Metareview - Star Wars: Empire at War

Graphics aside, there is no way Empire at War has a larger sense of scale than Rebellion. My fleets in Rebellion literally consisted of 1000s of Ties and hundreds of Star Destroyers, dozens of Super Star Destroyers, and a few Death Stars. Emprie at War limits you to 5 Star Destroyers at a time.

At Lucasarts they just DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DESIGN INTERFACES.

They need to hire some true designers like Chris Taylor, and stop paying amateurs. Really.

It's not the interface that's the problem. It's the pacing of the game.

It's too fast. I mean I admit, I'm not one of those guys who either knows how to or enjoys bum-rushing my opponent, whether it's the computer or a real online opponent. So I don't play online often, and I usually set the speed and difficulty of games like this down to the lower levels.

But this game commits the cardinal sin of any strategy game by making the *strategic* view move in real-time just as the tactical battle view does. The strategic view is supposed to be where you plan; it's the equivalent of a chess grid. Give me a time limit if you want, but don't attack me while I'm sitting there minding my own business wondering if I should build a mine or something. Strategic views should always be basically turn-based, even if it's not obvious that they are (they never need to tell you that you're taking turns, but the computer should not be able to build up a fleet and then bum-rush you on the *strategic* screen). I mean, in real life, wars aren't fought over the span of 10 hours. There's more than 3 minutes in between each battle. Gimme a little more time here, for god's sake.

What LucasArts did here is basically make two tactical views. There is no real strategic view because you can't plan your strategy. All you can do is build as fast as you can and attack as fast as you can, which is exactly what you do in tactical.

There are some major balance issues as well.. a couple of missile corvettes (I can't remember their actual name) can take out almost an entire fleet of Imperial star destroyers. Playing as the rebels, I made it through the entire game with a fleet of 10 or so missile corvettes and nothing else (I was getting bum-rushed by the computer before I realized how cheap and effective these ships were, and from then on it was a slaughter). This kind of thing can be patched, though, but it would be nice if the game was more thoroughly tested to begin with.

There are good things about this game. The scale of battle (especially the space battles) feels right and proper, for one thing, and it can be fun to pit huge fleets against each other. Well, really, I can't actually think of anything else I really like beyond that... but that's honestly almost enough. Get a really major space battle going and you can't get much more RTS fun than your next hour or two.

Overall, though, definitely kind of a disappointment, and not a game that lives up to some of the scores it's getting. That 70/100 up there is probably about right. GameSpot went way overboard (for once) in their score. This is a thoroughly average RTS game with some significant issues.

Battlegrounds was a fun game at the time but I don't know if this can tear me away from Dawn of War Winter Assault.
I would like to try the rts space battles though.

I don't know what kind of smoke the people who reviewed that pile were smoking, but it wasn't anything strong enough to merit those kinds of scores, I can assure you.

Here's the idea: take Rebellion, X-wing Vs. Tie Fighter, and Battlegrounds, and mash them all together. Then you got a good game.

Until they do that, I won't be happy with two squads of alliance rebels taking out four AT-ATs. Frickin' stupid powerful infantry.

Other than a horrendous interface and slightly better, if less epic and in-depth combat, Empire at War is outdone in almost every single way by Rebellion, a game that's nearly a decade old. Rebellion had a bigger and far more detailed strategic game. You had the option of using spies, diplomacy, sabatoge and intimidation. There were more spaceships, persistant damage and a real tech tree. And every action had repurcussions. In Empire at War, I took the Death Star around blowing up every single planet I came to. There were no consequences. In Rebellion, blowing up even a single planet caused massive diplomatic problems for the Empire throughout the entire galaxy. As for the vaunted space combat, ships damaged in Rebellion had to be repaired. Combat was actually 3 dimensional, and rather than the x beats y balance of EaW, Rebellion actually forced you to think about risks and positioning your ships. I guess I'm just disappointed that a modern game does much less with less depth than an old one.