Command and Conquer Rivals

i’ve been playing a lot of C&C Rivals on the iPad. it’s the best RTS for iPad yet! they did an amazing job adapting RTS to small screens and touch input.

the unit cap is only six so you don’t have to worry about selecting and managing a lot of units at once and the whole map fits on the screen so there’s no fiddling around with scrolling. this all keeps things very focused on strategies with which units you bring into the match and which six units you have built at any given time. it’s great! there’s a lot of depth to the micro and unit counters so you’re always busy rotating units around to give them the best match ups. also instead of just taking out an enemy base you can take control over launch pads to charge them up and send a missile at the enemy base. this does a nice job spreading the focus around the map between bases, harvesters, and missile pads.

there is a bit of pay to win since people can spend a lot of money to quickly level up their units. but, it’s handled pretty well and things don’t get too unfair. the matchmaking does a good job of pitting you up against people with units of similar level and when you do get matched against a whale with high level units it becomes a “challenge battle” where there’s no penalty for you if you lose and a nice boost in medals when you win. this feels like a reasonable compromise where they can rake in the cash from rich kids wanting easy victories while subsidizing and not spoiling the game for the free to play people.

every day there are five “bounties” you can complete to unlock a loot chest. i look forward to doing these each day - it’s a simple trick to get you to keep playing but it works. 🙂 it takes about 10 matches to get through them and you can re-roll the bounties to get new ones if for example it wants you to use a unit you don’t like. i actually kind of wish you couldn’t re-roll and so were forced to try different units and tactics more. as it is i always just re-roll the bounties until they apply to my current GDI and Nod decks - then play 10 matches and i’m done for the day. after the bounties you get very little rewards (xp, gold, etc) so it doesn’t feel worth it unless really trying to grind your way up the ladder.

i made it into the top “tiberium" league in January (which it said was top 0.5% of players) doing just free to play. last season I didn’t get as far maybe because I kept trying to make bad builds work or maybe because more players came in. i may try just playing it all day some sunday and seeing if i can get back into tiberium before the current season ends. i’m playing the current meta GDI and Nod decks which is pretty boring but have a decent 70+% win rate so i should be able to grind up there.

anyway that’s my mini review and what i’ve been playing lately. 🙂