For a price of cup of coffee I'm tempted to get the whole pack, being a fan of RTS. But I would like to know, are all those positive reviews based on nastalgia? Would the game be good for someone who's playing it for the first time now? Anything bad about the game I should know about?

It depends on your past experience and expectations with regards to RTS games. TA (as well as TA:K) were of the same generation of RTS as the classic C&C/C&C:RA series, WCII, and SC1, with a heavy emphasis on base building, and fielding large amounts of units. The big difference is that with its fully 3D engine, terrain can factor heavily into the gameplay. You could say it's almost the antithesis of RTT games like Myth: TFL, which eschewed base building and focused on small groups of individual units. My only major problem with the game is the the unit path finding can be quite shabby (again, this is more of a trait common to RTS games of the 90's). As a result, you may need to micromanage units a little.

The game, IMO still holds up quite well because of the single-player experience; the game with its expansions provide a wealth of single-player content targeting players of all skill levels, and if you get through all of that there's also a multiplayer skirmish mode against the AI as well. And on top of that, there's a wealth of user-created mods for the game too. The end game is particularly entertaining when you get access to each side's ridiculously powerful superweapons.

For the price of a cup of coffee, it's a great deal, IMO. But if you're coming at this game from more modern RTS you'll have to adjust your expectations accordingly.

Actually I love base building RTSs, and the late 90s is probably my favourite RTS era. And I prefer single player campiagn over single maps or multiplayer.

but... How shabby is shabby? I'm asking because in the last RTS I played, Tzar: The Burden of the Crown, horrible pathfinding turned a pretty decent game into somthing that was at times a real nightmare to play.

EDIT:
Yes, I'm buying it anyway. For such a price 2 games + 3 expansions sounds like a decent deal. I paid double that for Tzar anyway.

Its a decent game but it did not quite meet the expectations of C&C and Starcraft.

Shabby enough that if you aren't playing close attention, you may get units straying away from your formations to pursue attackers, and in my experience even get lost when sent to places far across the map. Thankfully the game does give you a way to actually customize your units' behaviour when under attack, and you can also set waypoints and rally points as well.

It's great. A big gray box commands a bunch of small gray boxes to destroy a bunch of small blue boxes so that they can get to and finally destroy a big blue box!

Yeah, it's worth having cheap but that's it. I recommend playing it at the office when the boss isn't around.

Well, yeah, it's originally dynamic soundtrack is broken (used to switch to combat music when a battle is going on). It now behaves like normal CD audio.

I had never played Total Annihilation before I got the GOG version several years ago and I instantly loved it. Before that I had only played Supreme Commander, its spiritual successor, and I actually never was a fan of the latter so it came as a big surprise how much fun I had playing TA. My only complaint about TA is actually that things can get pretty slow once naval forces are involved which take like forever to build and need only moments to die (IIRC one of my biggest issues with Supreme Commander as well).

I have been playing the Original Total Annihilation since it came out under Windows 95 up to its last update, Commander Pack, in '98. I also bought the OTA discs off of amazon in 2004 and played with it till i completed all its missions. When I came across GOG, I did my search and found the whole compendium (OTA, Commander Pack plus OST) for a nice price in 2013, so hence I got it again. I am now using a CyberPowerPC VIPER II with 6 Cores, 16GB RAM, 2GB Video Card, 1x 256GB SSD + 1TB HD and running on Windows 10. I cannot play 2 whole games in a day without my desktop PC crashing off on me. The only way to play it again is after a fresh reboot. I can play 4 hours non-stop (Skirmish Mode) without problems though. I just need to keep restarting my PC to refresh its resources before attempting another game/level. It only gives me black screen after it crashes only IF I play another game without restarting the system. Otherwise, it works, even with Core Contingency's easy levels. Crashes are common in the Medium to Heavy levels. Experiment to see what works best for all ye fans of this classic RTS game. Cheers! :D

Good game. community has been waiting for a sequel forever, decent community support (grab the fan patch), its original creator eventually made Supreme Commander which follows a very similar gameplay style.

HAHAHA I just realized the date

fuck.

TA is ok... but I prefer Starcraft.

*ducks*

I'm still playing it under Wine in Linux and it works great. It even supports 1080p natively, but I'm keeping it at 720p so I won't have to play with my binocular-goggles on.

To me it's like Nether Earth meets C&C. Being a fan of both these games and having played the crap out of them in my youth, I was instantly hooked. I even played TA in its hay day, but never got to finish the main campaign, let alone the expansion campaigns, which is what I'm slowly trying to do now.

If you're ok with low-res textures and low-poli models, the gameplay is still solid even today. If it were up to me, I'd include TA in the never-obsolete games hall of fame, along with other iconic RTSes like Dark Reign and Stronghold.

Edit: Now I see the original post is dated 2015. Eeeeehhh... sorry for the late reply, I guess? :)

There was also mods for it but I don't know the best ones to get.