Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins

Let me start off with a glaring flaw with this game. Beyond just the clunky controls, the absolutely abysmal pathfinding, the horrendous AI on both player and enemy sides, and one of the least useful UIs I've ever seen, the single player campaign has no difficulty select and no autosaves. Now, that doesn't seem bad, and it wouldn't be. But each of the aforementioned elements combine together into a voltron of absolute crapjank that is completely, utterly frustrating. There is a difference between a challenging game versus one that is hard for the sake of being hard. Additionally, being an obscure RTS game from the mid-2000s from russia, there is little to no english documentation from the game, and what little there is can mostly be found on very shady and sketchy websites. The Controls themselves are also extremely, extremely barebones and honestly just completely baffling, especially because it seems to be in service of a 3rd Person direct control mode that sounds neat on paper but ends up being absolutely pointless and useless. I am not good at RTS games; I mostly play single-player stuff on easy, and don't venture into the multiplayer at all, because I simply don't have the skillset for processing a lot of micromanagement at once. I had trouble with a few of the remnant campaign missions. And then I got to the sixth mission, which has the player defend against waves of enemies only for it to get wiped out and the player have to escort two hero units using some of the worst stealth mechanics possible, and if they are a pixel out of line, they die. Again, no autosaves, and no difficulty select. I'm usually fine with linear campaigns that unlock additional factions and storylines as you progress, but this is not a roadblock; it's a f*cking mountain. There will be people who say this is a hidden gem. It is absolutely not. It is a frustrating mess of jank and aged mechanics that exemplify the worst elements of real time strategy games, but with gimmicks that bog the game down even further. I paid around 50 cents USD for this, and I still feel ripped off because the game developers were either incompetent or malicious. This is not a good game, or even a decent game. This is the absolute worst thing a game can be: dissapointing even with no expectations. Everything is fighting against you to the point where it feels like the game actively wants the player to quit. It is not fun at all. Don't even bother buying it on sale, or even pirating it. It literally is not worth the hard-drive space. [b]Addendum[/b] After nearly finishing the game (I hope), I can honestly say my opinion still stands. Each faction feels gimmicky to the point where they become boring. Using the squad mechanics makes the ability for the Ascension's vehicles to transform pointless, since you can't access the needed abilities and they're not bound to hotkeys, making it more or less micromanagement, and the aliens play in a way that makes molasses seem fast, as unit production requires calling down batches of eggs and selecting the exact units you want instead of queueing them up. It's honestly just really clunky, and not in an interesting way. The story isn't even passable or interesting, being extremely forgettable and the world itself is just boring.