When comparing Starcraft vs 0 A.D., the Slant community recommends Starcraft for most people. In the question“What are the best LAN party PC games?” Starcraft is ranked 9th while 0 A.D. is ranked 40th. The most important reason people chose Starcraft is:
There are three selectable races in the game, Terrans, Protoss and the Zerg. The Terrans being human, while the other two are alien races. What makes the game stand out is that each race feels exceptionally different from one another, each with their own personalities. This makes for a different experience depending on what race has been chosen to play with.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Tons of personality that keeps the story and gameplay interesting and entertaining
There are three selectable races in the game, Terrans, Protoss and the Zerg. The Terrans being human, while the other two are alien races. What makes the game stand out is that each race feels exceptionally different from one another, each with their own personalities. This makes for a different experience depending on what race has been chosen to play with.
Pro Built-in offline LAN support
Being an older game, Starcraft suports offline LAN due to not as many people having internet back when it was released. This is something that many games (including Starcraft 2) regrettably do not feature anymore.
Pro Well balanced race selection keeps the gameplay fair
The game is fairly well balanced, so nobody gets an advantage by choosing a certain race. While each race will have their own unique abilities, the balancing of these abilities allows the game to play even handed, with no real advantage to any race.
Pro This game can be downloaded for free
Blizzard is now offering the original Starcraft (titled Starcraft Anthology) as a free download.
Pro Highly specialized units that are easy to learn but hard to master
This helps keep the game challenging and interesting even at a high level of proficiency.
Pro Free, Real-Time Strategy title actively being developed
Still currently in development, 0 A.D. is currently in Alpha stages and completely free. For those willing to wade through the multiple bugs, essentially testing the title, this game will scratch the itch of any RTS fan on a shoestring budget.
Pro Multi-platform support
The game will run on any Operating System, whether it be Linux, OSX, or Windows, which is great for people who dual-boot or use multiple OS's across their devices. No matter the OS used, one can install and play this game.
Pro Addictive Age of Empires style gameplay
This game can be seen as a spiritual successor to Age of Empires, thus it will provide similar gameplay to those who are familiar with the AoE series.
Pro Straightforward RTS gameplay
0 A.D. brings recognizable, straightforward, Real-Time Strategy gameplay to the players. With a mini-map in the bottom corner, resources shown in a bar at the bottom, and unit selection through double clicking, all of the major elements found in most RTS games is here, making for a very familiar game for those that are used to the genre.
Pro Code is open-source
Even if the current developer team chooses to no longer work on the game, others can keep contributing to the source code and modify it.
Pro Active development
By being in active development the game allows for frequent bug fixes as well as frequent new content. While it is still in alpha, the state of the game playability is pretty good with new features being added all the time.
Cons
Con Old and outdated
With the original release dating back to 1998, the game is quite old now and its graphics are not on par with current game offerings.
Con Lacks widescreen support
Starcraft is only available in a 4:3 resolution. However, a hack to make it work in widescreen can be found here.
Con Currently in alpha
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature complete.
Con Slow development
0 A.D. is an ongoing open source project that is as of yet feature incomplete. This game is still in Alpha version 23 Ken Wood as of September 2020.