Well beyond simple DLC, Escalation polishes every aspect of the base game. The campaign is excellent, and the expansion of defensive and upgradeable structures helps ease in new players. New technology amps the scale, but also provides tools to manage the larger world. Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is a fresh coat of paint for an already-revolutionary RTS.

Between the new aircraft, cool new orbitals, and fantastic design of the Strategic Zoom function, there’s a lot here to love for any fan of the mass real-time strategy. It’s a shame that the story still can’t always keep up with the stellar additions to the gameplay and that some of the new ground units get swept up in the sheer way that the game is built, but Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is still one of the coolest, most smooth, and vast real-time strategies out there.

Escalation succeeds at making Ashes of the Singularity a bigger, better, sleeker RTS that allows you to play its great new content alongside just about everything from the base game (including the lacklustre original campaign missions).

While the staging and the characterization of the fractions still is sub-par, this is better than Ashes of the Singularity in every aspect, especially in terms of the large scale skirmishes that give you an optimal strategic viewpoint.

Escalation manages to improve many aspects of the past Ashes of the Singularity, it brings two new campaigns that deserve to be played this time, many new units and the strategic zoom. Unfortunately there are still many problems with the path-finding, that cause a lot of frustration.