PC Critic Reviews

It might not yet feel as complete as the 'official launch' label on its Steam page suggests. But still, you have never seen anything remotely like this. And Uber Entertainment's game loses no opportunity to remind you of that.

Overall this game does what it set out to do, and it does it well, giving both veterans of the series and new players a chance to experience some of the original magic of Total Annihilation, while keeping it fresh and extensive enough to create new battles and new war stories on a galactic scale to tell around the Real-Time Strategy campfire.

Planetary Annihilation has some amazing ideas and an inspired look, but too many issues with the User Interface, the AI and the random generation of the solar systems.

Planetary Annihilation has layers upon layers of features that push the RTS-genre to the next level. The problem is: these revolutionary features are so well hidden that half of the players won’t even find them. There are also some crucial parts missing. The game remains playable, but less of a high quality product as we had hoped.

A ridiculous learning curve hides a fun RTS.

Planetary Annihilation looks and feels underwhelming. Interplanetary combat might seem fun on paper, but gameplay-wise it's an absolute chore. And that's just it, Planetary Annihilation is missing all the FUN which was present on Supreme Commander - a much better successor to Total Annihilation. [Oct 2014]

True, its best qualities can be obscured in the early going by its unforgiving difficulty and the absence of good tutorials, but even when you're overwhelmed, speedy combat and smart AI reel you in. Give it time, and the fast and furious combat smooth out the rough edges into a compelling and challenging strategy game.

In regard to the real-time strategies there is one sure sign: if you defeat real opponents much easier than the AI - there’s something wrong with this game. If you ask yourself what’s wrong with this gamma-version pretending to be final release, you have to admit – anything bad with exception of engine. We are convinced that after the current gamma version the delta version will follow, then epsilon, zeta, and so on until the omega one. There will never be a final PA release because developers have no idea about the final state of their game. [Oct 2014, p.80]

Planetary Annihilation is a game full of wasted opportunities.

Despite its solid foundation this is not a good game. The techtree is too shallow, strategic finesse, cunning or defensive play is hardly rewarded. Add to that pathfinding problems, performance issues and even crashes and it becomes clear that the potential (or ambitions) were bigger than the final result.