I've finished almost all of the possible campaign content for this game, and I would highly recommend it, though with a few caveats.
The base gameplay in Hordes is the same as the rest of Petroglyph's "8-bit" line, so expect to play something that feels loosely like Command and Conquer, but this time with a bit of WarCraft mixed in. Unfortunately a lot of the issues with pathfinding, destroying terrain, workers going insane, etc, do persist as well. The positives also carry over. For a lower budget game, the micro in more open spaces works fine, hotkeying through big deathballs works well, and the C&C type UI is extremely intuitive, especially for newer players.
The campaign takes place after 8-Bit armies, and has some of the same drawbacks(lack of production value, no real story, no cutscenes, but there are a lot of scenarios to play through, and trying for 3 stars on all the missions is pretty engaging, and gave me good reason to go back and retry earlier levels. The benefits from 3 staring the missions are ridiculously overpowering, however, for some missions like the finale of the Lightbringer(humans) campaign, it's probably worth it. If you're newer to RTS games, I would like to note that there isn't really a perceptible difference between normal and hard difficulty. Getting bronze on most missions is very easy, but even during a few missions on the standard difficulty for the Lightbringers, you'll hit inconsistent challenge spikes that aren't mitigated by dropping difficulty. You'll be able to finish everything in the game without issue, just know that things might get grindy or attritional at times, and not in the best way. For the most part, though, the missions are good.
If you can get this game for something like 5-10 CAD, that would be my recommendation. 20 CAD is too much for what's here, but this game is a very good time investment, even if the level of production doesn't, in my opinion, command its regular asking price.
For multiplayer, I would have recommended something like 8-Bit Armies: Arena in the past, but as it's been delisted, if you're just into that element of the game, I would pick up the 8-Bit Armies game first as I believe that's the most competitive/balanced, then look into picking up these expansions if you want more factions to play with your friends or something.
If you're a fan of C&C and Petroglyph/Westwood RTS games, you already have this game. If you're looking for something to dip your feet into an RTS and learn the controls, this or any of the 8-bit games would be great as a low-cost introduction to dip your toes, without being too shallow. If you want a more premium experience, this definitely isn't for you, and you'd want to look at StarCraft 2, Grey Goo, or the first Company of Heroes game for a game with a bit more production values. Early C&C games are super easy to obtain, and there's even a remastered version on steam of the first titles. C&C 3 is also pretty good and still runs as far as I'm tracking, though don't quote me on that. Age of Empires is still popular and updated. This game will seem very average and will not match the titans of the genre, make sure that you don't buy this instead of the bigger ticket games if you'd prefer that.
This isn't a blockbuster big ticket RTS, but that's clearly not what it's billing itself as, and the mix of C&C building with WarCraft type units is charming, and recommended for fans of this studio.
