Meridian: Squad 22

Significant improvement over New World, still not great. Units now are easily recognizable, map zoom and rotation is present, although pretty limited, upgrades make sense. Problem is still with AI — in conquest mode every single match will play out exactly the same, enemy AI never ever deviates from it's pattern: build several units (depending on difficulty), attack main base using most direct route (so you only need to build defenses only in one place), wait several minutes, repeat. On base side of thing it will only rebuild powerplants and factories. Destroyed turret control center, removing all defenses? Whatever.
Buy with very deep discount, play 10-12 conquest matches and delete forever.

The amount of time i had my units freeze in spot, or get stuck not able to be moved or 'commanded' ruined a lot of maps. Cool concept, but not made perfectly.

The game is "OK", however it is not worth the 14.99$ price tag. I bought the game on sale for 2.99$, and for that price, its worth its value, but that's mostly because it feels unpolished, and it is also lacking a lot of the traditional RTS controls, like being able to give units multiple commands to execute in sequence. Would i recommend the game? If the game is on sale for less than 5$, yes, but 5$ is the most i would pay for this game, any more than that, and it just isn't worth buying. I know the game was released in 2016, but even back then, standards were a lot higher than what was put into the project here. If the developer would add QOL features for general RTS control schemes, then i think the game would be worth the 15$, but for me, it is almost unplayable, due to the controls being lacking.

First mission. Built too many drones. Can't create more farms. Can't order troops to kill drones. I defeated myself.

I couldn't get into it. Storyline was hokey as heck, gameplay reminded me of Command & Conquer with a user interface still deeply rooted in 1995; frustrating and hard to use. Game progression was slow annoying timed missions through very easy near-tutorial levels.

Maybe it's a good game if you get into it but there was nothing enjoyable about this for me.

it's ok, far far far from a top rts game, actually starcraft 2 arcade alone maps could probably compete with this game. I've had a few good hours with this game but I'll probably not bother finishing it.

What to expect from a small team that makes a sequel to a poor game for a publisher who sells all sort of cheap crap? Well, pretty much more of the same. And that's exactly what Meridian: Squad 22 is. More of the same. Sure, we've got some improvements. For example, we can zoom and rotate the camera now (bloody awesome improvement for 2016), while even though there's still no speed settings, gameplay became more fast and smooth.

There are also two new game modes. The first one is just a bunch of missions with difficulty selectors (because you can't freakin' choose difficulty in the main campaign), while the second one is called “conquest” and offers you to capture the planet sector by sector (mission by mission). But since the main gameplay is still pretty poor (sometimes even more than before, actually, for example, situations when units will try to shoot each other through walls and hills are pretty common now), it's not like you'll want to bother.

And as for the main campaign, it's laughably short (only nine missions, all of which feel pretty basic) and the story feels like some sort of demo. So... yeah... Yet another game to add for Headup Games' pile of shovelware. Not sure who's to blame here - noobish developer, or publisher who didn't even give the game a chance, but the fact is – you want a good RTS – keep looking.

This is a small scale game. A pickup once and playthrough game, both campaign and extended skirmish. But at the same time despite its short playtime and little replay value its a nice cheep little RTS with allot of heart put into it (as far as I am aware one guy made most of this, I could be wrong). Reminds me of a mix of Halo Wars and Starcraft.

I see allot of complaints about unpolished and not up to the par of modern RTS but at the end of the day thats asking allot from a small studio that wants to put out a product. While I would agree there are elements that can use improvement like larger maps, more factions, a better and larger unit cap system (larger zoom out, better unit stats display, simply allot of little things that honest I at least don't mind because the game is playable and most RTS games have their UI quirks you just need to get used to on some level). I play allot of RTS games, this one is not bad and I have played far worse.

I bought it cause I wanted to support the developers, and I hope they go on to make more and greater games! I am giving it a positive review because I enjoyed playing it. I bothered even writing a review because it seems some people seem to downvote it just because it doesn't meet Triple-A RTS game standards. IDK, just my opinion.

Decent strategy game, if you manage to get it when on sale i would recommend it, but for full price it is not a good deal, game is little clunky, especially pathfinding and control in general, story is not very intriguing and game is very short, but again - for 3 bucks it is acceptable

Squad 22 isn't perfect. Right off the bat, there's no true skirmish mode, which is an odd ommission. There's no mod support, which is unfortunate. And many of the campaign missions are very "find the right build pattern" in nature.

Never-the-less, it's awesome:

The bad guys are called Skeleborgs, which is more Warhammer 40K than actual Warhammer 40K.
The gameplay plays fairly akin to Starcraft, but with naval and technology layers.
Maps are just begging for you to explore them.
The game is very biased to singleplayer, with multiple ways to play.
I mentioned that there's killer skeletal robots called Skeleborgs, right?

Squad 22 is likely worth more than they're actually asking for, you'll definitely get your money's worth.

I'm always looking for that "next" RTS to scratch my itch; something a game in this genre hasn't done since Starcraft II came out.

Basic 90's, classic RTS. Base building with four different types of units: armoured vehicles, naval vehicles, air units, and infantry. Naval units you will virtually never use, air units are unnecessary to build. Has a rather low unit cap that functions off population (base is like 17)

No reason to purchase for multiplayer.
The campaign takes about an hour -- if that -- to complete, with some of the 9 missions taking a whopping five minutes or less to complete. One mission requires you to wait for 20 minutes while the AI sends 1-2 units at a time against your army. I AFK'd for 10 minutes and won. Woopie.

The AI is hilariously stupid.

Vehicles do not travel down hills straight. They slide sideways.
Mission six has terrible lighting that makes it difficult to tell what your units HP unless you alternate between selecting each of them -- good job; the lighting of the maps actually interferes with your ability to play (thankfully the game is so easy this isn't an issue)

The story is disjointed, makes very little sense and does nothing to ease you into it. In medias rae is important for any story obviously, but if you're going to craft a narrative at least take time to properly introduce the narrative. Feels like someone spent 3-4 minutes writing this after crafting the campaign levels.


Even on sale, this game isn't really worth what you pay for it, and you'll just want a refund for the time it took out of your llife to play. If you're looking to shave time off your lifespan you should take up smoking or drinking; and doing hard drugs like herion because at least that's a fun way to shorten your life.

Feels like a step back from the original. Unit selection is still small, but customizability took a hit - you can't choose their armaments. Units frequently spaz out and shake from left to right while moving like they're on Ecstasy. The AI also cheats and runs on infinite resources.

On to the good, there's more modes and things to do. The world of Meridian looks and sounds as amazing as ever for a one man project.

Overall I'd say get the first Meridian and wait for this one to get some fixes.

The AI clearly cheats, you cannot repair your vehichles, your buildings, or heal troops except with a commander ability with a 45 second cooldown. The AI has prebuilt bases, and instant-spawning cheats apparently. So the campaign is garbage. Your only artillery is seaborne. Oh, you need to crack some turrets without naval support? Tough fucking luck. Your planes are the old wooden-canvas types. Not by technology level, by sturdiness. I know that even modern aircraft could be taken down by a single bullet, but keep in mind that hitting something that goes MACH 2 is the main defence against bullets in the aircrafts case, and if it is being stationery to be shot at (like in this game) it will be garbage (like in this game).

Update:

Also, would like to point out the complete and utter moronic logic behind "short range anti-tank long range anti-infantry" derpism. And the fact you cannot see the range of the units, until you try them out in actual combat. Or the retardness of the research system, where you have to go around and collect stuff on the map from canisters of knowledge. Like, the actual fuck is that supposed to represent? Also I'm pretty fairly sure the AI-s exact carbon copy of units has either a range-buffs on them, armor buff (which you cannot see either. what a fucking coincidence) or both, because they reguraly outshoot my exacty same army composition with higher health research (which is 10 whopping percentage) for some reason. It does attempt some stuff like StarCraft, where you can set the mineral node as the rally point of your workers, but it doesn't span the workers out like in SC so they won't get in each others way, no they'll happily que in front of the single mineral node, so you'll need to manually set them up anyway. You can hotkey ONE and ONLY ONE building to a hotkey, meaning if you want multiple factories, get ready to put a fucking piano artist to shame. Also another attemt at SC stuff is the fact you can rally your factories to a fighter unit, but if you move the unit before the reinfocements arrive, the reinfocements will go the last location, will not follow the unit set as rally, as in SC, which can lead to an army scrattered across the map. And since there is no "select all fighter units" like in SC, you'll have to look around the map, manually send them to an RVP if you want a coherent force.

Last note: I've removed this clusterfuck from my steam library. It does nothing but drives me mad. At least I know which devs I'll add to my "never buy from those dipshits again" list.

This game is actually quite good. It plays like a classic RTS similar to Command & Conquer. It's very fun to play and if you have played RTS games in the past then there is almost 0 learning curve. Do yourself a favor and try this game. You won't be dissapointed.

8.5/10 Well worth the price!!

Meridian Squad 22 is your standard modern RTS however instead of research or set units/upgrades per map you can choose your own via a tech tree of unlockables. By standard I mean, you build a base, train units, blow up the enemy base… or! Do a story mission controlling your unique characters. You have food limits so you can’t just swamp the map, microing your units makes you extra powerful in this. You can make unit compositions that work well together too.
Air units are fragile but easily the best unit once you get a swarm going but cost more food than infantry. Vehicles are slow and get blown up easy.

The main story made sense and the game play was enjoyable however only about 6-7 hours long if you can micro units well.
One thing that I found jarring is you cannot repair your base with another means but the main single method of repairing and keeping units alive- a command skill that is cast in an area. This means base defences are not ideal unless you’re food capped since you need to use your heal on them instead of your army.
In the last mission the AI got ‘stuck’ and was clustering units before reaching my base which let me make easy work of them (ah well). Also the actual map for the last mission could use some work.

If you’re a fan of RTS games give this a shot, I enjoyed it more than Gray Goo even though the play time is much less.
Now that I’ve finished the campaign I’ll be trying some of the challenge maps.

I was torn in deciding whether to recommend this or not, but in the end I have to say no. It has elements that, if tweaked, I feel the game would be so much more enjoyable.

Pro's:
1) Decent story, although there is a slight pause between each dialogue startup.
2) The way the resource gathering is designed is very similar to Starcraft, one of my favorite RTS games.
3) The levels have a very nice looking design and they make the attempt to be different from the previous map.

Con's:
1) Not nearly enough units can be produced. Starcraft and C&C 3 Tiberium Wars were so much more enjoyable to me because they allowed for a huge amount of units to be on the map at once. This game requires you to basically expand to another mineral patch before being able to build more units.
2) The maps do not let you place buildings anywhere you want. No matter where I try to build the building space always seems to be red. The same applies for where units can explore. Sometimes it looks like explorable terrain but your units can't really go anywhere.
3) A lot of the maps just feel like you're defending against nonstop waves of enemies that keep appearing from off the map. It gets repetitive very fast.

All in all to me some of these con's outweighed the pro's and I got bored real fast. As such, I can't give my full recommendation that this is an enjoyable game. But this is just my opinion so if you want to try out a decent new RTS then go for it.

If you've never played meridien before then prepare for frustration. There's no manual/user guide - you either have to fumble around yourself to work out how to do things or ask the (extremely friendly and helpful) community.

However, having to keep pausing the game to go log a question on the forum and waiting for an answer makes this game more of a turn-based game than a RTS...

It may be fun to play once you know how to play it, but... it depends how patient you are and how much of a pain you want to be by keep posting questions on game-play at the forum.

A fantastic old-school RTS with an innovative research system. At the time of writing this review, there are only 4 campaign missions available, but it's all really great. I can't wait to find out where the story is going. The music and sound effects also blew my mind and to me, these are easily the highlights!

There's also a Conquest mode which gives you randomly generated missions to play. I can see how this could get repetitive in the long run, but for now it works really great!

A thumbs up from me, I definitely recommend this game!

Elder Games revists the world of Meridan and with some nice new improvements. It still amazes me that this is the work of just one man. I have RTS games in my library that cost me three to four times as much (that were developed by teams of dozens) that are not as polished as Meridian: Squad 22 already here at early access launch.

If you like RTS games with classic playstyles of base building I highly recommend this game. For the price it is already worth the money in my book.

in general this game look amazing, a starcraft 2 style that keep it refreshing.

pro:
1. really nice graphic
2. nice dialogue
3. great tutorial easy to learn
4. game run really smooth, 60 fps on high quality
5. nice combat graphic
6. minion diversity

con:
1. minions get stuck at eatch other and slow down really badly
2.the building screen is way to small
3. not a big enough zoom... i love to watch my minion from a close up and really far for more tactical view
4.some of the quick key doesnt work properly
5. cinematic are just laggy has hell....

in general... give it a shot i really love it for the price even though i havent seen all the game.