Conventional wisdom among my friends was always that this one was better than the original, but I'm not so sure that's the case after playing through both again now.

This has a more-is-more approach, expanding the combat most notably into the air and water with lots more planes and boats. Neither is particularly interesting, and the same simple land-based strategies are as effective as ever, giving you the feeling of having a big arsenal with no real use for much of it.

The story missions have a couple fun twists and objectives to them, but then there are also some pretty heinous puzzle-y "indoor" missions, which can eff right off. Overall it feels like they're stretching a bit. If I'm not mistaken, I believe this was designed as an expansion, originally, and if that's the case, it kind of shows.

Outside of the very clumsy alt-history setting, they're not really doing much of interest with the story here, and the cutscenes are well on the wrong side of cringe. C&C managed to avoid that by making the briefings quick, simplistic, and winking, but that charm is somewhat lost with all these nothing characters and half-hearted attempts at lore and world-building.

At the core, it's the same game, and that game is undeniably cool and fun to play. But the accoutrements are inferior in this one.