Zero-K really shines when it comes to having intuitive controls that work well.

The rest of the game feels very lackluster, kinda' like Scorched 3D meets C&C mods, like in a bad way though.
It is an admittedly unorthodox approach to RTS - it's a decent timesink with friends, but I just can't take it seriously as a competitive game and have no motivation to get better at it.

This game is about being as greedy as you can while rotating through a rock-paper-scissors-style unit composition to outmaneuver and outproduce your opponents. Most of the units do the micromanagement movement for you in an attempt to keep themselves alive so you can focus on the larger picture, but the AI is often accidentally-suicidal. Defeated units can be recycled for additional resources which changes large skirmishes from exciting battles into situations that you want to avoid so that your opponent doesn't have a chance to gain a huge one-sided advantage.

The game has a terraforming mechanic but it's kind of a weird expensive pain in the ass which is easily mitigated or avoided by just using air units. Great against the AI, worthless against a human opponent.

What I dislike the most about Zero-K is the commander hero unit that each player starts with. Commanders act as a basic source of income and a basic storage silo in addition to being a combat unit. Commanders eat up a lot of resources as they are upgraded which concentrates a lot of investment into a single unit that still ends up being simple to get rid of with a couple of bombers later on in the game. For all their customization options, they still just kind of suck once you exit the early game and if you do lose them early on you are crippled until you rebuild the storage that they provide.

There isn't much unit or tech progression in this game. From the outset of a skirmish match, you are able to build any unit in the game at your own discretion. Some of these choices are not exactly economically smart. This puts a heightened emphasis on constantly scouting while also diminishing the value of any scouting you do because your opponent can simply 180 into something else.

A lot of the game's mechanics feel like they're at odds with each other and stapled together, like turrets designed to be built on shorelines that happen to do bonus damage against underwater units, which you probably won't reasonably see until they are out of the water anyway.

There's also just like way too much stuff constantly happening all at once which makes keeping track of the state of a game way more complicated than it needs to be. There are mechanics for long range radar and radar jamming, mechanics for terraforming, mechanics for increasing or decreasing production throughput, recycling mechanics, revive mechanics, upgrade mechanics but only for the annoying expensive unit and not for the other units, reloading mechanics but only for certain units, some things cost money or power constantly, others don't, some buildings explode, some don't, some units are invisible, some aren't, each unit has its own detection radius, also some units shoot fire and some shoot electricity and some shoot disabling stun rockets and some can shoot where they can't see but others can't, the bombers have to dive onto a target to hit it for some reason, some units can climb or jump, some units have gravity beams, etc - it's just way too much. All of this craziness is exacerbated by different maps giving opportunities for land, air, or sea combat - all of which have their own dedicated quirks with pathing, building, etc.

It feels like the game didn't actually have a direction in mind and just kept adding whatever sounded cool because all of it feels like 75% polished and most of it really isn't that fun to play with or against; it often feels like nobody is really being outplayed so much as simply overwhelmed by the massive number of things to keep track of. There is some enjoyment to be found in the hedonistic immersion of a million stupid robots that are all doing their own unique thing but once the novelty of that wears off playing this game is a pain in the ass.

tl;dr
good party game, not really great if you want something competitive - there is a ladder though if you're some kind of masochist

Zero-K really shines when it comes to having intuitive controls that work well. The rest of the game feels very lackluster, kinda' like Scorched 3D meets C&C mods, like in a bad way though. It is an admittedly unorthodox approach to RTS - it's a decent timesink with friends, but I just can't take it seriously as a competitive game and have no motivation to get better at it. This game is about being as greedy as you can while rotating through a rock-paper-scissors-style unit composition to outmaneuver and outproduce your opponents. Most of the units do the micromanagement movement for you in an attempt to keep themselves alive so you can focus on the larger picture, but the AI is often accidentally-suicidal. Defeated units can be recycled for additional resources which changes large skirmishes from exciting battles into situations that you want to avoid so that your opponent doesn't have a chance to gain a huge one-sided advantage. The game has a terraforming mechanic but it's kind of a weird expensive pain in the ass which is easily mitigated or avoided by just using air units. Great against the AI, worthless against a human opponent. What I dislike the most about Zero-K is the commander hero unit that each player starts with. Commanders act as a basic source of income and a basic storage silo in addition to being a combat unit. Commanders eat up a lot of resources as they are upgraded which concentrates a lot of investment into a single unit that still ends up being simple to get rid of with a couple of bombers later on in the game. For all their customization options, they still just kind of suck once you exit the early game and if you do lose them early on you are crippled until you rebuild the storage that they provide. There isn't much unit or tech progression in this game. From the outset of a skirmish match, you are able to build any unit in the game at your own discretion. Some of these choices are not exactly economically smart. This puts a heightened emphasis on constantly scouting while also diminishing the value of any scouting you do because your opponent can simply 180 into something else. A lot of the game's mechanics feel like they're at odds with each other and stapled together, like turrets designed to be built on shorelines that happen to do bonus damage against underwater units, which you probably won't reasonably see until they are out of the water anyway. There's also just like way too much stuff constantly happening all at once which makes keeping track of the state of a game way more complicated than it needs to be. There are mechanics for long range radar and radar jamming, mechanics for terraforming, mechanics for increasing or decreasing production throughput, recycling mechanics, revive mechanics, upgrade mechanics but only for the annoying expensive unit and not for the other units, reloading mechanics but only for certain units, some things cost money or power constantly, others don't, some buildings explode, some don't, some units are invisible, some aren't, each unit has its own detection radius, also some units shoot fire and some shoot electricity and some shoot disabling stun rockets and some can shoot where they can't see but others can't, the bombers have to dive onto a target to hit it for some reason, some units can climb or jump, some units have gravity beams, etc - it's just way too much. All of this craziness is exacerbated by different maps giving opportunities for land, air, or sea combat - all of which have their own dedicated quirks with pathing, building, etc. It feels like the game didn't actually have a direction in mind and just kept adding whatever sounded cool because all of it feels like 75% polished and most of it really isn't that fun to play with or against; it often feels like nobody is really being outplayed so much as simply overwhelmed by the massive number of things to keep track of. There is some enjoyment to be found in the hedonistic immersion of a million stupid robots that are all doing their own unique thing but once the novelty of that wears off playing this game is a pain in the ass. tl;dr good party game, not really great if you want something competitive - there is a ladder though if you're some kind of masochist