Rogue Command Review | A Clever RTS Twist That's Easy to Start and Hard to Put Down
Feneq Found What Makes RTS Games Fun and Built an Entire Game Around It. Mostly.
REVIEWS
Woody Wood
6/12/20265 min read
I grew up playing venerable series like StarCraft, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, and Dune. These games defined PC gaming for an entire generation. Unfortunately, real-time strategy isn’t nearly as popular today as it once was, but it still has a big footprint in Indie gaming.
Enter Rogue Command! A roguelike RTS developed by Feneq available for PC.
At first glance, I was skeptical about combining RTS gameplay with roguelike progression. It’s definitely not what I’m used to, and I couldn’t picture how it would keep me playing without an end goal.
Never judge a book by its cover, I guess, because it actually works quite well. The sheer variety of units, buildings and perks in Rogue Command offers a compelling reason to keep going with just one more run. The only question is whether you succumb to the repetitiveness that comes along with roguelikes.
Reinvents the RTS Formula
Rogue Command does away with a lot of classical RTS mechanics. Instead of a campaign, the game has you complete runs of nine increasingly difficult skirmishes against an AI opponent.
Progression is handled entirely outside of gameplay.
Every time you complete a battle, you select rewards on a reward map that unlock new units, unit upgrades, consumable abilities and bonuses. And with over 200 units, 100 upgrades, 50 hacks, 30 abilities and 70 enemy units, each run feels completely different.
You’ll also unlock new buildings and units as you clear certain milestones. Those units are generally more powerful so that you can progress across runs and take on even harder enemy bases.
Every time you beat a run, you gain an ascension level that introduces modifiers to make enemy units stronger, as well as new final bosses.
All this variety is what recreates the addictive loop that powers great roguelikes. A lot of the enjoyment in Rogue Command comes from discovering new assets and figuring out how to use them to your advantage.
The downside is that luck can play a bigger role than skill. Since your army is built around randomized unit choices and bonuses, you’ll sometimes field a weak army that gets quickly overwhelmed in the middle stages of your run.
Fast and Accessible
One of the biggest barriers to entry for RTS games is how long they take to get going. Traditional titles often require that players spend a lot of time each match building and researching before the action starts.
That’s definitely not the case with Rogue Command.
Since most of the strategic decision-making happens between battles, your focus is entirely on gathering resources, producing units and attacking the enemy once the match starts. There are still important tactical choices to make during the fight, but they aren’t centered around surviving long enough to build up.
The result is a much faster pace than most RTS games. The average battle lasts around five minutes, while the management phase between maps takes only a couple more. Even the final stage of a run can be completed in under ten minutes with a great build.
Rogue Command rewards applying constant pressure with well-balanced strikes while holding off counter-attacks. That makes for a much more exciting experience than amassing a huge force to take out the enemy in one fell swoop.
Rogue Command isn’t very flashy. The low-poly visuals are purely functional, the soundtrack gets the job done, and there’s barely a story tying everything together. Yet, Feneq was able to pick out what makes RTS games fun and strip it down to something more approachable, even for players who aren’t necessarily fans of the genre.
Not Enough Things to Do
Rogue Command’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness.
At first, the game feels incredibly varied as you're discovering all these new units, perks, and strategies. The problem is that all of those choices ultimately serve the same purpose.
No matter how different your army looks from one run to the next, you're still trying to accomplish the exact same objectives. You’re either hunting a specific unit or destroying a building.
The issue becomes more noticeable the longer you play. Since the base-building mechanics are so streamlined, things start to feel routine. You learn which units to select, what enemies to target first, and where the less-than-stellar AI is likely to attack from.
This is where narrative-driven RTS games would introduce quests and events to break things up, but that doesn’t happen here. To be fair, inserting new final bosses each ascension level does provide a small change, but you’ll still be chasing the same objectives no matter how many times you play.
The lack of alternative game modes is an even bigger issue. There's no campaign, no multiplayer and no secondary game mode that changes the formula. Once you've seen what a run looks like, you've essentially seen the entire game.
Eventually, playing Rogue Command will come down to pushing for harder fights, and that doesn’t appeal to everyone.
At the Edge of Good Value
There's no question that you'll get your money's worth if the gameplay loop clicks with you. The combination of unlocks, ascension levels, randomized rewards and hundreds of available units can easily keep players busy for more than 40 hours. That's great value for $20 USD.
However, other RTS games in a similar price range often provide more ways to enjoy their content.
Cataclismo, for example, includes multiple game modes, a creative sandbox and community-created maps. Godsworn offers a traditional campaign structure alongside its skirmish content. Both games give players reasons to keep coming back beyond simply increasing the difficulty level.
Rogue Command relies almost entirely on the strength of its core gameplay loop. The first 10-20 hours with the game feel fresh and can appeal broadly to most players, but anything beyond that is generally geared towards Roguelike fans.
Verdict
Rogue Command is a clever play on the RTS formula that combines streamlined real-time strategy gameplay with roguelike progression. The result is a game that's easy to pick up and surprisingly difficult to put down. The constant stream of units, perks and unlocks makes every run feel rewarding, even when things don't go according to plan.
Unfortunately, the game’s roguelike nature becomes more noticeable over time. Without a campaign, multiplayer, or alternative game modes, the experience starts to feel repetitive long before you've exhausted its progression systems.
If you're looking for a modern RTS that respects your time, Rogue Command is easy to recommend. Just don't expect it to hold your attention forever.
