New patches and DLC took this from a mediocre game to a good game, well worth your money.
This game got slammed hard by users upon release. Brutal, half thought out 1 star reviews. Good honest reviews of 5-6 out of 10. Patch after patch the game evolved into something better. But, first, the game:
The gameplay in Sup2 is a mix of Supreme Commander 1 and more common RTS games. Instead of a set income, you have resource pools. However you have no worker unit besides builders, so resources do have a set income depending on your extractors. You still have large armies, however less large than Sup1 because of the games attempt to fix the fact very few people could run Supreme Commander 1 upon release without a really good computer. It runs like silk, and it can run on older hardware. The battles are just like Supreme Commander 2. Experimentals however, have been toned down. I agree yet disagree with this. It sometimes ruined the strategic feel of the first game and became a production war, yet not very often. They are more like a bunch of assault bots dumped into 1 unit with special abilities. But some of these experimental prove interesting. The Noah Unit Cannon shoot units across the map which can break a siege and provide a good means of harassment, and the Cybran Bomb Bouncer provides a virtually unbreakable anti air shield and a huge "mega blast" to clear out units in a radius around it, and the magnetron can either pull units in or push units out a radius around it, providing an interesting defense. Overall, it's a very fun, actionpacked game. However, in the tournament circuit for this game, games tend to be uninteresting and take away the whole spirit of the game, with some games being as short as 5 minutes. So it's main source of joy is the casual, unranked multiplayer and skirmish modes. The maps are interesting, detailed and fun. Some are too small, though, with classic maps from Finns Revenge being so small it takes a few seconds to get to the opposing base, and no room for anything but small armies and naval conflict.
The patches have done wonders for this game. The first big patch gave several balance changes and free access to all the pre order maps. So it went from 20 to almost 30 maps, with the pre order maps mostly being larger and more interesting than the launch maps. Then another patch was released: the infinite build queue. The response to the resource pools instead of fixed income was 50-50. Some liked it, some hated it. So they made a compromise: you pay for the buildings and units when construction starts, not when you queue it. You can now lay out a whole base and queue lots of units without having to pay for them immediately, feeling more like Sup1 (however it is still two different systems), and if you don't have the money when come time to start building, it doesn't cancel, if will simply get into position and build as soon as sufficient funds arrive. A discrete improvement was that the supply limit changed according to map. Larger maps let you have 1000 (finally!), while smaller and medium allowed 500-750.
Last but not least, the DLC was released. Tons of huge, epic new maps! The return of the monkeylord (unchanged visually and superior to the Monkeylord in Supcom1)! Awesome new experimentals and research for all the factions! New units! New boosts!
The game is 20 on Steam, plus 10 for the DLC (which is worth it, trust me). Well worth your money, thanks to GPG getting smart.