A Great Three-Way War, Told Badly
I loved the original Ashes of the Singularity. It was ambitious and rough around the edges, and it asked what an RTS could look like if you stopped worrying about unit caps and let the war happen. I sank more hours into it than I’d like to admit, so I came to the sequel with a lot of goodwill. I left with mixed feelings.
The setup is the best thing about the narrative. The war is not humans versus robots. It’s a three-way fight in which every side has a reason to exist. The Post-Human Coalition broke away from AI created Haalee’s influence and is driven by paranoia. The UEF is just trying to survive both of them. And the Substrate, fragments of Haalee’s own consciousness, each with an independent existence, are protecting a synthetic civilization while trying to prevent what Haalee sees as a coming catastrophe: a Second Singularity, brought on by unchecked Post-Human expansion.
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: PC
Price I’d Pay: $39.99
That last part is what hooked me. Haalee the AI isn’t after extermination. She wants to keep humanity confined to Earth to stop a future she believes will end badly, and that’s a more interesting antagonist than most strategy games manage. Questions about what we hand over to the machines we build, and what is left of us afterward, are the right ones to ask.
The execution doesn’t honor any of it. The launch campaign is told from the UEF’s side, and it doubles as the tutorial, introducing armies, regions, production, terrain and the interface mission by mission. I understand the logic, and it’s a friendly on-ramp for newcomers. But a story that has to teach you the interface while telling you something profound rarely does either well. The most fascinating faction, the Substrate, stays at arm’s length, and the human side never gave me characters to care about. I kept being told the stakes were enormous without feeling them, and by the midpoint I was skimming story beats that should have had me hooked.
Credit where it’s due: this game looks fantastic. The lighting, the particle effects and the way a battlefield slowly becomes a smoldering ruin of molten metal and tracer fire are all superb. Zooming from a single squad out to the entire front line is a thrill every time, and it’s one of the best-looking RTS games I’ve played in quite a while. The visuals carry a lot of weight and make the missteps elsewhere easier to forgive.
Scale is what Ashes II does better than almost anything else. When hundreds of units collide across a sprawling map, it’s spectacular, and for a few minutes at a time I got exactly what I came for. Once the spectacle settles, though, you’re doing familiar RTS things: building, expanding, queuing units and throwing them at the enemy. The scope is staggering, but the ideas underneath feel like a refinement of the original rather than a reinvention. The genre has been limping along for years, and I hoped this might be the game to give it a jolt. Instead, it’s a very big, very pretty reminder of what RTS games already do.
Ashes of the Singularity II is a game I wanted to love, and parts of it I do. It’s gorgeous, the battles are on a scale few games can touch, and a three-way war between the UEF, the PHC and the Substrate is a terrific premise. If you loved the original, there’s plenty here to enjoy, and the spectacle alone might justify the price. If you wanted the game that finally drags the RTS back into the spotlight, you may walk away a little disappointed, like I did.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.