I played a bit more of the game with the free weekend they have right now. After playing four missions, I reached a conclusion:
-The single feature that affects more the game in both gameplay, controls, UI, how good you are, etc, and in the end is in detriment to the game, is the fact that almost every unit has an rechargeable active ability you can use.
You can use them, and you must use them, if you want to be play well, as there is a big difference between playing only using the abilities of a pair of heroes, and activating all the abilities of all your army (grenades, flamethrowers, assault jumps, knockdowns abilities, slow down/immobilize enemy, etc), and the timer means that you surely can use them again for the next firefight.
The problem is, I find it so much a bother. It’s micro for micro’s sake. It’s a pain in the ass going through all units quickly and clicking fast in the enemies. I find it uninteresting as a system to try my reflexes on, I much prefer action games for that, and it’s barely strategic nor indicates any great tactical move from my part, usually it’s more important try to use 6 abilities in obvious targets, than being slower and only using 3 abilities in well chosen targets, quantity matters.
If at least the developers would admit it’s an issue so they would readapt the UI/controls to fix it, maybe for example showing all the abilities icons on screen of all units you have selected in a moment, that way you wouldn’t have to go through every unit. But no.
There was a time where the RTS genre was popular and the main examples were Command & Conquer 1/Red Alert 1, Starcraft 1, Age of Empires 1/2… which had much less micro. I don’t think it’s coincidence the actual downfall of the genre.