YMMV / Mental Omega

• Annoying Video Game Helper: In "Insomnia", you get a beeping alert when the Paradox Engine's health drops below 50%. The alert is fine the first time its health gets below that threshold... but it quickly becomes annoying when you notice The Paradox Engine only self-heals up to 50% health... which means that even if you keep it well-protected, the moment an enemy unit as much as grazes the Paradox Engine, you'll get the "WARNING - The Paradox Engine is under 50% structural integrity!" message, with its corresponding sound. And it will happen a lot of times during the mission.
• Awesome Music: The entire Allied and Soviet soundtrack is made of vintage Frank Klepacki awesomeness. Now the base being broken over the locked mixes makes more sense now.
  • Epsilon's OST, which was created by Black Ice 9 is likewise epic and fits faction well. Notable tracks include "Chaotic Impulse" and "Solara".
  • And then we have the soundtrack to the Foehn Revolt faction by World Beyond, which sounds like the soundtrack of an epic war movie. Notable tracks include what is essentially the faction's main theme "Remnants of a Distant Future" and "Destiny".
  • Some of the unique music that plays only during certain scenes or levels is also worth mentioning.
    • "Godsend Intro" is essentially the theme for the Aerial Fortress Irkalla. This dark, apocalyptic theme perfectly fits the unit's introducing level, Godsend (Epsilon 17).
    • "Annihilation March", the opening theme of Death's Hand (Soviet 24) composed by Smiechu. It sounds exactly as its name implies, a bombastic Hell March-esque war theme that perfectly suits the Soviets taking back Moscow from Yuri.
    • "Virus" by Frank Klepacki plays over the opening of Insomnia (Allied 22) and is the kind of fast-paced rocktronic theme to get you in the mood to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to Epsilon.
    • "Militant Funk by Frank Klepacki plays over the opening of Withershins (Allied 23) and like the example immediately preceding it, it exists to make kicking Epsilon ass with the full might of the Allies all the more badass.
    • "Machines Collide" again by Frank Klepacki plays over the opening of Hamartia (Allied 24) an ominous yet epic score for the ominous initial stage of the mission set in Epsilon's underground installation underneath the Mental Omega Device.
    • "Alternative Route Advised" by World Beyond plays after the initial stage of Vanishing Point (Foehn Origins 05) and perfectly invokes Autobots, Rock Out! just as Yunru pulls herself out of the Despair Event Horizon that is the imminent global mind control so that you kick more Epsilon ass in style.
    • "Land of No Justice" by World Beyond, the opening theme of The Remnant (Foehn Origins 06) and captures the feel of the level being the desperate last stand for all that remain to fight Yuri after the activation of the Mental Omega Device.
    • "Bewitched" by World Beyond plays during the epilogue of the Allied campaign and enhances the feeling of loss and despair as Tanya and the few survivors of the Allied expeditionary force escape on board the Paradox Engine wreckage as it's Chronoshifted to Point Hope, leaving the rest of the Allies including Siegfried to die or be mind controlled when the damaged Mental Omega Device finally activates.
    • "Not the End" by World Beyond, the epilogue theme to the Foehn Origins campaign is the opposite of the above, a triumphant orchestral rock theme to restore a feeling of hope after Yuri's seemingly inevitable victory is thwarted at the last minute by the activation of the Paradox Engine's time freeze.
    • "From Chaos" also by World Beyond, its instrumental version is used in the "The Finale Trailer", a somewhat sinister track reflecting the imminent threat of the Mental Omega Device on the world, yet offers a glimpse of hope. The lyrics conveys the Allies' perspective in their assault against said device in Antarctica.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Yunru, Libra, and Eureka, who are often called the "anime" commandos due to their appearances having more in common with an anime character from a military sci-fi setting, and, as some argue regarding the first, concept-wise. Some like them either because of their appealing designs, while others dislike them because they see them as being out of place next to other commandos and even infantry units, who tend to use a "grittier" and more practical designs. There are of course, also a third group who don't particularly care about the "anime" trio and simply enjoy the game.
  • The Foehn Revolt itself is this. They are either beloved because of the utterly badass looking futuristic design of their structures, infantry, and vehicles, yet some absolutely despise them due to finding them extremely annoying to fight against due to how their units and support powers are able to inflict a wide variety of negative status effects, such as the Clairvoyants and Giantsbanes ability to paralyze infantry, the Deviatresses, Angelsharks, Irritators, and the Chaos Touch support powers ability to inflict confusion, which causes units to wander around randomly, attacking indiscriminately, as well as the Raccoons and their Haihead-exclusive counterparts the Hovracoons, as well as the Blackout Missile support power, which all have the ability to disable vehicles and structures, as well as the similarly functioning Orcinus Waveshaper which is able to exclusively disable vehicles weaponry, with the only thing not affected being infantry and aircraft. It should be also noted that they also have the ability to disable support powers, superweapons included through the use of the Raccoons, Hovracoons, Signal Inhibitors, and the Signal Jammer support power as well, which create a field that blocks the ability to do so in their radius, with the Signal Inhibitors radius being large enough that, in spite of only being able to build three of them, they're able to cover up an average sized base when positioned correctly.
• Best Level Ever: The mod is a collaborative effort by some of the best mappers in the community, so it's no surprise that many maps qualify, whether for attention to detail or the tough-but-fun challenges. However, there are standouts:
  • Epsilon's Act Two debut, The Conqueror. The Soviets are hosting their second annual Victory Parade; the sheer spectacle is awe-inspiring, explicitly-invoking the title screen of Red Alert 3 with columns of tanks, infantry, and waves of Kirovs marching down the main street in sync, indefinitely, in front of a cheering crowd, all while a Red Alert 2-ified version of the Soviet March from 3 plays. You, as Epsilon, have a small fleet of Shadow Tanks you'll need to stealth through the partying streets, avoiding patrols and sentries, to get into position near five Nuclear Reactors you'll have to destroy simultaneously; at one point, one of your tanks will have to cross the parade grounds itself, picking the optimal moment to dart across between waves of marching units. Once that's done, Yuri makes his entrance via mass-mind-controlling large chunks of the parade and turning them on one another, while large portions of the crowd explode into poison or mutate into Brutes. The entire scene devolves into absolute chaos, and it's from this chaos that you must then use your forces to seize the ornamental Topol-M's for Yuri's own purposes, ending with the assassination of Premier Romanov himself. Overall, the map is fun, stylish, and while tough, doesn't quite reach the levels of frustration as some of the others. It's a fitting way for Yuri to debut himself as the true Big Bad of the war.
• Breather Level: the third Epsilon co-op mission consists of defending Rashidi's prototype MCV from Terror Drones for three minutes. You have Gatling Tanks, which eat Terror Drones for breakfast. This makes the level ridiculously easy, since the rest of the levels are Nintendo Hard. The devs themselves acknowledge this in their playthrough.
• Broken Base: Yes.
  • Considering the massive changes between 2.0 (a continuation of the original game) and 3.0 (a complete recreation of the game's storyline), not to mention 3.0's locked mixes, there are fans who just simply not like 3.0.
  • It's a running joke among the devteam to point out that an ex-member also considers 1.2 better over the other two. Just because 1.2 had no missions.
• Demonic Spiders: A good majority of the Foehn Revolt's units count as this, thanks to them practically having a decent counter for just about anything.
  • The Raccoons and Hovracoons are the bane of every Superweapon in the game, due to their passive ability to prevent you from using support powers, superweapons included, in a decent radius around them, as just a handful of them, combined with Signal Inhibitors, a Foehn structure which has the same ability to disable support powers, except with a much larger radius than them, can prevent you from using your superweapons on an enemy Foehn base. To make matters worse, they have the ability to "hack" armor units and aircraft alike which disables their weaponry, rendering the only way of safely getting rid of them is to use artillery units or flying infantry such as the Rocketeers, Gyrocopters, and Neonwasps. God help you if there are anti-air defenses and units nearby.
  • The Giantsbanes are good against tanks and aircraft alike, but the most irritating thing about them is that like the Clairvoyants, they have a stun-gun that's capable of paralyzing infantry at long ranges.
  • Huntresses have the ability to create a healing cloud of nanites after they kill any type of infantry, and deal more damage than the Navy SEALs, Duneriders, and Pyros, their equivalents from the other factions. They also have the ability to hijack vehicles, including higher tier ones such as the Monster Tanks.
  • Orcinus Waveshapers are able to disable the weaponry of most land vehicles and naval vessels, with the only thing unaffected by it's field are infantry and aircraft. God help you if there are a high amount of anti-infantry and anti-aircraft units protecting them.
  • Any Foehn unit that comes equipped with confusion rays counts as this, such as the Deviatress and Irritator, due to them causing your units to attack their allies indiscriminately.
  • Syncronin and their upgraded counterparts, Syncronauts, also count as this, due to their ability to decrease the durability of structures, which admittedly doesn't sound too bad on paper, while in actuality, they are yet another headache inducing unit, as their debuff is stackable, while the Syncronin have an absurd range, while the Syncronauts are stealthed and able to debuff multiple structures in close proximity with one another to make up for their dramatically decreased range, essentially making them into a faster working, infinitely more spammable version of the Allied Cryocopters which were nerfed for their reappearance in Mental Omega so that the speed at which their freeze ray works isn't stackable.
• Difficulty Spike: Most challenges added in 3.3.1 are much more difficult than the original ones present in 3.3 (except for Endurance and Ouroboros, which are only slightly more difficult).
• Fan Nickname: Chinese players like to call Norio Tomokawa as Ji Fu (紀夫).
• Fridge Horror:
  • "Cyberanatomy" is set in the Xinjiang region where the cyborg production facility is located. Imagine what happens with the Uyghurs living there, who are implied to be subjected to a conversion into soulless cyborgs against their will. Given China's track record of attempted genocide and persecution against the Uyghurs, this would be a truly terrifying sight to behold.
  • Given that Yuri came from the future (specifically the events of Twisted Insurrection) one has to wonder exactly what happened to Kane and the Brotherhood of Nod in this timeline? Did Yuri get rid of them? Was he piggybacking on Kane the same way he piggybacked on Stalin? Was the Mental Omega Device simply a way to clear the path for the Brotherhood to take over the way they were going to take over the USSR if they won WWII? Is it possible that the Foehn Revolt defeats the Epsilon Army only to face Nod in the aftermath? And can we still expect a certain meteorite to eventually impact Tiber River Valley in this version of the timeline?
  • The ending of the Epsilon campaign shows that anyone that's immune to the effects of the Mental Omega Device will be found and forced into the grinders to be broken down and made useful to the hive mind that way. Even if a fraction of humanity's population is innately immune to mind control that's still millions of people killed simply because they couldn't be controlled.
• Goddamned Bats: The Foehn Revolt's Clairvoyants, for those attempting to obtain a stolen tech unit against the aforementioned faction, mainly thanks to their ability to detect disguised infantry as well as their primary weapon being a stun-gun.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In Hamartia (Allied 24), during the final stage, you can feel free to create a Plot Hole on your own by selling the Old Chronosphere... for a measly 50 credits.
  • In Death's Hand (Soviet 24), the Hands of Ereshkigal are supposed to be invincible, to the point that destroying even just one of them before their scripted crash leads to mission failure. That hasn't stopped players from legitimately obtaining around a hundred Grumbles and Oxidizers to take them down.
• Hype Backlash: Despite the popularity of the mod itself, it still became clear that the mod isn't immune to criticism, as Yunru, Libra, Eureka, and the Foehn Revolt as a whole are all highly divisive, as the former three are seen as out-of-place in the game due to their blatantly anime-esque designs and overall character concepts conflicting with the more grounded and occidental character designs of other infantry and commandos, while the Foehn Revolt itself is reviled by some due to their many status effect inducing units and support powers making them a chore to fight against if it's against a player who knows what they're doing. The gameplay itself has also been criticized as revolving around as simply spamming as many units as possible to win without much strategy in mind, which has caused the Soviets to be criticized as well due to their gameplay relying heavily on masses of units to overwhelm the enemy leading to them being seen as overpowered thanks to the sheer price efficiency of Conscripts and Flak Troopers, which have both received buffs to their durability.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Wolfhound's "SOOOOOOOOOOOON!" line has become the go to response to anyone asking for when the next update to the mod will come out.
  • The Allied Commander's Heroic Sacrifice by making the Paradox Engine collide with the Mental Omega Device, in a last ditch attempt to destroy it, has been likened by many with what Tassadar does to the Overmind at the end of the Protoss's first campaign in Starcraft I (although the Allied Commander's is far less effective). Some go as far as to paraphrase what Tassadar says so that it applies with the content of Hamartia.
  • Speeder hates the Allies.^ExplanationBoth fans and detractors of the mod have taken notice on how the Allied Nations consistently either lose to the Soviets and Epsilon, or achieve victories over them that quickly wind up meaningless or just buying time for them. This has lead to jokes that Speeder, the mod's creator, secretly hates the Allies.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, Rashidi considers Yuri's implementation of Libra, a dangerously-unstable psychic of immense power, to be this. It's the final act, combined with the Allies revealing their Paradox Engine superweapon, that convinces him to formally betray Yuri and join up with Foehn.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Aerial Fortress Irkalla's voice! All of it's lines are delivered in a GLORIOUS robotic monotone.
• Narm: The Foehn Revolt may sound a little silly to German speakers, since Foehn means "hairdryer" in German.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • During the loading screen, Yuri's ghost portrait is shown in Epsilon skirmish with their music playing.
  • The end of "The Raven" in Act 2 of Soviet Campaign, after the commander successfully hold off the Allied invasion from Stalington, the camera suddenly switch to a raven flying over to your base as your radar suddenly went offline, the Iron Curtain became purple, to the point the screen goes black. Instead of a result screen, the players are greeted with an unexpected surprise courtesy of Yuri, with a weird monotone voice and began controlling your mind. The game then proceeds to next mission, "Awake and Alive", with this loading screen completely distorted and a disturbing music with only one objective: RUN!
  • The Act 2 Epsilon ending. The utterly absolute victory of the Epsilon gives the ending a chilling tone, especially with the very casual way they send people who are Immune to Mind Control straight to the Grinders, or the shot where Epsilon and mind-controlled American aircraft fly over a Statue of Yuri... on top of where the Statue of Liberty used to be. It helps convey the hopelessness of the situation.
• Scrappy Weapon: The Cyborg Commando. Aside from being impossible to achieve due to the absurd requirements needed to even obtain it, which consists of infiltrating the battle labs of all four factions, which, while difficult, is not outright impossible, pales in comparison to the second requirement, which is owning the barracks of all four factions, making it impossible to achieve outside of a few select conditions, such as if you're playing Ultimate Alliance mode, which gives you the MCVs and arsenals of all four factions, alongside the stolen tech units, the Cyborg Commando unit included, having four good friends who are deliberately allowing you to do so for fun, hacking the game to use cheats, and the last, and most unlikely, being that you're somehow THAT good at the game. The unit itself is also bare-bones and impractical as all hell, due to being completely unspecialized aside from dealing lots of damage and having high durability that's bolstered by it's ability to regenerate over time, as well as an immunity to Attack Dogs, Spooks, Terror Drones, Radiation and units who weaponize it, such as the Desolators/Eradicators and the Syckle, as well as being immune to poison too. Both of these things are rendered useless by multiple flaws, such as the Cyborg Commando's Arm Cannon having a horribly slow rate of fire, causing friendly fire to any of your units caught in the radius of it's plasma blast, and only being able to target ground units, and the Cyborg Commando's immense durability and immunity to many things is rendered worthless as many other things are still capable of affecting it, such as Volkov's Tesla Cannon still being able to paralyze him and his canine companion Chitzkoi being able to kill him in one hit, as well as him not being immune to the Viruses darts, as well as being vulnerable to EMP's and magnetic weaponry.
• That One Attack: Depending on who you ask, a lot of support powers can qualify as this, specifically the ones that immobilize or otherwise hamper the movement of units.
  • The Cryoshot, and it's superior counterpart, the Cryospear, taken from Red Alert 3, especially the latter, as unlike the Cryoshot, the Cryospear is capable of immobilizing all surface units for a longer period of time and with a greater radius.
  • The Foehn Revolt's Blackout Missile. It's essentially a non-indefinite version of the Raccoons and Hovraccoons ECM Jamming ability, which has no limit to it's range.
    • Another Foehn Revolt support power that can be considered this is their Chaos Touch, which applies a weaker version of the confusion effect that their Huntresses and Irritators use, and although it doesn't last very long, the fact that it forces your units to wander about can severely mess up their formation if you're aiming to micro-manage them.
  • Good luck keeping infantry blobs alive when playing against AI Soviet players because they adore using Rad Attack. In Challenges against multiple Soviet players, it makes infantry even more useless than it normally is in that mode.
• That One Level: Depending on who you ask most missions in the mod can be this.
  • Specific mentions go to the Epsilon level "Human Shield", you only have two Epsilon Adepts and somehow you have to use them to fight your way through Terror Drones (which are immune to mind-control) and Snipers (which out range and can one shot your adepts) in order to mind control Allied spies to steal Soviet technology. However, Human Shield was made much easier in 3.3 with the introduction of Shadow Ring, a recharging support power that can temporarily make your Adepts or Spies invisible to enemies, dogs included. Also there's the Allied mission "Hammer to Fall" in which you have no anti-air units but somehow have to fight your way to a Soviet uranium mine which is guarded by attack helicopters.
  • However, there is still the infamous "Singularity", a remake of 2.0 mission "Duality", in which you have to spark a war between Pacific Front and China. Its difficulty lies in the fact that you had only 3 units to control and you were unable to lose any of them; the map is extremely densely packed with insta-death units and traps (a random kennel on the north side will spawn attack dogs if approached, almost guaranteeing death, and thus failure, for the unit who did so), AND you have to weave carefully between both bases to destroy a number of key structures, ending with an Iron Curtain. The map will Bait-and-Switch you multiple times by suggesting/showing multiple possible routes to take, but nine times out of ten all but one path will be guarded and result in unavoidable, unpreventable death. On anything above Easy difficulty, there will be patrols of Veteran units guarding many of the only routes forward you'll need to carefully dodge, lest they sound the alarm and summon Gyrocopters to hunt you down - and none of your units can target air units. And the final, nasty cherry on top? Once you've finally reached and wiped out the Iron Curtain, you are then given a strict time limit to race all three units back through the base to the far side of the map to extraction before guaranteed failure. Put all of this together and boom. You have a mission which was not completed by 99% of players even on Easy difficulty - and can take hours (very mandatory Save Scumming included) to finish for the few that did. It's also worth mentioning that "Singularity" was created by a mapper who likes to boost the difficulty of missions up to eleven - to the point that even he is unable to complete some of his own missions.
  • Even the non-baseless missions can be hard as hell; two out of the three Epsilon Act One based missions can arguably qualify:
    • Think Different has you hijack a Chinese base to infiltrate a Tech Center and then wipe out the Pacific Front forces in the area. Like pretty much every other based mission in the mod, every inch of territory outside of your starting area is heavily-fortified, including your primary ore field, meaning the pittance of resources you'll get from the nearby oil derricks will be your only source of income until you can slap together a preliminary force to clean out the closest areas. Meanwhile, the enemy will be launching near-constant assaults with mixtures of infantry clusters, tanks, and siege weaponry almost from the word "go"; if you aren't prepared to counter their frequent assaults, your makeshift base will be leveled in short order. The easiest way to drill through the enemy's fortifications are with rolling waves of the Mighty Glacier units, the Nuwa Cannon and/or Kirovs. So just take it slow and claim their territory inch by inch, right? Did we mention this is a Timed Mission, and failing to complete the objectives in time will result in the main Chinese army arriving and curb-stomping your forces? For bonus fun, capturing the (heavily-guarded) Tech Center is not enough; you then have to wipe out every Pacific Front base on the map. Like any campaign AI, they'll contiuously rebuild destroyed structures until you take out their (equally-heavily-guarded) Construction Yard, making attrition difficult. Oh, and you only have three Spies and can't train more, so if you lose all three before infiltrating the Tech Center, Mission Failed for you!
    • Epsilon's Act One finale, Moonlight. It starts with you having a modest attack force you'll need to take out a heavily-fortified base - the layout of the map means you have no choice but a full-frontal assault, and if you micro poorly, or are even just unucky, losing too many critical units can make the following parts unmanageable. Once you've seized the base and captured the Rocket Pad there, you get reinforcements - including an MCV to finally start building a base. Unfortunately, that was the easy part. From there on out, you'll be under constant assault from three different directions and a full mix of enemy units types - including infantry swarms, heavy armor, Scud Launchers and Kirovs, many of which will periodically spawn in for free from the edges of the map (so leveling the enemy bases won't buy you any breathing room). If that doesn't sound bad enough, there's your actual objective, which is to capture and hold three other Rocket Pads in the three other enemy bases on the map. Two are at least relatively-lightly defended, but the third is a nightmare, with multiple layers of defenses (including three Apocalypse Tanks that will eat most assault forces for breakfast), and the only way in is through the front door. Then realize you somehow have to juggle an effective attack force while guarding all three of your base's flanks against constant mixed assaults, as well as the near-constant rain of paradropped infantry, tanks, and Terror Drones right in the heart of your base (did we forget to mention that?) And the big crowner of all this? Just like Think Different, you have a time limit - run out and the main Soviet army will arrive and wipe out your forces with ease. The one upside is you start with a generous amount of credits, but your only "safe" ore field is pitifully small, and the others (as well as the Oil Derricks) are directly in the line of fire. You have to effectively juggle and micro so many different perspectives at once, all while under a time limit, that a casual player can be easily overwhelmed.
    • Even the ones that aren't ball-bustingly-hard are anything but easy; Shipwrecked is the fourth Epsilon mission and is a wake-up call to the fact that the based missions won't be any easier than the baseless ones. You start off by capturing an Allied Construction Yard, which you are then tasked with using to destroy the Allied Aircraft Carrier fleet located on the opposite end of the map. Not so bad, but there are a few issues - the map is a series of islands, meaning any land units you want to attack with will have to be transported. Additionally, the Aircraft Carrier's hard counters - subs, and the anti-armor artillery naval units - are not available to you, and what you DO have access to, the Carriers both outrange and out-damage. You can get Zephyr artillery via the Tech Center hidden in the top right, but they're still outranged and will be chewed up and spat out by the Carriers without fodder to soak their attacks - plus they're still land units, so you'll need to use transports to get them in range. Additionally, the Allies will send periodic paradrops, Rocketeers, and transports full of vehicles to assault your base - while it's not unmanageable, a player who doesn't pay sufficient attention to their defenses can take a lot of losses before they can effectively secure their base. Finally, after a certain point, the Allied assault waves will include packs of Engineers who will try to mass-capture the player's buildings, starting with their Construction Yard and Barracks. If you're not paying attention, your defenses focus on the other units and the Engineers successfully bum-rush both? Time to reload. Altogether, while this mission is a far cry from the difficulty of the other maps, it's a definite kick in the teeth for the typical player expecting an easy, early based mission.
  • 2.0 had Paranoiac, where the mission was a complete nightmare if a crate's random boon turned out unhelpful for the player (not a Driller or cloak or similar).
  • Actually it's easier if we just list every single Baseless Mission in the game and say "those are hard as hell".
  • "Thread of Dread" (Soviet 20) is likely the hardest base-building mission in the two Acts. It is essentially a Superweapon Challenge against an enemy (the proto-Foehn Revolt) that holds four Nuke Silos (although three of them can be disabled by destroying at least three of the Windbelts surrounding them... but, of course, the game doesn't tell you this, so unless you come across it by complete chance, you are on a gamble) and it sits at an incredibly fortified base full of Hammer Defenses and Sentinels, as well as Iron Dragons to snipe any attempt to use artillery to break through the defenses... which you have to do quickly, or your Construction Yard is eventually going to be 2HKOed by consecutive Tactical Nukes (and you can't build another MCV as usual in the campaign). To make matters worse, the proto-Foehn base is supported by two Chinese ally bases, and there are two Epsilon bases next to yours that are both hostile to you (with the one on the left loving to send Basilisks and Magnetrons) and glorified meat shields that are going to fold after the first two or three nukes aimed at them. Good luck.
  • The two final Soviet Act 2 Missions are noted to be considerably harder than those of the other three factions:
    • Both missions have the shared trait that air units are almost unusable in offense. "Fatal Impact" features an absolutely ridiculous amount of heavy anti-aircraft defenses (Oxidizers, Gehenna Platforms, deployed Colossi, Sentinels, Tech SAM Bunkers...) that can tear through even Kirovs like they are made of paper, whereas "Death's Hand" features a more 'conventional' end-game defense of Dybbuk Hives... except these cannot be disabled until the final objective is complete, meaning assaulting the enemy bases will have to be done with ground units.
    • "Fatal Impact", on paper, is not a particularly difficult mission and it's very straightforward to find the Spatha Defense Systems and destroy them. On paper. On practice, the map has a very confusing layout and you have three armies that are effectively cut off from each other (you can send air units between each group, but, as mentioned above, the anti-air defenses are so extreme it's not worth trying). You have to manage an MCV-less base in the top right, Volkov and Chitzkoi (and some Grumbles you can pick up) on the top left, and your only MCV on the bottom left. Then there's the matter of reaching the Spatha Defense Systems themselves, for some of them are placed in locations that look like they can be approached by one of your three armies, only for it to turn out that you need to reach it with another. While you do have two hours and a half of in-game time to beat the mission, between the layout, the managing of all armies, and knowing in which order you have to take on them means you might as well run out of time in your first try. There's a reason the loading screen warns you in that it's going to be "a long battle".
    • "Death's Hand", while overall simpler, is also much more complex than what it looks like at first. The beginning can force several restarts because the Epsilon armies deploy several ambushes, especially from the moment where you own a Barracks (which involves Drillers full of Engineers) or a War Factory (a heavy pincer attack). The enemy has a lot of bases and all of them will try to build a Psychic Dominator or Tactical Nuke. You are given a lot of MCVs later on, allowing you to expand, but also forcing you to take care of more sections of the battlefield at once. You have allies, but they don't accomplish much by themselves, and once the unofficial time limit that are the Hands of Ereshkigal show up, they are nothing but a distraction to buy you time. The toughest part is the Iron Curtain puzzle, as at least one of the Iron Curtains is cloaked (on Mental, more than half the Iron Curtains are cloaked), so you might run across them multiple times, without realizing they even exist...
  • While most Challenges would end on this category due to the unfair advantages the enemies have, the Regenbogen Challenge takes the cake. While all other challenges are difficult but predictable, letting you figure out how to turtle against the AI, Regenbogen is difficult and unpredictable thanks to its random weather effects. It is perfectly possible for an otherwise impenetrable base to be outright ruined if you get several of the nastiest weather effects in a row. The Yellow weather effect, which sends up to 30 Hunter-Seekers to the players' bases, causing a lot of destruction on their path, is especially infamous, with many guides simply telling players to quit if they happen to get two Yellows in a row, more-so in the early-game. Even if you can survive the onslaught of the Yellow weather, you still have to deal with the weather effects that Suppresses all your non-epic, non-projectile units, and the one that effectively turns practically all your units into One Hit Point Wonders, greatly limiting the viable factions for this challenge.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite the Pacific Front specializing in Cryo technology, they notably don't have the Cryo Legionnaires from Uprising.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It's hard to get invested in the story at all thanks to the Allies, the protagonists, being cartoonishly incompetent and unable to achieve any sort of meaningful victory, while there's nothing about the Soviets that makes one want to root for them thanks to a combination of them no longer being the underdogs due to a case of Adaptational Badass, but also due to characters that served to make them sympathetic either being changed into being more villainous such as Premiere Alexander Romanov, or Adapted Out entirely such as Eva McKenna, Lt. Zofia, and General Vladimir, and Epsilon as a whole being Unintentionally Unsympathetic thanks to their brutality being equal to that of the Soviets. Arguably, the only silver lining is that the ending reveals that the remnants of each faction, that managed to escape to safety from the effects of the Mental Omega Device, have grouped together to form the Foehn Revolt.
• Unexpected Character: In spite of the statements that time-travel would not be involved in the plot of Mental Omega 3.x (unlike what happens in 2.x), during the cutscene in "Reality Check" (Epsilon 23), a Time Machine in ruins is visible when Yuri tells Libra of mistakes he had made. The same Time Machine appears in "Hamartia" (Allied 24), in the underground cave.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Yuri is portrayed as being a Well-Intentioned Extremist here who wants to forcibly induce world peace by mind controlling everybody on the planet, rather than the cartoonishly evil monster of a man who has no redeeming features whatsoever. However, this characterization falls flat due to Epsilon (the faction he leads) still retaining the obscene brutality and love for inhumane weaponry, that their counterparts in the vanilla version of Yuri's Revenge had, as well as being complicit in all of the acts of cruelty the Soviets engaged in thanks to assisting them in their conquest of the world, only to turn against them, solely because they no longer needed their assistance due to them not being part of the 2nd phase of their plan. The fact that Epsilon began rounding up anyone who are immune to mind control and sending them into the grinders can kill any remaining sympathy or understanding that one has for Yuri entirely.

---