Final verdict

All in all, as an expansion to a great multiplayer RTS, Forged Alliance really delivers, satisfying all the needs of the fans. The new balance, economy and the new units are excellent, and in that regard, it is basically what Brood War was for Starcraft. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the rather predictable and highly scripted single player campaign, which seems to be nothing more than a neat extra for Supreme Commander veterans to play around with. This would all be fine, were it not for the puzzling fact that this expansion is a standalone game, somewhat suggesting that beginners could start their Supreme Commander adventure with FA.

Such players will most likely be disappointed by the horribly overwhelming campaign and brick wall resembling learning curve, compared to the "build 3 extractors and 3 power generators" style of the early maps in the original game, and the fact that they will only be able to use the new faction in multiplayer battles. Basically, if you liked Supreme Commander, then skipping this would be a sin; if you are new to the SC universe, you're better off getting either the vanilla version or the gold pack, containing both games.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	1800MHz Processor	3.0 GHz Intel or equivalent AMD processor or better
Memory	512 MB	1GB
Graphics Card	128 MB video RAM or greater, with DirectX 9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support	256 MB video RAM, with DirectX 9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support
Graphics Card Example	NVIDIA 6x00 or better	NVIDIA 6800 or better
Free Disk Space	5.1 GB	5.1 GB
Net Link	Broadband (DSL/Cable)	Broadband (DSL/Cable)

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ / Intel Pentium D 830	AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ / Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Memory	1 GB	2 GB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon X850 256MB / NVIDIA GeForce 7600 256MB	ATI Radeon X1900 512MB / NVIDIA GeForce 7900 512MB
Free Disk Space	6 GB	6 GB
Net Link	Broadband	Broadband

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	92	Absolutely top notch multiplayer , this is what Supreme Commander should have been at launch. Somewhat disappointing single-player, partly saved by the finally usable AI, but that's not what this game is about anyway. Beginners are out of luck without playing the original game though.
Graphics	91	All in all great graphics and the new units and race really do stand out. Maps are a bit bland. The visuals only really shine when zoomed in though, and this doesn't happen too often.
Audio	88	Good soundtrack and great voice acting, but the lack of unit acknowledgements robs the game of a great verdict in this department.
Technology	85	Lots of great features, great visuals, massive amount of things happening simultaneously but the fact that people with single core CPUs won't be able to play online with an enjoyable performance is disappointing.

OVERALL

A must have for Supreme Commander fans, Forged Alliance improves upon the original game in every possible way. The amount of different tactics one can use is simply unmatched in any other RTS - however, if you are new to SC, you may want to get the original game first.

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