Played and finished them all except C&C4, EA + no base building + always online was enough for me to never touch that travesty. In an ideal world, Petroglyph could redo it after the remasters and actually make a proper end to the franchise.
But I digress. For me, the original C&C really set the tone, theme and my expectations for the series and Joe Kucan did such a great job as Kane that the original holds a special place for me. Added to that, there were frequently multiple choices of missions as you advance through the story, offering different map layouts and sometimes even completely different missions as the campaign progresses, offering great replay value for the main campaign. As the series continued, this aspect unfortunately disappeared and thus this remains a big plus for the earlier games in the series.
In terms of overall quality, things started to drop off in terms of core C & C values for me with Generals, going with 1:1 real life factions seemed a bit dull to me and while the takes on say China were humorous, the typical EA-induced laziness/streamlining started to set in with this entry when the FMV mission intros, hallmarks of the series, were replaced with text briefings.
Tiberian Sun was weird, I wasn't a massive fan of the leap from the tech level in C&C1 to Tib Sun, with cyborgs, walkers replacing standard tanks and whatnot but I still enjoyed the game, however there were a lot of unfinished and unrealised aspects to that outing sadly.
Gameplay wise RA1 + RA2 are still both absolute classics, with both games featuring fantastic expansion content, from the original C & C's Covert Operations, through Aftermath,Counterstrike and Yuri's revenge, these were true expansions and provided some of the trickiest missions across the series; it was always fun to fathom out the solutions to these puzzles, you could always tell the designers had gone to town on some of these - Paradox Equation (I think) completely rejigged all units for one mission so Heavy Tanks fired Tesla coils and other various things, the expansions were packed with fun experiments and interesting mission setups like that, it was a great time for the genre
For me, recent attempts at RTS games fail in making their factions appealing/interesting; in the Tiberium series you have the charismatic Kane, in RA you're working with Stalin and so on, I'm immediately invested because of the care and attention put into the FMVs that form the backdrop of the game, like Einstein assassinating Hitler in the opening moments of RA immediately catches your interest and draws you in. Marry that up with memorable units; Tesla Coils, Obelisks of light, Flame troopers and the like and you've got some very distinctive factions to play as (as well as there being tangible "faces" for the factions and franchise). Petroglyph have tried recently with the 8-bit games, Grey Goo and that other one Forged Batallion, these guys have nailed the C&C gameplay but they've completely forgotten how to do memorable/appealing factions and thus their recent attempts have been completely forgettable. C & C had this cool near-future thing going on (the original at least) and RA had an alternate past that were immediately recognisable/relatable. Maybe the unique combination of gameplay and quirky/slightly camp FMVs were products of their time, but I actually gave a shit about GDI/Nod and Allies/Soviets, but the newer RTS games- I couldn't give a shit because the factions are trash. Probably the same reason people were clamouring for an actual campaign in the Sins of a Solar Empire series; there you had some decent factions but no story/campaign.
I watched the GDC Classic Game postmortem for C&C while at work this week, it's a interesting watch but the big takeaway for me was it was one of those beautiful times in game dev where they'd caught lightning in a bottle; the people involved gave a shit, they loved the game they were making and it shows in the earlier products especially.
