As I wrap up the campaign, RUSE certainly has its charm, and is one of the most unique RTS I've played in a long while.
Pros:
1) Unique and large number of Factions: The factions don't just copy and paste units. Each faction (consisting of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany) all have unique units, and their own strengths and weaknesses. The Americans, for example, have production bonuses, while the UK has aerial combat bonuses. Seeing factions rarely seen in WWII RTS games (like Fascist Italy, or France) have a large variety of unique units to roll into battle was certainly enjoyable. Same goes for the unique prototype units the factions has.
2) Campaign: As I stated before, the campaign was quite fun. However, I won't lie and say it was easy. Actually, it's one of the more difficult campaigns I've played in a long while. The large number of routes to accomplish your objective, or to screw over the enemy is quite fun. You won't run out of money, unless you aren't aggressive at all, and it is rewarding to finally wrap up WWII. The maps that were designed for the campaign are quite impressive and fun to play on, giving you plenty to look at, fight over, and destroy.
3) Graphics: Now, looking at most of the gameplay images shows the game from its almost fully zoomed out. However, once you zoom in, you can see the game developers took their time to render beautifully done units and terrain. Zooming in to inspect the differences between North African, Sicilian, French, and Dutch/German villages...especially before you destroy them, is quite fun. The towns certainly lose their tranquility once you have artillery shells slam into homes, or bombs being dropped on the town's square.
4) Ruses. Of course, what sets this game apart compared to other RTS games are the ruses. Ruses are various actions you can accomplish against the enemy, or yourself, to try to give yourself an advantage. Camouflaging bases, or putting radio silence on your own faction can prevent the enemy from getting targets, or putting terror, or spy on your enemy forces can give you an advantage in battle. It's much more strategic to engage the enemy using whatever ruses you can, instead of tank rushing like most RTS games.
Cons:
1) Campaign frustrations. Although I enjoyed the campaign, there is one thing they do that is extremely frustrating. Whenever some certain point is reached, you're warned about some newly opened front the enemy is opening on you. Except A) It's out of the blue, and B) They basically get 20 free units to rush towards that newly opened front. Why is this frustrating? Because it takes quite a while for new units to be produced, or already deployed units to move towards to respond. And...by then...it's commonly too late.
2) Skirmish maps: They're too...RTS like. It would have been much more fun to give you more realistic or even historical maps for you to play on, but instead, you get maps that create absolutely no real strategy, since each side is a mirror image of one another. Even if they just made the campaign maps and turned them into skirmish maps, I would have certainly enjoyed myself more...but this just seems too silly.
3) No Force Fire: This is a extremely small flaw, but, with all of this beautiful scenery, I just felt lost without the ability to just destroy it all, even if there are no enemies around. Hell, call it denying the enemy assets, but it should have been possible to destroy it. And yes, I understand there is a perfectly legitimate reason, but still.
I would totally recommend purchasing this game, and getting it's full value out of it. Any strategy gamer would love this game, and missing out on this, especially with some other RTS disappointments that have occurred recently (yes EA, I am looking at Tiberium Twilight, you *CENSORED*). On top of this, Ubisoft didn't try to destroy this franchise with their moronic protection system they implemented with other recent games. All in all, I hope they expand on this franchise, be it moving the game to other wars, or just make another campaign.
-Commanderkai