[ChuckNorris89]

I played Emperor: Battle for Dune when it came out in ~2003 and loved it as a child, especially house Ordos and the cobra cannon, but boy, are those some rose tinted glasses.

The switch to an early 3D engine made the game look and feel janky as hell, and you could tell from the lack of polish Westowood was in pain from the EA take over. Placing buildings, moving units across the map, path-finding, everything felt ... unfinished. The low-poly 3D models made everything look like textured cardboard boxes. Hell, even the UI and HUD elements were real time 3D rendered, but really low-poly and fugly. It seemed unnecessary, as if the game devs and designers had no experience yet how to make a 3D RTS game right, but the marketing guys told them everything must be full 3D because every cool game is 3D now. I much would have preferred they stuck with per-rendered 2.5D isometric graphics from the Red Alert 2 engine.

But the story, cut-scenes and missions had me captivated enough to spend too many hours in the game, that had my parents worried. Good times.