Meridian New World Special Edition

I've run through enough real-time strategy campaigns to spot the difference between a game that respects the genre and one that merely imitates it. Meridian: New World falls somewhere uncomfortable between those two poles. Made almost entirely by a single developer, Ede Tarsoly, it channels the base-building, resource-gathering loop of 1990s classics - think Command and Conquer's pacing fused with a faint StarCraft aesthetic - and adds a light RPG layer on top. The primary resource, Shardium, is mined in a way any StarCraft veteran will recognise immediately, and the campaign missions ramp up gradually through a tutorial structure that actually respects newcomers. That part works. The mechanical hook that separates Meridian from a pure clone is its unit customisation system. Rather than producing distinct unit types, you select a chassis and then equip it from a pool of around 15 researched weapons - laser cannons, rocket launchers, plasma options, anti-air loadouts - before production begins. Your commander also accumulates XP in the field, which unlocks battlefield abilities you can deploy anywhere on the map: construction speed boosts, rate-of-fire buffs, targeted debuffs on enemy squads. Between missions, you walk the ship, talk to crew members, and those dialogue choices feed back into how the story branches. Some missions give you mid-objective decisions, like choosing whether to destroy enemy turret control, airfields, or factories - and that choice shapes the enemy composition you face for the rest of the level. For a solo project, that is genuinely ambitious. Here is where the spreadsheet view gets ugly. The AI is the game's most consistent failure. Enemy forces follow a simple script: accumulate units, push toward your base, repeat. To compensate, the AI receives bonus resources, which translates to a numbers advantage rather than smarter play. Your own unit pathfinding is worse. Units frequently ignore commands, wander off trajectory, or refuse to engage. On a tower-defense mission mid-campaign - a 25-wave segment designed to teach turret placement - broken pathing can turn what should be a tense defensive puzzle into a war of attrition with your own interface. Hotkey customisation is absent, patrol commands are missing, and camera zoom range is limited. These are not nitpicks for a 2014 RTS; they were genre standards before Meridian was built. The story side is more forgiving. Metacritic sits at 43 and Steam reviews land at roughly 48 percent positive from around 327 users - a mixed verdict that tracks with reality. The soundtrack is genuinely good, with a crunching guitar score that echoes C and C's energy, and the cutscene visuals punch well above the solo-dev budget. The mission variety does include stealth sections and tower-defense segments alongside straight base-building, though execution on those modes is uneven. There is a skirmish mode against AI and a map editor with Steam Workshop support, which extends the lifespan beyond the single campaign. A sequel, Meridian: Squad 22, exists if this one hooks you. As a strategy specialist I find Meridian: New World hard to recommend at any significant price point because the AI and pathfinding issues are not cosmetic problems - they directly undermine the core decision-making loop that makes RTS games worth playing. However, if you lived through the Earth 2140 and Total Annihilation era and want a short, story-driven campaign that scratches that itch without demanding much from your GPU or your wallet, the sub-$5 tier price is an honest ask. Go in with calibrated expectations: this is a passion project that shows what one person can build, not a polished commercial product that competes with the genre's benchmarks.

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