Supreme Ruler Ultimate Review

For a series which spans back over 30 years, Supreme Ruler has had rather a tough time of things at late. The Kickstarter campaign for Supreme Ruler 1936 didn't get anywhere near its 60k goal, it was looking pretty doubtful even when we did our interview with them last year. The two devs then ploughed on anyway to finish the title for this May. Although the reception was mainly positive, with only a small group of fans criticising the game for being rushed, the release was rather unceremonious, receiving very little attention from media outlets. Perhaps it is a combination of these factors which influenced BattleGoat studios to have another crack, and at the same time create a title which wraps up all the Supreme Rulers into one.

Being somewhat of a grand strategy title, Supreme Ruler Ultimate is clearly not going to be for everyone. It's a slow-paced game of building up, manoeuvring, and smashing into enemy lines. You can trade resources and techs with other nations, form alliances, research new unit designs, build factories, and generally do all the kinds of strategic bits and bobs you'd expect in a game like this. This, of course, means that the game also features the obvious types of units - tanks, infantry, planes, cruisers, carriers, and so on.

The British air-force is looking rather healthy at the start of WWII

The entirety of the game's play takes place on a very orthodox-looking continental map of the world. You can very quickly zoom down to individual battalion level, all the way up to a spherical globe level. There does appear to be a minor performance issue with the game at higher levels of zoom, but it doesn't really impede gameplay. There are several speeds of gameplay, including pause and slow-motion. The range provided is sufficient, although the fastest game mode is, perhaps, not quite fast enough for some.

There's no doubting that the game is a great crack for fans of the genre. It's fun more or less from the get go, and seems to have enough depth to provide lasting entertainment just in terms of the single player offerings. In addition, if you've played games like this before, Paradox's titles for example, then the learning curve isn't too steep. That's a bit of luck because the in-game tutorial only explains about a third of the game mechanics. There are absolutely loads of different units to research and produce, and seemingly a variety of strategic options including espionage, diplomacy, and offensive or defensive warfare.

It can be confusing to work out exactly who's winning with the sprawl of units and explosions

There are a variety of game modes offered, including WWII campaigns with various goals scattered throughout, individual scenarios, and a custom sandbox mode where you can craft your own goals. The latter two can take place in various timelines including the WWII period, the cold war period, and the near future. These timelines reflect the various Supreme Ruler games released over the past few years. The game also features a local LAN and internet multiplayer mode.

The graphics and sounds do their job. I don't have anything particularly noteworthy to say about them, which is probably a good thing. It looks like there has been some effort made to represent period units in a relatively faithful way, I suppose that's something which fans of the WWII era will appreciate. Personally, I haven't got a clue what a Mk VII Tetrarch tank actually looks like.

The only real major problem is down to a lack of information, both about what is actually happening and about how the game tactically functions. When you send in 20 tanks against the enemy and your units all start scrabbling about in battle - dying, retreating, destroying, and so on - it's rather difficult to see exactly if you're winning or not. Then, when you do win (or lose) it's so entirely clear what you did right or wrong. Was it the early air strikes which pre-weakened the enemy lines? Or was it a lack of supplies to your front line? As a matter of fact, how exactly do you get supplies to the front line and how much supply are they lacking right now? It's difficult to know exactly what you should be building, where you should be sending it, and when is a good time to sit still and when is a good time to push forward.

Fascist Spain shifts alignment to the allies and pre-empts Italian aggression. Who'd have thunk it? Mussolini didn't, that's for sure

Having interviewed lead developer David Thompson last year I can almost imagine his answer, "How would you know those things in a real war?" Yeah, it's a good point, and to be honest there's something to be said for a little bit of mystery and discovery in a strategy title - it's not like I learned how to ace Civlization IV on deity without reading a lot of in-depth strategy forums. Nevertheless, I feel that some of the battle information could be better displayed with bars and statistics, like how many of their guys you killed in that last specific assault vs. how many you lost, and also that some of the games concepts could have been explained in greater detail in the tutorial. But at least there is a tutorial, and you do get more of an insight into the game's workings from the tips which intermittently pop up on your news bar.