Seeing how Brad wanted us to give reviews and feedback, I felt really compelled to give my opinions. Sorry it isn't going to be all positive, having just literally dragged myself through 7 hours of playing this. I have not played multiplayer(which you will understand why if you read below) and only got up to campaign mission 4(painful enough as it is). Also, I will be making a lot of comparisons to Supreme Commander, which is the high bar which I think all RTS games need to be compared against.

UI, information feedback and ease of access

I would like to say firstly that I played this in 4k resolution and 1440p, so a lot of my views here are from a very high resolution point of view.

To start with, please redesign your mouse cursor. And I mean please do it! Most of the time, I am always trying to find the mouse cursor. It is not contrasty enough against the game's graphics and way too small so it easily loses itself in the background. This issue with the mouse cursor is almost by itself the singular game breaker because I will keep coming back to it.

This is a fundamental failure in the UI design. The mouse is a tool which we interface with the game. The mouse cursor is the most important feedback to us to how we use this important tool. If you are spending most of your time searching the screen for the mouse cursor, you lost. Right now, I have not played any multiplayer, but based on my current experience playing the campaign and constantly hunting for the mouse cursor, I doubt I will dare touch multiplayer. There is no excuse for not thinking of how to find the mouse cursor. I emphasize again, you need to always know where your mouse cursor is. Without that knowledge, you cannot interact with the game! A good RTS to compare your mouse cursor against is Supreme Commander. Supcom has a bright contrasty mouse cursor and its context changes are very well highlighted in bright colors. Easy to find your tool and interact with the game.

Healthbars are another pet peeve. The healthbars again in such a dark color, I can't tell what state of health my unit is in. To refer to Supreme Commander again, bright green bar, easy to see and very contrasty. It is bad enough that in high resolutions the health bars are really tiny but at least make it obviously visible. When playing mission 4 of the campaign, one of the alien units appears to have a shield, and thus a blue healthbar over its brown healthbar. This is again ill-advised in my opinion. I haven't played far enough to know if shield health is separate from hull health, but can shields regenerate? If they do, do hull health regenerate also? What is the level of my hull underneath my shield? Supreme Commander does this right with little blue shield bar below its green healthbar. You know it might be shielded, but you can tell if that's a walking wreck with strong shields or a brand new target with strong shields.

The sounds in this game are completely pointless and useless, other than to make some noise. Honestly, you click a unit, you hear some robotic grunt. You order it to move, you hear nearly the same robotic grunt. You build a building, same robotic grunt. Units get produced, same robotic grunt. Something happens, same robotic grunt. Everything is the same robotic grunt. Only 1 sound effect seems to give me important feedback, when I hear the Artemis fire, that sort of indicates that I need to look around for a battle somewhere. The voiceover when you run out of metal, I could hardly make out what she is saying. 

It is not just the sounds, information feedback is just poor. I like how you can assign an army and from that army, make orders of units to round up the army. However, while you can do this, you can also order units queued in the factory. How do I know if a unit being constructed at the factory is destined to be part of the army or an independent? Also, queuing units from an army requires that a unit of cruiser level or higher be alive. Sometimes the cruiser dies and you lose the whole build queue from the army. Do you know this? Does the factory tell you this? Does the game tell you this? 

Engineers do not report that a building is completed. Factories do not report that a unit is completed. These are all important information cues that I need to know when I can start some move, strategy, whatever. And somehow, I get the feeling someone will tell me "but there are such information cues, you ignored it!". In which case, if those cues are so easily missed, they are useless. 

Gameplay

Can I first say, while playing this game, I was continually frustrated by 1 aspect so much that I really could not enjoy the game much. Yes, it is that bugbear, the missing mouse cursor. 

Honestly, when I play a game, I want to be challenged by the game. Instead of being challenged by the game, I am first challenged by its UI. This detracts massively from being able to enjoy the game. I play "find the mouse cursor" more than I actually try to interact with the game. Please fix the mouse cursor! I am not willing to play multiplayer with this mouse cursor. I hate to be playing "find the mouse cursor" when the opponent is playing "trash my base".

Now, I'll take a deep breath and move away from the mouse cursor.

During the development of AotS, I remember that this game was touted to be less clicky, more thoughtful. Unfortunately, it feels as clicky, if not more than Supreme Commander. In Supreme Commander, a high actions per minute(from here on referred to as APM) count is beneficial in micromanaging but in general I could get away with not needing to click spam the game. There is very little automation, or a feel that there is very little automation. Patrol routes are rather unintuitive to manage. Some units seem to know how to move and attack, some just seem to move through fire with horse blinkers.

The units feel very dull. Everything shoots blobs. The 1 exception which I really like is the Zeus. That has a lightning whip like attack. I like it, very novel. However everything is is just a platform that fires blobs at other platforms. You see lots of blobs flying, blue blobs, yellow blobs, just blobs flying everywhere. 

Firing blobs aside, battles seem very much a stationary affair so far. It feels like many of the units cannot move and fire, yet some can. However, I do not get the feeling like I can order my army to perform maneuvers, while the the units attempt to fire at the enemy while maneuvering. It is like I order my blob to the enemy blob, the 2 blobs clash and they stick to each other like 2 lumps of Play-Doh stuck to each other. There is no sense that I can successfully focus on maneuvers. Each time I order my unit to move, it is like a forced move and my unit attempts to move but does not fire back. It only looks like attack-moves will allow the unit to fire, but it stops to fire.

I also wish there are firing range circles. Maybe there is, but as of this moment, I cannot find it.

Army formations are neat, but it can be improved. Some of the aspects of the army which I really like is the ability to queue unit builds to round up an army. You also get a nice window telling you what units you have in this army. The negative aspect of the army is the lack of my ability to micromanage individual units within an army. Say I have Artemis units within my army which consists of another 60 Brutes. They clash with an enemy blob and my Artemis get too near. I cannot select the Artemis and order them to move back without telling the army to move back, in which case, the whole army moves back and most stop firing at the enemy. It will be nice if 1-0 are group select commands, Ctrl 1-0 are group formation commands, F1-F10 are army select commands and Ctrl F1-F10 are army formation commands. And if you press F1-10, you give it the army commands like you do now, but if you click select an individual unit, it is an individual unit. At this moment, I'm forced to keep artillery type units in a separate army from armored type units.

Constructing buildings in this game is quite frustrating at times. I cannot tell how big a footprint a building takes, and how much space it needs. There is a feel like there's an invisible grid in the game that your buildings snap to when you build them, but yet I don't get a visible feedback on the size of the building grid it needs. This makes planning a base difficult. Supcom has a grid, and it shows you very nicely in green squares the footprint of buildings. Building bases in Supcom is such a pleasure and so easy, why can't you just borrow a cue from it?

Command giving while paused is a nightmare. Just try this. Pause the game, select a unit and then order it to move 10 times. See what a nightmare that is now? 10 move arrows if you give it 10 commands. Which is the correct or valid arrow? Not only that, you cannot see which unit you actually specifically select. The UI is paused at the moment of the game. If you have 2 units selected when paused, and you go select another unit, it does not tell you that. The UI still shows the 2 units selected just when you paused the game. 

The Campaign

Can I say that I really dislike the campaign? 

It has a very linear feel to it and not only does it feel linear, but it feels like you have to play a certain optimized manner exact to what the scenario wants. 

This is not what I think of a campaign battle to be, this is what a specific challenge is supposed to be. Campaigns mission 1 and 2 were too easy, so it sort of set a frame of mind going into campaign mission 3. 

Campaign mission 3 was unforgiving. As of now, I know only 1 way to complete mission 3, which is to do as Mac says and put Artemis cruisers on the plateau. Any other way of playing seems to result in a loss.

And if I thought mission 3 was bad, I spent 5 of my last 7 hours on campaign mission 4. Needless to say, I have not figured out how the devs want me to exactly bend this piece of wire.

I thought the early campaign missions are supposed to help you ease into the game and learn its mechanics and units. No, instead by campaign mission 4, it decides that this is all about devs vs players. I must be punished for wanting to play the campaign. Yet by campaign mission 4, I doubt I have scratched the surface of the game yet. Campaign mission 4 is still slowly showing me new units by a trickle, yet I doubt I will be giving the game much time any longer because the plain truth is I am not having fun trying to figure out how the devs really want me to complete mission 4.

Campaign mission 3 was the stark warning, that I have to finish the campaign mission in a fixed manner. At least campaign mission 3 tells me to put artillery cruisers on the plateau. There are no such hints in mission 4. There is no sense of being able to do things my way.

Conclusion

In short, I really was hoping that this game will take over the throne which Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance still sits on. But no, Ashes of the Singularity does not even come close. And this is extremely disappointing because I personally like Stardock due to 2 superb games you have released; Demigod and Sins of a Solar Empire. Both Demigod and Sins of a Solar Empire show that you know how to make games. Both Demigod and Sins of a Solar Empire are absolute gems which I still absolutely enjoy and that makes it even more painful to see how flawed Ashes of the Singularity is.

At this current state Ashes of the Singularity feels more like a DX12 tech demo than a game. Sorry to say it but I honestly didn't feel like I was playing a game the last 7 hours. If I wasn't trying to hunt down the mouse cursor, I was busy trying to figure out what on earth is going on. I don't feel like a commander in command of an army and fighting to win.

Perhaps I will revisit Ashes of the Singularity again later but I was genuinely hoping that this game will grab me at hello. Supreme Commander did and I had to tear myself away from the game. I had to drag myself through Ashes of the Singularity. I had to force myself to give Ashes of the Singularity a chance. I just have to say I was deeply disappointed as Ashes of the Singularity plainly refused to deliver despite the chances I gave it.

Sorry Brad, I know you tried. I just hope you will try harder.