History YMMV / CommandAndConquerRedAlert3

*** The [[BoringYetPractical]] Vindicator opens many windows of attacks thanks to their high mobility and their very high DPS.
*** The Cryocopter is considered by many players as the most broken pre-Uprising unit in the game. It's a support unit that freezes enemy units causing them to slow down and eventually become completely frozen, allowing them to get destroyed in a single hit. What's even more infuriating is their S.H.R.I.N.K Beam special ability that allows the Cryocopter to reduce an enemy unit's size and greatly weaken its overall capabilities to the point that it becomes useless and easily crushed by smaller vehicles. [[MundaneUtility It can also be used on friendly Prospectors to quickly expand territory, as shrinked units at least get a significant speed boost]]. Added with the "High Technology" and "Advanced Aeronautics" upgrade protocols and they become even more difficult to destroy unless with a sufficiently massed anti-air group.
*** Aircraft Carriers are floating vessels that are capable of launching unmanned planes out of reach from almost anywhere in the map. These planes are also extremely hard to take down even with sufficient AA units and defenses. Then there's their special ability called the "Blackout Missile" - a warhead that when deployed will cause structures and vehicles to be disabled within in a *large* radius. Upgrading the carriers with the High Technology upgrade increases the EMP's effects for a longer duration. This ability alone shuts down players many options that they can use to their advantage and leaves them completely exposed to other attacks, much to their frustration.

** Generally speaking, the Allies have drawn the ire of many players in the online competitive scene due to their abundance of cost-effective units and strategies that can be considered extremely overpowered. There are even instances that a skilled Allied player can defeat an enemy who has a higher economic advantage which tends to question the credibility of the game's balance. Interestingly, though, [[DifficultButAwesome they also have the highest skill cap and requires intensive microing to utilize their units to their full potential]] so it can be said why there are much more Soviet and Imperial players online than do Allied players.
** The chrono timebomb is extremely powerful. The only way to counter it is to move everything out of its radius. Waiting for the countdown to end will make it explode. Attacking the bomb and managing to reduce its health to 0 makes it explode. [[ArtificialStupidity Guess what the opponent AI does when it encounters a time bomb.]]

** The Allied Cryocopter is considered by many players as the most broken pre-Uprising unit in the game. It's a support unit that freezes enemy units causing them to slow down and eventually become completely frozen, allowing them to get destroyed in a single hit. What's even more infuriating is their S.H.R.I.N.K Beam special ability that allows the Cryocopter to reduce an enemy unit's size and greatly weaken its overall capabilities to the point that it becomes useless and easily crushed by smaller vehicles. [[MundaneUtility It can also be used on friendly Prospectors to quickly expand territory, as shrinked units at least get a significant speed boost]]. Added with the "High Technology" and "Advanced Aeronautics" upgrade protocols and they become even more difficult to destroy unless with a sufficiently massed anti-air group.

** Generally speaking, the Allies have drawn the ire of many players in the online competitive scene due to their abundance of cost-effective units and strategies that can be seen as extremely overpowered. There are even instances that a skilled Allied player can defeat an enemy who has a higher economic advantage which tends to question the credibility of the game's balance. Interestingly, though, [[DifficultButAwesome they also have the highest skill cap and requires intensive microing to utilize their units to their full potential]] so it can be said why there are much more Soviet and Imperial players online than do Allied players.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** Cherdenko attempts to escape to the only place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism! SPACE!
** [[spoiler: President Ackerman]] in the aforementioned ThatOneLevel of Mt. Rushmore needs to go to the superweapon control center to activate his weapons. Problem is the only direct route to the building is through a map-long mountainside road. Instead of using an airlift or the Chronosphere to teleport him directly to the building (which he later does when he teleports to the airfield!), he opts to ride his slow-ass limo through the long way. Granted, if he does otherwise the mission will pretty much be Unwinnable but still...

* CompleteMonster: [[InsaneAdmiral Anatoly Cherdenko]] is a hammy Soviet colonel who uses Dr. Zelinsky's TimeMachine to murder UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein and rewrite history to one where the USSR reigns supreme, and Cherdenko himself is Premier. Overseeing WorldWarIII and refusing to restore time to its proper state even as countless innocents die, Cherdenko's actions differ in each campaign, but are monstrous in their own way. In the Soviet campaign, Cherdenko first uses his new commander to assassinate the Emperor of the Empire of the Rising Sun, then lures Allied forces into a truce meeting just to kill them all. Cherdenko then [[FrameUp frames]] and kills his own ally Krukov before betraying and trying to exterminate his loyal new commander and all the man's allies. In the Allied campaign, Cherdenko agrees to a truce with the Allies, only to leave them to die while he intends to use a fleet of warships to bomb every major Allied city across the world and kill millions, reacting to defeat by attempting to abandon his allies and flee to the one place not yet tainted by capitalism: Space.

** The fifth Imperial mission compared to the previous. While the Allies still use plenty of Cryocopters and Hydrofoils, you gain access to some actually decent surface-to-air units on the ocean (Sea-Wings), as well as being provided a very powerful fleet that's pretty much grown into GameBreaker status due to them destroying [[CurbStompBattle helpless MCVs]], allowing most to be Elite by the time the second part of the mission begins. The Floating Fortress' built-in cannons helping with defense and the extra Ore Nodes on the Floating Fortress itself don't hurt.

** Yokohama. Not only does the enemy start off by sending Aircraft Carriers, Century Bombers, and Chronosphering troops into your base, you start out with a badly damaged one, and need to wait for your MCV to get there. And just when you've managed to destroy enough key Allied structures, the Soviets show up to toss four Dreadnoughts at you and keep churning out more (you'll want to position your own units where they spawn to counteract this). And then the AIs taunt you or accuse you of being a cheat for destroying the devices they set up to prevent you from commanding your units. Oh, and it's a TimedMission as a result. The use of [[HeroUnit Yuriko]], and buying time via the Nanoswarm Hive is absolutely crucial in turning the tide.

* CompleteMonster: [[FromNobodyToNightmare Anatoly Cherdenko]] begins as a mere colonel in the Red Army, only to become far worse. With the Soviet Union on the brink of defeat by the Allies, Cherdenko travels back in time and kills UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein, creating a new timeline in which he is now [[CorruptPolitician Premier of the Soviet Union]]. Finding his actions have resulted in not only the Soviets driving the Allies almost out of Europe but also given rise to the Empire of the Rising Sun, Cherdenko proceeds to oversee the Soviet war effort. In the Soviet Campaign, Cherdenko stages an assassination attempt on himself to frame General Krukov and kill him, silencing Dr. Zelinsky for trying reveal his actions to the [[PlayerCharacter Commander]]. Ordering the assassination of Emperor Yoshiro and the subsequent occupation of Japan, Cherdenko organizes a peace gathering as a trap for the Allies. With all his enemies defeated, Cherdenko deems his trusted commander a liability and eagerly tries to destroy him. Responsible for creating a timeline that worsened WorldWarIII, Cherdenko was a mad man who'd stop at nothing to hold his newfound power.

** Similarly, the Moscow level comes right after the brutal Yokohama level (where the enemy sends wave of top-tier units from the beginning against a damaged and barely-functional base, and there's a time limit), in which you start with multiple defense cores and a good base in order to destroy the Kremlin... [[CurbStompBattle and you get the Shogun Executioner]].
** Finally, the Amsterdam level is pretty reasonable in its difficulty compared to previous missions and the other campaign finales. It's mostly a ground battle, as there's only narrow rivers in the area, limiting the use of Naval power, and the game forbids the use of air units until the nearby Allied air base is destroyed. You start off with Yuriko, two King Onis, and some infantry for good measure, which should be enough to breach its defenses (if you don't intend to use Wave Force Cannons for good measure). Though the Allies have a Proton Collider, it only takes destroying the power plant next to one of them to shut them down, which can be done with a few Final Squadron strikes. Destroying the bridges makes holding out against the Allies' counterattacks more predictable. Even the arrival of the Soviet remnants isn't much of an issue, given that Zelinsky apparently forgets to secure any Ore Nodes. In short, it's a pretty straightforward, linear assault that can be made easy with the use of Yuriko and a number of well trained armored units.

*** The shining example is the Harbinger Gunship, a flying bomber that can bomb the crap out of any ground unit, or can slaughter infantry with its machine gun. It has a lot of health and it doesn't need to reload.

** Chernenko declares he is escaping to space as it has not been touched by capitalism. In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E5Oxygen Series Ten of Doctor Who]], the Doctor discovers a scheme to make an oxygen monopoly - described as "Capitalism... in space!"

** Mt. Rushmore, for being the most LuckBasedMission in the entire C&C franchise. The strategy is obvious. [[spoiler:The president]] has gone crazy and if given enough time will drive his limo to a building which will cause you to fail the mission. If he dies the weapon you need to stop from firing fires automatically and you also fail the mission. You may be tempted to use a Cryo Copter to circumvent this physical time limit, but the enemy will deploy Apollo Fighters against it should you do this, and the debris from your lost Cryo Copter may destroy the limo instantly. It's far safer to spam the cryo shot ability to slow him down significantly. The Roosevelt bust isn't the only weaponized face on Mount Rushmore; the limo will activate the other three heads on its destination, requiring a Century Bomber to paradrop an Engineer to capture the appropriate station, which is another time and money sink. And speaking of money, there's little in the way of ore node expansion, which results in serious money starvation (it doesn't help that Warren has [[ArtificialStupidity some trouble]] securing the ore nodes near his base, making things more difficult than they reasonably should). The best way to counter this is to send Spy after Spy after Spy into the enemy base, conveniently lacking Attack Dogs, to rob money from the Refineries as well as shut down the base's power to help hammer those numerous anti-air defenses. All the while the enemy will send many attack waves your way. If you were lucky enough to trigger the event where Mirage Tanks become available, a number of them will be put under your control, which can help fend off the weaker attacks. If not, you'll have to field your own. And once the central command is destroyed, [[spoiler:the president]] will make an escape attempt via helicopter. Should you fail to prepare for this, it's game over. The missions only get more difficult from this point forward.
** Tokyo. You start off with half the ore nodes typical of a mission, and you must hold the line with limited resources. Don't bother attempting to destroy the Imperial forward base outright; there simply isn't enough resources to make this worthwhile. Your initial goal is to hold out until Soviet reinforcements arrive, but [[spoiler:they never do. You're on your own]]. After this, the Imperials rub salt in the wound by using their Psionic Decimator to eradicate your entire base, leaving only your Construction Yard intact (and any units you had the foresight to get the hell out of ground zero). You're given the option to have your co-commander teleport to the other side of the map, but it's far better for you to do this yourself. From there, you'll need to eliminate key targets in the various Imperial bases to win the mission. What makes this difficult are both Imperial superweapons being fully operational, the relentlessness of the Imperial armies (''especially'' their navy; you'll want to eradicate their docks first), and Imperial reinforcements spawning from the west. Serious management of surgical air strikes to waste production structures is crucial to winning this final blow against the Empire of the Rising Sun.
** The penultimate mission in Havana starts off with a bit of infiltration magic. Try not to get run over by Soviet treads as you make your way to the objective, a sports stadium housing Kirov Airships preparing to deliver city-levelling warheads. Should any such Kirov escape the map boundaries, it's game over. Money is once again relatively scarce for the task at hand, with more and more stadiums becoming active, all the while the Soviets not budging an inch and even making numerous counterattacks. Once more, the use of surgical air strikes and anti-air divisions are a must in this level. And you don't even get the usual freebie point to invest in top secret protocols, meaning that you'll have to wait a while before you get the coveted Advanced Aeronautics upgrade.
** Then there's the final Allied mission in Leningrad, also invoking GuideDangIt; this is a timed mission, and enemy attacks from the east almost never stop coming. Rushing with the Mirage Tanks provided at the start against the enemy War Factories to the east is pretty much a must, and every Iron Curtain is heavily defended. That's not even getting into Krukov's deployment of the Vacuum Imploder and his ambush army of Terror Drones and Apocalypse Tanks.
** The Imperial Campaign is no stranger to this either. The Odessa mission, of which the first section is a frustratingly difficult EscortMission. You have to defend a convoy of ten slow and unarmed transports with only a small number of units while the Soviets send waves of units that attack multiple sections of the convoy simultaneously. And the kicker is that the mission is a failure if even a single transport is destroyed.

* RetroactiveRecognition: Creator/GinaCarano plays the Russian assassin, Natasha Volkova.

** Mt. Rushmore, for being the most LuckBasedMission in the entire C&C franchise. The strategy is obvious. [[spoiler:The president]] has gone crazy and if given enough time will drive his limo to a building which will cause you to fail the mission. If he dies the weapon you need to stop from firing fires automatically and you also fail the mission. You may be tempted to use a Cryo Copter to circumvent this physical time limit, but the enemy will deploy Apollo Fighters against it should you do this, and the debris from your lost Cryo Copter may destroy the limo instantly. It's far safer to spam the cryo shot ability to slow him down significantly. The Roosevelt bust isn't the only weaponized face on Mount Rushmore; the limo will activate the other three heads on its destination, requiring a Century Bomber to paradrop an Engineer to capture the appropriate station, which is another time and money sink. And speaking of money, there's little in the way of ore node expansion, which results in serious money starvation. The best way to counter this is to send Spy after Spy after Spy into the enemy base, conveniently lacking Attack Dogs, to rob money from the Refineries as well as shut down the base's power to help hammer those numerous anti-air defenses. All the while the enemy will send many attack waves your way. If you were lucky enough to trigger the event where Mirage Tanks become available, a number of them will be put under your control, which can help fend off the weaker attacks. If not, you'll have to field your own. And once the central command is destroyed, [[spoiler:the president]] will make an escape attempt via helicopter. Should you fail to prepare for this, it's game over. The missions only get more difficult from this point forward.

** The penultimate mission in Havana starts off with a bit of infiltration magic. Try not to get run over by Soviet treads as you make your way to the objective, a sports stadium housing Kirov Airships preparing to deliver city-levelling warheads. Should any such Kirov escape the map boundaries, it's game over. Money is once again relatively scarce for the task at hand, with more and more stadiums becoming active, all the while the Soviets not budging an inch and even making numerous counterattacks. Once more, the use of surgical air strikes and anti-air divisions are a must in this level.
** Then there's the final Allied mission in Leningrad, also invoking GuideDangIt; this is a timed mission, and enemy attacks from the east almost never stop coming. Rushing with the Mirage Tanks provided at the start against the enemy War Factories to the east is pretty much a must, and every Iron Curtain is heavily defended. That's not even getting into Krukov's deployment of the Vacuum Imploder.

** The fourth Imperial mission might be the contender for the most difficult mission in the game, as there's no way of using hindsight to mitigate the difficulty factors in this mission. First off, you start off with next to no credits, which is an absolute middle finger for a mission where you need to build up troops to defend multiple areas from the enemy. There's no way to increase your monetary gains; the four obligatory nodes you start off with and the enemy's two are the only ones on the map, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard and obviously the enemy isn't at all hampered by this massive Ore drought]], fielding plenty of units that include Cryocopters, Apollo Fighters, and later, Aircraft Carriers, all of which act as DemonicSpiders in this mission as you lack a reliable surface to air unit on the water at this point. The enemy also makes liberal use of paratroopers to further scatter your defense squads. And once it's time to take the fight to them, they'll have a truckload of defenses (all of which magically have no power requirements for some reason) that can only be breached safely with Shogun Battleships. And if that wasn't enough, they also set up bases on land if you let their MCV sneak through). The only consolation the mission gives are two sets of reinforcements (they'll have the Fortified Fleet upgrade, but you won't have access to it yourself. Lose these units, and you lose this advantage), the repair drones provided by some of the objectives you need to defend, and having access to the Nanoswarm Hive this early in the campaign.
** The sixth Imperial mission follows suit. Money is hard to come by without rushing against the enemy's isolated refineries, or looting the local neighborhood and the EA studio. Meanwhile, it seems that the enemy has plenty of funds to send surgical strikes against your base, given their sizable establishment across the map. They even have various scripted attacks coming from offscreen! Their main bases are heavily fortified as well, necessitating the newly-introduced Wave Force Cannon. You may be tempted to use a Sudden Transport to do some scouting, crate gathering, or a classic Engineer rush, but the enemy fields plenty of Attack Dogs.

** In ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquer3TiberiumWars'', base construction was, for a multitude of reasons, problematic. With the grid-based building system of old being implemented in Red Alert 3 ([[{{Retraux}} like in previous, older games]]), as well as ''far'' more generous construction space granted by additional structures, outposts, or simply being free-reign in the case of the Empire of the Rising Sun, this has been swiftly rectified.

* WinBackTheCrowd: Subverted. Though this was very obviously the intention of the development team, with open and forthright communication regarding gameplay features via an official forum, a Website/YouTube channel providing weekly updates and player matches, and a considerable amount of time, energy, and effort sunk into the production, the extremely vocal backlash of hardcore fans of Westwood's more serious-in-tone titles effectively ended all chance at continued production of C&C titles. Nowhere was this more apparent than the development and release of ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianTwilight,'' which saw a level of disregard and lack of polish unheard of since ''Generals,'' and far more in line with EA's usual treatment of acquired [=IP=].

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: EA's approach is bashed by many fans of the the classics as they feel the camp themes are overdone and {{flanderized}}, too gaga, with the FanService being too blatant and that Westwood's [=RA2=] balanced wackiness and seriousness in the right mix. Tone and cutscenes aside, some gameplay changes are not well received, harvest fields are gone and replaced by static mines, now almost a core building inside a base and easy too defend with and adjacent wall, all-in-all hurting gameplay and marauding. The many support powers feel gratuitous and gamey, as many can't really be countered and in practice they are eventually granted no matter what without an in-game reason or decision. The dual mode for units adds petty micromanagement, amphibious buildings and units demean the peculiar importance of sea [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and Tanya is no longer a brunette]]. It could have been worse, as ''Tiberian Twilight'' really was the nail in the C&C coffin.

* CrazyAwesome: [[spoiler:President Ackerman]], after his FaceHeelTurn. Who else would turn [[spoiler:Mount Rushmore into a supervillain lair complete with DeathRay?]]

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1Sq1Nr58hM I'm escaping to the ONE PLACE THAT HASN'T BEEN CORRUPTED BY CAPITALISM... SPAAAACE!!!]] Its memetic quality is only enhanced by the fact that Tim Curry is [[{{Corpsing}} visibly trying not to laugh]] as he says it.

*** In a real life twist on this, after the game's release, a significant chunk of current spaceflight research, development and deployment has since been taken over by for-profit corporations such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX Space X]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin Blue Origin]], with many predicting that corporate-owned space transport and interplanetary resource mining operations will be a major industry in the 21st century.

* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap: Downplayed with the Gap Generation mechanic. There's no longer a dedicated structure that hogs up power for such a purpose. Instead, it's an alternate mode for the Mirage Tank, a useful unit in its own right, which cloaks friendly units around it rather than creating a blatant blob of shroud. This is far less conspicuous than a giant black circle on the radar, is mobile, and relatively inexpensive compared to the utter mockeries that were the Gap Generator structures in previous games. It doesn't cloak the Mirage Tank itself, which is a fragile unit, but it can be handy in hiding idle armies from paranoid players.

** The game, in its attempt to bring more fanservice to the table than its predecessors, crossed into cheesecake overload instead. Nothing wrong with some titillation, but when EVERY single female character in the game is dressed like a model wearing a sexy Halloween costume in even the darkest situations, it starts to become funny rather than arousing. Especially when you consider that [[MildlyMilitary they're supposed to be professional soldiers]].

** The game, in its attempt to bring more fanservice to the table than its predecessors, crossed into cheesecake overload instead. Nothing wrong with the occasional bit of titillation, but when you have EVERY female character in your game like that, it just becomes distracting. Especially when you consider that [[MildlyMilitary they're supposed to be professional soldiers]].

** In the midst of the game's [[{{Camp}} campy-ness]], Yuriko. Prior to the game, she was allegedly taken from her parents by the Empire, where she then went through god knows how many horrific experiments in Dr Shiro Shimada's Omega program. Then came the start of her campaign...and it all ends after she [[spoiler: made meat puree out of [[KillEmAll everything that stood in her way]], killed both Shimada and her alleged sister Izumi (the former out of revenge and the latter out of self-defense) and she has now has no idea what to do.]] And her theme song is pretty tear jerking...

* {{Narm}}: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yMy7JuGpJM SPACE!]]
* ReplacementScrappy: