Etherium

My first instinct when I loaded up Etherium was that someone had submitted a promising design document and then run out of runway before the game was actually finished. The bones are there. Three factions, the corporate Consortium, the zealot Intari, and the enigmatic Vectides, each with distinct unit rosters and six commander abilities covering things like planetary bombardment, map exposure, and climate manipulation. Territory control is node-based, similar to Dawn of War's sector system, where you cap points, chain adjacent outposts, and slot in upgrades like tech centers, refineries, logistic hubs, and orbital cannons. The upgrade slot limit is the game's best idea: with only a handful of build spaces per colony, every choice locks out another, and that tension is real. The Conquest mode wraps all of this in a turn-based galaxy map where you allocate action points, move fleets, and then drop into ground RTS battles when planets are contested. On paper, that is a solid structure. In practice, the execution falls apart in several spots that matter. Unit animations are genuinely poor, infantry float-waddle across terrain and weapon effects look like neon pellets, which would be forgivable if the systems underneath were tight. They are not always tight. There are no keyboard shortcuts for unit deployment and no way to queue auto-production, so every reinforcement requires three clicks through menus while your front line is actively getting chewed up. The unit cap tops out around 18 total, which keeps battles small, but because positioning and flanking are not deeply modeled, those small skirmishes end up feeling thin rather than tactical. The dynamic weather system, sandstorms stopping movement, blizzards freezing rivers open, volcanic eruptions closing routes, does add genuine disruption and is probably the most fun the game has, but reviewers at launch noted it tips into frustrating randomness as often as it creates interesting decisions. The faction differentiation is shallower than the marketing implies. Each faction shares the same base unit categories, with only four unique units per side, and three of six commander abilities are identical across all three. The Consortium, Intari, and Vectides end up feeling like reskins with different stat weights rather than fundamentally different playstyles. The single-player Conquest mode campaign is the main offering, but mission structure repeats itself quickly and the story never gives you a reason to care which faction you picked. AI behavior is inconsistent: the enemy rushes your nearest territory on normal difficulty and does not adapt when you out-tech it, but bumps up to punishing on higher settings. The multiplayer situation is the real problem if you are buying this in 2025. The player base was essentially dead within weeks of launch, and nothing since has revived it. Reviewers at the time reported waiting over an hour to find a single opponent. Four-player matches, which is the mode where the design probably shines most, are effectively impossible to find organically. If you have three friends who will commit to booting this up together, there is a functional and moderately enjoyable RTS here. If you are banking on finding a random lobby, stop now. The Metacritic score of 62 lands about where the game deserves: not broken, not dishonest, just underdeveloped and outclassed by cheaper or older alternatives.

Fred · Scout Team

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