Tempest Rising Review

It pains me to say, but the RTS genre has been in pretty dire straits for…well, a long time. Actual releases in the genre have been few and far between, and it’s safe to say the genre has been in a bit of a stagnation period. Tempest Rising aims to end that period of stagnation with a clearly Command and Conquer: Red Alert-inspired entry into the genre, aiming to invoke some classic nostalgia while giving everything a fresh and modern coat of paint. And for the most part, Tempest Rising achieves what it set out to do.

A Solid Campaign

The Tempest Rising campaign takes place in an alternate history of 1997, where the people of Earth try to recover from an apocalyptic nuclear war. Two factions, the GDF (think GDI) and the Tempest Dynasty (think Brotherhood of Nod), fight over a powerful resource called Tempest. The GDF is heavily reliant on advanced technology and equipment, while the Tempest Dynasty utilizes a well-trained military with mostly conventional weapons to fight the war.

Tempest Rising Review

7.5Good

PlatformPC

Release DateApril 21, 2025

DeveloperSlipgate Ironworks

Publisher3D Realms, Knights Peak

Fans of the genre know that RTS campaigns can get quite repetitive. Most of the missions end up the same: build up a base, mass an army, then sweep out across the map, taking out enemy bases and expanding. There are missions like that, of course, in Tempest Rising, but in between are more missions with more diverse objectives, such as escorting a convoy across the map and carrying out rescue operations by tactically utilizing the special abilities of certain units.

Speaking of which, most of the units for both factions have a unique special ability that, when properly used, can help turn the tide of certain battles. Micro vs Macro play has always been a huge part of the RTS gameplay, and Tempest Rising definitely caters more to micro-based play. In fact, even during missions where I could more freely build up and train units, I never had particularly massive armies.

I played as the Tempest Dynasty faction and found the unit diversity quite refreshing. Most of the enemy GDF bases are littered with Guard Towers, a structure that allows GDF units to garrison inside for protection while still allowing them to shoot at my forces. However, one of the units in the Tempest Rising arsenal, the Ignitor, wields a powerful flamethrower. The flamethrower catches units (and buildings) on fire, causing damage over time, but can also “penetrate” the defenses of garrisons like the Guard Tower, taking out the units bunkered inside without having to first kill the garrison.

The campaign is accompanied by between-mission briefings akin to what you’ll remember from the Command and Conquer and Red Alert series. But rather than FMVs, Tempest Rising utilizes beautifully rendered cinematics. They’re great to look at, and help build the immersion of the campaign, I couldn’t help to miss that something special that the trying-to-be-serious but hard-to-take-serious FMVs from genre classics.

The eleven mission campaign—technically, there are two campaigns, one for each faction—doesn’t overstay its welcome, and was an overall enjoyable experience. Most of the plot points are predictable, so don’t expect anything mind-blowing in terms of storytelling, but you can expect an enjoyable and well-polished campaign with mission variety and fun progression via a between-mission upgrade system.

Lackluster Skirmish and Multiplayer modes

It seems as though most of the overall polish went towards the campaign. Don’t get me wrong, the Skirmish mode—essentially vs. AI mode—and multiplayer modes aren’t broken or anything. But with only two playable factions in each of the modes, many of the genre’s longstanding issues with monotony and hard-to-balance competitive play prevent the modes from standing out. There are only nine maps for the two modes, and unfortunately, no map editor for fans to add more to the potential pool.

Skirmish mode in particular suffers from an AI that handled the campaign better than the base building competitiveness required to really make an AI-centric mode shine. The AI didn’t seem particularly efficient at base building, which was odd because every time I played Skirmish mode, the AI played mostly passively, turtling more than applying pressure to me. This of course made things a bit too easy. However, when it came to actual battles, the AI did a good job of using the unique special abilities each unit has, and made actual battles more of a fair fight.

As for multiplayer, the mode as a whole feels like somewhat of an afterthought. There’s only one single match type for ranked play, 1v1, and even for non-ranked, there is only 2v2 and FFA. Across the nine maps, six are only playable in the 1v1 mode, while 2v2 and FFA can only be played on the other three. The limited modes and limited map pool resulted in me quickly growing tired of the mode. In the few games I played—six in total, where I won half of them—balance seemed rather solid. But with only two factions, things like scouting felt less important once you learned how to properly use each of the factions’ units. I’m sure there are many better players than me who can prove that wrong, but that was my experience.

Optimization is top-notch

I will say, aside from the oftentimes strange AI in Skirmish mode, I played through Tempest Rising mostly bug-free. And performance-wise, the game feels extremely well optimized. Visually, the dark and industrial world in Tempest Rising is beautiful. I have a rather newer PC build(Ryzen 7 7700X CPU and RX 7900 XT GPU) and had no issues, but a friend of mine running on a 6 or 7-year-old PC that I played Skirmish mode with mentioned several times how impressed he was with the performance even on higher settings.

Overall, my best word to describe Tempest Rising is solid. It’s not a complete gamechanger, but honestly for the genre I’ll happily take a well-polished and quality RTS experience, which is exactly what Tempest Rising is. The campaign is one of the better RTS campaigns out there and is worthwhile to experience. Fans looking for an RTS multiplayer mode to sink their teeth into might find some fun here, but temper your expectations. The developers have already confirmed they are working on adding 2v2 to ranked play, which will certainly help, but until the inevitable third playable faction is added to the game, I feel as though the mode might not reach its full potential.