Ok so I finally bit the bullet and shelled out for BZCC and I've just had a quick IA game on Alien Dunes ISDF (me) Vs Scions(AI) using the default settings and my intitial impressions are - well let's just say they aren't great.

Let's start with the gameplay issues, the biggest and most glaring issue is that the enemy AI is utterly braindead, I started building a base with factory, com bunker, guntowers, service bay and a couple of upgraded extractors. During this time I wasn't attacked once by the AI, so I went on a little hunt with a group of tanks and scouts and only found 2 AI extractors and few roaming scavs and a couple of gunspires. I had one small encounter with a warrior and scout around one of the enemy extractors and that was it , I was then able to drive up to the matrarch and mortar it to death, game over.

On the subject of mortars the target lead aiming thingy (T key) seemed off when attacking a gunspire at least ( after that I stopped using it, finding my own judgement to be better), I was shooting the red dot dead on and my shots fell short every single time.

Now lets talk about physics, they aren't fantastic , the controls felt slighty sluggish and unresponsive, this isn't how I remember BZ2 , I know there was a bit of a downgrade with 1.3 due to Nathan's crusade against flying but I don't remember them being quite as bad as this. I mean they aren't utterly awful now and I probably could get used to them with a bit of time but by the same token they could have been so much better. These are meant to be hover tanks, in theory there's no real resistance so they should be ultra manouverable but instead it feels more like driving a lead weight through molasses.

One other minor issue is that selecting units and buildings using the spacebar seems a little "twitchy", I'd often find myself selecting the wrong unit, but maybe that's just me - it has been a while since I last played this game.

Ok now let's discuss the visuals.... oh my, this is a bit of mixed bag isn't it.

My first impression was of the menu screens and to be honest they are plain, boring and ugly as sin, just a load of featureless grey metal blocks shoved together in an attempt to look "gritty". Urgh, horrible just horrible, they look like they were thrown together in 5 minutes during someone's tea break. I know the original menus weren't great but they were better than this.

The ISDF units and buildings were a very hit and miss affair, some bits look OK and others not so much, the biggest problem is that they deviate far too much from the original designs, the buildings especially, they all look horribly rounded now and it's not a good look.

Also I'm not a fan of the red lights and stripes on the ISDF units, red was a poor choice of colour for a start as it doesn't really stand out from the orange paint jobs enough, I'm not sure if another colour would work any better but the red certainly doesn't, I think personally I'd have maybe gone for white, although having said that I'm not sure if they are neccessary at all.

I'm sure there is more I could say on this subject but after a quick scan of the various forums it looks as though much of it has already been said . This is a bit sad as I don't really like to criticise Coxxon, I've really enjoyed much of his work especially the Uler mod.

Another thing I really don't like are the aiming reticules, they look terrible, they are really distracting which is far from ideal, and what's with the beveling effect ? they aren't supposed to be 3D objects and it just looks bad - really, really bad.

On a lesser note I wasn't keen on the look of the alien ruins on the dune map, it was painfully obvious that they were just low poly models with high detail textures slapped on them, the little tiles or bricks were way too small and looked horribly messy and repetetive from a distance.

On a more posiitive note the Scion buildings and units looked pretty damn good, nice work there, and the new lighting is nice as are the terrain textures.

Ok that's probably enough for now, it's quite a lot of stuff for one quick game and I'll probably have more to say once I've played a bit more. On the whole from what I've seen so far this whole thing seems somewhat rushed, I'm sure a lot of these issues really ought to have been picked up on in testing, it feels more like a mod than a professional commercial project. As of now you get a C+ I really hope you are able to address some of these issues as BZ2 deserves to be treated better than this.

Thanks for taking the time to post this. I also did a quick Instant Action (on Bridges) and can confirm some of the issues.

For me Battezone 2 is one of those childhood games that will remain endless. When it first came out my 4 MB video card couldn't even render the colors properly. And yet I was captivated and got pretty far in the campaign until I upgraded my card to see the graphics properly.

When Battlezone 98 Redux was announced all I could think was how cool it could be if BZ2 would also get the same treatment. Now it's here and somewhat predictably there are some bugs, but it seems more than most of us wanted to see.

I got BZ - CC last week to benefit from the discount. I purposely stayed away from the campaign knowing there would be some bugs. It seems however that I need to stay away for a while longer now.

Coming back to the glitches what I've noticed (in just one Instant Action):

- the scrap indicator is buggy in that either the white scrap bar or the topmost green section go out of the blue underlying texture;
- entering a relay bunker and panning the camera around messes up the shadow rendering; it seem some shadows are only rendered when you're on foot/in a ship;
- units have serious trouble navigating bridges;
- the ISDF constructor glitches when moving into position to start a construction (also it looks kinda silly in its red stripe overalls - the original design and stance were way cooler);
- the 'ground effects' for the Sabre Tank/Scout thrusters look bad; they seem to be either on or off and not gradual as the ships come closer to the ground or rise up;
- the water is transparent and looks very clear from above, but from underneath it's blurry and can't see anything that's on the ground (this is actually a gameplay issue because a player above the water can see and shoot one below, but not the other way around);
- the specular shine is a bit too much for ISDF, it should be toned down a bit;
.....

Overall I think we're weeks if not months away from fixing all of this stuff :(. I hope the devs stick with it and eventually do fix the issues. This game deserves it.

PS: On the ISDF red stripes and general unit design - One of the main things that I liked about BZ2 was the design of the units and structures and especially the ones from ISDF. While I do think some of the redesigns are good, overall there is a bit of the original feeling lost. I haven't fully decided on the red stripes. On the one hand I do think they're cool and make the ISDF units stand out a bit. On the other hand they don't really fit from a realistic standpoint and sometimes they make the low poly nature of the unit stand out.

@XenoRad yeah the game definately needs a bit more love from the devs.

Ok so I played a second game, again on alien dunes with me as ISDF and the AI as Scions and this time around I had a bit more of a positive experience.

I bumped the difficulty up to hard and the AI actually put up a decent fight this time, I was recieving some fairly strong attacks from maulers, sentries and warriors, I didn't build a tech center, training facility or bomber bay which I'm guessing is why I didn't see any archers, lancers or titans but the AI put up a good fight all the same.

I found that by reducing the HUD size in the graphics options the reticles looked a bit better although I still think they look too ornate but at least they weren't all that distracting this time around. Also strangely enough I found it easier to select units with the spacebar this time, not sure if this is a result of my graphical tweaking or whether I'm just getting used to the game again.

The Ai units don't seem to have much trouble getting around but then dunes is a pretty flat map so I wouldn't expect them to have much of a problem, I did catch service trucks trying to hump guntowers on a couple of occaisions though, but that's always been an issue.

I'll play some more this weekend myself. I was hoping we'd see a 2nd patch by this week's end, at least to fix the more glaring issues in the campaign missions.

I am concerned that this games was released with bugs any decent player could find in as little as 5-10 minutes.

Considering what the community did with the 1.3 patches it would be a real shame if, with access to the source codes, the devs can't bring the game into a better position.

The fact that so many obvious issues exist in the basic IA game is a bit of a worry, how they weren't spotted and acted upon is a bit of a mystery to me, I guess that maybe this comes from having devs who weren't familiar with the original game ?

As for the campaign, I never much cared for it tbh, it's always had issues and they've only been getting worse ever since work started on 1.3. I do feel sorry for those that want to play it though, it must be really frustrating especially for new players.

Oh one other thing why weren't the weapon effects updated with the rest of the graphics ?

They don't look any better than they did in 1999/2000, a bit of an oversight if you ask me considering there are mods for the original game with better effects than these...

I've just had another game, this time on Chill, same setup (me ISDF, AI scion, Difficulty hard) and hover units sometimes got themselves stuck on the slope running up to my base, I sent a whole group of Sabres back to my base to get repaired and only a couple of them made it.
I'd expect this kind of behaviour from tracked units but not from hover units, I'm pretty sure this was never a problem in previous versions of BZ2.

- the specular shine is a bit too much for ISDF, it should be toned down a bit;

yeah you're right about that it's definately a bit over the top .

This time around I built a tech center and some walkers but the AI were still only sending warriors, sentries and maulers at me, it get's really boring after a while of just being hit by the same 3 unit types.

The AI maneuvering and combat in this remaster seem markedly worse.

I remember it was never great in the original, but I can build two full groups of Sabres and lose half of them because they fly around each other and don't shoot anything.

The game seems considerably more difficult than I can remember and I don't think it's because it's actually hard, it's because my units are basically useless.

I've noticed a couple of things with my AI units, the first thing is that they seem to try to spread out when attacking a target, presumably so that they aren't shooting eachother, but they don't seem to be too concerned about getting into the range of enemy defences etc. when doing so.

Secondly the first shot they fire is always way off the mark but then they seem to get more accurate.

When playing as ISDF Sabres seem pretty ineffective now, I had much better results using squads of Mortarbikes, they can kill most targets quite efficiently and they're cheaper to make.

Assault Tanks seem almost useless but Rocket Tanks are pretty good if ordered to hold their position, providing you tell them to go to fairly strategic spots in the first place.

Walkers are just crap and to be honest always have been, their design is idiotic, they have their weapon hardpoints too close to the ground meaning that even the slightest lump or bump in the terrain renders them totally ineffective.

Ok a couple of more criticisms here:

1) Controls while in pilot mode are awful , just super sluggish and horrible, trying to get to a new tank when your old one is destroyed is now a real chore.

2) The walk animations for the ISDF constructor are a definate downgrade over the original, they just look really stiff, not sure if that's quite the right description but they lack fluidity.

Played a couple of IA games on Chill and Sea Battle in BZ2 and did the same for BZCC. Also played the 1st mission in the campaign for both games for extra comparison material.

I'm appreciating the new graphics and style of the remaster more and more. So far every map from BZCC is more refined and better lit than in the original. I also agree with the Pluto redesign although I did like the original purple color palette. One thing that I don't like about the new Pluto is the fast rotating sky. The stars are almost whizzing past and I doubt the planet actually spins that fast. Also, the spinning of the stars contrasts with the static images like nebulas and meteorites and brings it into focus that they're just that -static images plastered on a moving sky.

Moving on to the gameplay and bugs.

I mentioned some issues with the scrap UI indicator. I think that's due to the HUD scaling, some values may scale the different textures differently.

Also, the shadow issue when going inside the relay bunker looks like a consequence of a close shadow draw distance. When on ground, perhaps you can't notice when shadows start to render, but from the RTS perspective that's obvious.

@LizardBz2 - The Sabres got stuck on the base ramp on Chill for both my games so it's not exclusive to the remaster. Perhaps there is a small difference in the path finding accuracy as potentially I noticed a bit more bouncing about for various units as they try to navigate the terrain but all in all - the path finding is sub-par in both games.

I noticed a problem with the Turrets/Guardians, at lest the ones that are already spread out across the map. They seem to have trouble switching between targets as units come into and out of range.

For instance two units approach them, they start firing on one. That unit retreats but not enough to fully get out of range. The turret keeps tracking it but not firing while ignoring the second unit which can come in close and started firing.

The smoke and fire effects are glitchy in both games, they should update that code and fix it.

All in all, ignoring the current bugs, BZCC is BZ2 1.3 with a graphics overhaul. The original limitations are still in place.

I think it's time for some of these limitations to be fixed/reduced in the coming weeks/months. With access to the source code such an opportunity should not be squandered.

Nice comparison well worth doing.

@LizardBz2 - The Sabres got stuck on the base ramp on Chill for both my games so it's not exclusive to the remaster. Perhaps there is a small difference in the path finding accuracy as potentially I noticed a bit more bouncing about for various units as they try to navigate the terrain but all in all - the path finding is sub-par in both games.

I guess my memory is a little rusty, it's been a few years since I last played BZ2, I think I've forgotten more than I remember about this game.

They seem to be fairly active in patching things and responding to user input - just not here on GoG. The steam page sees much more activity.

You'd be better served posting this over there, honestly.

I would if I could, but I can't so I'm stuck here.

I made a steam account when I saw BZCC was getting released, but I can't post on the BZCC steam forums, or any steam forums.

Just chipping in here, there is a patch coming out to address much of what you've raised regarding the AI. Hopefully this will improve the experience for you :)

Also apologies for my late response on here, will be more active from here forward. Things have been a little bit hectic :P

Thanks for the large amount of feedback, it's really detailed.