot. The BAR community is toxic, very toxic, unpleasantly toxic. You get kikcbanned for 'nothing'. If u think/make up a new start/strategy, it might be you'll get kickbanned for playing your new strategy out of the game and gameroom. As a matter of fact, when i was new to the game i played Istmus front, got my base deleted by enemies, i fled into pond and ended up building a Flagship in pond, for defensive purposes. That worked really good against the enemy T3 invading. It worked, the Flagship was able to blast all incoming T3 and T2, so i builded a 2nd Flagship in pond. We won the game. But during the game i got involved with an ally, who accused me for trolling (since he had not see any1 build T2 navy in pond before), this person filled an complaint against me..! And then i got banned for a week, for building T2 navy in pond, can you belive that?! This is an example of the toxic community. The game is fun, the community not so.

I fucking suck at RTS. Like I am so bad at RTS they just don't click with me. Been playing this game on and off for a year and it is crazy fun. The only RTS I've ever managed to improve at.

I just donated $20 to support FOSS. I noted to them I'll further donate to push for Full controller support. That's an avenue RTS ought to consider helping broaden the genre's appeal to handheld and in the living room.

Full controller support please. "KB/M only" no longer makes sense today. It just restricts the RTS genre at the desk and gives no option to a controller input that is growing in popularity with PC gamers. - Command & Conquer 3 - Command & Conquer Kane's Wrath - Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 - Age of Empires 4 - Lord of the Rings BMFEII - Universe at War - Supreme Commander 2 - Tom Clancy's End War all on the Xbox have great full working controller schemes (obviously have to being on consoles) - Wheel menu - Expandable quick navigation mini maps - double click and "shift" queue functions. More and more traditional/non-traditional PC RTS games have or been implementing full controller support options: - Iron Harvest - Empire of the ants - Halo Wars 1 and 2 - Age of Mythology Retold - Aliens Dark Descent - Desperado 3 etc.. It helps widen the appeal to a bigger audience if they have the option to play those games just with a controller. Be nice to play all PC games on the couch with ** Handheld ** Gaming PCs now as they are growing fast. *IF* game devs don't have the resources to have full controller support, allow room for modding so it's easier for modders to make full controller UI schemes and mods.

solid review, probably one of the only reviews to get me to play these types of RTS again :)

I’m eager to try this out. Everything since StarCraft 2 has been… well, basically “StarCraft 2 but not as good”.

Great video! What song is playing 7:00

I play the sheet out of this game. I’ve been a long time player. GET THIS GAME. It’s free. It’s a blast.

Something many people fail to mention and really attracts new player into the genre is that bar doesn't look like it was made in 2007. Which also helps with visual clarity to the point where bar is an enjoyable game to watch.

10:20 Name literally one game that doesn’t have a distinct icon for the commander

great review! thanks!

As someone who's played this nearly daily for the past year - I highly recommend it!

BAR is the best available RTS game at the moment.. amazing work

It may be great, but I am tired of another Total Anihilation C&C, SC and whatever style of RTS, which focues on large armies and terrains which end up being flat map with obstacles. Why nobody can copy Dawn of War 1 + expansion or BFME style of RTS with a love to expand controlls like BAR?

I was a causal Age of empires player playing a few weeks every few years. From the moment I picked up Beyond all reason about 6 months ago I was hooked. RTS is now my main game genre and for the first time ever ive gotten pretty decent at the multiplayer aspect of the game from 1v1 to 8v8 even making the top 100 player leaderboard. This game has so many fun and dynamic ways to play. The lobby system allows you to find games that match how you like to play and means you will become familar with the different players and make friends as you play.

Best RTS out there, really. most strategic and tactical depth, most amount of content, free, the best control schemes that i have ever experienced in an RTS... I cant play any other. The fact you can easily play 8v8 games means even multiplayer can be pretty chill cause your contribution is minor.

Honestly, total annihilation Kingdom sounds dope of it was modernized

It is a gem, since the start, long time solo player, and still play all the classics, the mods keep them alive.

A big reason planetary annihilation didn't do well was that when they pushed the expansion, they deleted the old steam store so people had to purchase the entire game again.

Nice to see BAR getting the love it deserves.

I'm a Twitch streamer and I only play BAR, which is inspired by Total Annihilation, I used to play TA in 98'. I recommend Beyond all reason

Great video of what looks like a great game. Now to see if they can really scratch my TA itch - can I have build a Big Bertha look-a-like and take apart my enemy beyond visual range?

ummm what about Herzog zwei?(1990) Dune 2? (1992) they were made way before total annihilation (1997)

This looks very cool thanks for the info, +1 Sub

Have you heard/tried another free spiritual succesors to anihilation series Zero-K ? It kinda ruined other games for me due extensive terraformation or that each expolosion creating craters.

Been playing the game for about a year now. Me and a couple of friends. We usually play against the AI, with a 20 min. timer before all hell breaks loose. We boost the AI to give it a pretty big advantage and man...we've had so many awesome battles. Especially the ones where you barely cling on, are almost overrun but still manage to turn the tide, throwing nukes left, right and center just to keep the frontline from crumbling. An absolute gem of a game!

MB, look out for any lobbies that might have a SMRT clan member in it for some fun AI games, some might be willing to help get a grasp of the mechanics. :) Great video absolutely love this game :)

SimpleAI is stupid and doesn't care about recycling old structures and notoriously blocks its own factories with buildings. BarbarianAI is much more thoughtful about pathfinding and it even adapts to the player's unit composition.

This game is far and beyond better than most if not ALL paid-for RTS games.

We need more people to see how amazing this game is

You hit the algorithm, good luck friend.

BAR OP. Let's go boys

just the most toxic community you'll ever see!

This game is massive Download it and get on board!

The way you can effortlessly control the armies in this game is well beyond all other RTS games. The biggest downside is slow development, since the game is free and development voluntary. I think it's the best current RTS, and if you have development capabilities, it's super easy to jump in and even do something you always wanted for an RTS. Highly recommend it.

Now we just need you to cover Zero-K and contrast it's development fork from Total Annihilation, not so much as a 'instead of' but as a 'complement to' Beyond All Reason. For myself, The game I dream of is BAR with Zero-K's unit AI. I understand why BAR doesn't do that, but I still dream of it.

21:38 just saying afaik overwhelming amount of attack range rings was fixed and also they only appear like that cause of view switching in replay (my guess)