I just finally got into this game and I’m completely shell shocked! I had seen it recommended before but ventured into other games without giving it a fair shake. As an avid RTS fan since Dune: The battle for Arrakis on Sega genesis, I’ve been slowly feeling more and more lackluster in the genres future prospects. I was a huge Blizzard fan and when Starcraft dropped I was completely thrilled that the development started to veer away from the Warcraft style into larger armies. I was a fan of Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, and others with similar style but it just felt…off, maybe clunky is a better term to use (even though westwood studios was the same company that produce Dune to begin with).
I was worried with SC2’s lean on commanders and “special” units during campaigns but was glad multiplayer stayed a little less “MOBA”. I was especially excited for Stormgate but it honestly looks more WC3 than SC and I was let down from my own expectations (we really need to have industry defined sub-genres at this point so advertising is better).
Then last weekend I finally downloaded BAR after I missed all of the Steam winter sales and wanted something new to play. I’m completely blown away from what this game has accomplished and where it’s going. This feels like the first RTS game I’ve played that was made by real RTS players.
There’s so much functionality and cohesion going on I don’t know where to begin or how to describe it. You know every game that you play where you have to download copious amounts of mods for quality of life or gameplay improvements? They just bake it right into the game. Ever just want to sit back and watch a huge 25 v 25 battle with 10k units on the board? Literally jump into any lobby you want and watch the chaos commence (8v8 is the most popular that I’ve seen atm). This entire week I’ve had my “BAR TV” setup where it literally non-stop plays matches in spectator mode (lobbies stay up where new players filter in and out so it will never stop unless you log out, awesome system).
There’s so much I have to learn. I was Diamond League in SC2 and on BAR I’m getting completely torn to shreds by the easiest AI difficulty. It’s such a different mindset you need with this game, the hardest opponent is yourself and keeping your head in the game. I’ve watched games where a team is up 30% in resource production over the enemy team but it all comes down to your moral. There’s so much potential for proper strategies and there’s no concrete “winning” path, it’s all about your tactics and ingenuity. With a team game it’s about support and functioning cohesively like an actual real battle.
I haven’t felt this excited about gaming in a long time and I can’t wait to see where this game goes, I’ve already started spreadsheets for comparisons and making build orders with counter plays. I think I’ve found my home for the foreseeable future and I’m definitely satisfied. For anyone interested I’ll link some good videos and content creators I’ve stumbled onto, if you have recommendations I would love to hear them as I’ve only been watching a few casters so far.
TL;DR: BAR good, it’s free so go download it.
Videos as promised:
WinterStarcraft - The biggest RTS battle ever?! Total Annihilation inspired RTS - BAR (Winter also has his own voice overlay on the game, I thought “Winter” was just a character/theme and I laughed my ass off when I heard his voice come through while playing and having one of his videos on in the background)
Drongo - The Best Strait Spawn Is Actually Water - Beyond All Reason (BAR) (the game has water units like boats and hovercraft facilities with it’s own tech trees! I just really such at water atm)
FitzBro - Beyond All Reason Beginners Guide (BAR) (one of the first one’s I stumbled across looking for more guides, not sure if there are better ones out there yet.
WinterGaming - Nuclear Terraforming in Beyond All Reason! (Insane Game) (I wasn’t aware that you can actually terraform in the game till this video and it’s incredible.)
Also in about 10 hours the 2v2 pro tournament is about to start! If anyone’s interested I’ll post a link but I’m not sure where it’s officially done yet besides one older 1v1 tournament I watched the other day (not sure if it’s the same channel or if what I watched was the “official” upload).
Edit: The official 2v2 Pro Tournament just wrapped up! It’s located here. The juicy parts are near the end but kudos to the streaming team for keeping it going for 8 hours! I really enjoyed the bump in professionalism and the overall flow of the event compare to the previous event I watched, their constant improvements is what’s going to be keeping me hooked for a long time. Also I’ll include a link to the actual game download below as @gmr_leon@mstdn.social pointed out it was missing,
If you’re going to dive into any RTS I would definitely recommend this one. With any of them you have to familiarize yourself with the units and the interface which can seem like a lot at first till they become like your best friends and you know them by heart. A lot of other RTS’s that have been around are somewhat losing steam for entry-level players and might not be worth the investment. If you want more “hero” types of RTS I would probably recommend something like Stormgate but if you’re interested in military/army battles then BAR is a winner.
I don’t know why I didn’t link the website lol, guess in my head I didn’t want it to come across as sponsored or something and anyone who was super interested would just look at the links in the videos or search it. I’m just very entertained atm so figured I would share the videos that got me to this point. Thank you for the Zer0-K and other references, looked it up and now realizing there’s a whole slew of projects and remakes I’ve missed out on.
You made me pause for a while and contemplate my RTS gaming history. I was never really enthralled with medieval or time period rts’s (even though I’ve definitely sunk a lot of time into some of them like lord of the realms) but C&C I absolutely loved when it first came out. The cool live-action cut scenes, expanding what I was familiar with playing Dune, even had family members that also really got into the series. I slowly drifted away from it, I realize it was because of the excessive never-ending expansions being released and an absolutely bonkers story of a political drama it was. I just couldn’t keep up with all the releases as a broke kid and the characters/story lines did nothing for me.
Old school Blizzard did a great job with Warcraft cinematics for the time, the mystery behind the world you inhabited was left to your imagination at the beginning. They did a banger of a job with the Starcraft lore when it came out as well. I still remember pouring over the game booklet with the origins story before and after getting to finally play it. Human prisoners lost in space like some kind of 30th century Australia stuck in cryo-sleep and only awake to find they can never return home? Fascinating. Zerg Hive mind with specialized broods with their own lore? Baelrog Brood is legendary to me still. Protoss was just so fascinating and everything connecting the universes stories together just seemed mystical. Though I feel like they just completely botched it, Brood wars story was too rushed with a million things going on, SC2 was just abysmal and generic story telling but I do appreciate that something did happen after sc1 as I would be complaining for different reasons if they had just dropped it and moved onto a different game lol. Sorry for the wall of text, was nice to get this fleshed out from my mind though.
No worries on the wall of text! Also fwiw I’m familiar with RTS games, which is why I mentioned not being in the mindset for them currently. They’re a lot to take in, even on a good day! 😅
Nevertheless, when I’m of the right mind for’em, I really enjoy’em. Building up outposts, assembling a bunch of units, and fending off enemies, it can be a bunch of fun!
Lately I’ve been more interested in peaceful builders/strategy games though. Still, BAR and the like remain really impressive!