I'm uninstalling this demo right now. No, really, I was so impressed by it that I no longer want any trace of it left on my hard drive. That makes for a decent-enough sunnary of my experience, so now let's analyze its problems a little more in-depth:

1. Tutorials that forbid player progress until the announcer has finished speaking.

There's an interesting article over on Gamasutra that mentions this particular sin. Or rather, the author points out that the most popular games (based on sales numbers) within his realm of research had no appreciable tutorial - personally, I just think players get pissed when they aren't allowed to play the game. That's how I felt, too, sitting through the agonizingly slow narrator as he spoon-fed me each instruction. Naturally, the written or read instruction are useless without the instruction manual (why have a tutorial if you force the user to read the manual anyways). This is handily sidestepped, however, by the tutorial placing these great big blue bulls-eyes on the stuff you're supposed to click. What's really funny, too, is that you can't click anywhere but where the tutorial wants you to, when it wants you to, but the narrator assumes you wandered off to explore the UI... something I would have loved to do, if only I could have. That doesn't hold a candle, however, to where the narrator is simply wrong - requiring some semblance of I.Q. to pass the tutorial, when everything else about the tutorial is so insultingly brain dead that the average meercat could complete it. That is the next problem with tutorials of this kind: How is it fun to follow a set of directions in a situation that is so canned, so pre-planned that it's literally impossible to fail, especially for no reward, not even a "good job" from the damned narrator? In the case of the Imperial section towards the end of the tutorial, the NPC takes credit for the victory! This is anti-fun, distilled and purified until it just reeks from its own putridity.

2. Inconsistent input system, or at least an input system that sucks.

I'll talk about the galactic map first, which was a totally uninspired list of every major stellar feature in the official Star Wars canon. Click-and-drag a droid from ground to space, then space to the "steal" slot on a neighboring... no wait, that's what the tutorial said, but it's not working. Well, what the heck. Drag to the fleet location? No, that's not it. Drag to the planet itself? Oh... that's how, and the game just sorta figures out the rest. Why force me to drag it into space, then? Totally a missed streamlining opportunity, in fact I think the unit management UI sucks, especially when compared to systems like Galactic Civilizations II's, or Master of Orion 2's systems. Seriously, this is a question that doesn't need to be asked again, and LucasArts no longer has the capability to answer them in an effective, graceful fashion.

Now for combat, which is probably more important. It seemed like I was faced with two separate input systems between space and ground, something which I can't understand the need for - the two different kinds of combat are otherwise so similar that I just. Specifically, I had a hard time, for whatever reason, selecting multiple units in a stroke on the ground. As one of those must-have features that's been a part of RTS gaming for over a full decade, this would be a serious oversight if it doesn't exist. If it did exist and I had such a hard time with it that I've become confused into thinking it doesn't, then their interface system sucks. Further, the camera seriously needs a rotate feature, one of the few things that wasn't explained (since the tutorial went so far out of its way to explain everything else, I assumed the rotation feature didn't exist).
They also need to seriously streamline the attack-move command. This is especially aggravated by idiot units that won't defend themselves...

3. Idiot Units

Nothing makes a strategy junky more mad than pointless micromanagement. By "pointless", I mean the most trivial, rudimentary tasks, such as shooting back. I left a few units to defend a zone, moved on with my main force, and later checked on them to find them surrounded by the enemy, taking fire, and doing nothing to stop themselves from being slaughtered. This is another of those "over a decade" things for which there can be no excuse.

Oh, but this gets better. Units will respond to their neighbors' movements by moving, the idea probably being to create a nice, loose formation that won't befoul the AI's attempts at pathfinding. I take this guess because I've used a similar method in AI programming tournaments where unit density could screw with the results of my pathfinding algorithms - causing the AI to choose significantly less-than-ideal routes because they keep thinking the ideal route is blocked by the guy in front of him. There's a problem with how LucasArts does this, however, because while it does prevent units from getting too close to each other, it can cause formations to get "pushed" by their neighbors. They can get pushed straight into danger, which they then don't respond to.

4. Serendipity

Sometimes, chance can make for an interesting and fun mechanic in a game. Name one RPG that would be substantially improved by removing chance. I can even think of some creative and effective uses of chance in RTS games - particularly how weather was handled in Shogun and other Total War series of games, or how it contributed to the massive, army-versus-army determination of how well your units killed the enemy's units. I really want to hammer the weather effects in Empire at War, because I literally dropped my forces on Tattoine, and a sand tornado blew them and the initial reinforcements I called in completely away. Mission failed, the empire probably laughing their butts off at my misfortune.

5. F@#$%ng Hacks

Nothing can sour the gameplay experience like the enemy revealing a commanding super-advantage, a kind of coup-de-douleur (blow of suffering) just to make you feel bad. I'm specifically talking about Bobba Fett, who single-handedly torched 4 squads of my rebel infantry and took over the reinforcement point they were guarding. I mean, it's not bad enough that the Empire has a massive base in the center of the map that was guarded by a lot of AT-ST walkers, TIE Maurader light tanks, static anti-infantry defenses, and the gratuitous legion of stormtroopers. It's not bad enough that almost all of these were safely behind a shield whose generator and power supply were within the shield, making bomber support utterly worthless. It's not bad enough that there were only two chokehold entrances to the base, where the rebel forces start on the side of the map opposite the less-fortified entrance. It's not bad enough that, while it's possible to walk around, you suffer perpetual attacks by doing so, as well as having to deal with environmental hazards that not only eat your valuable troops, but your troops are too stupid to stay away from. No, this isn't bad enough. LucasArts had to throw in a character who can travel three times as fast as your fastest unit, can roast 4 squads of units at a time with a flamethrower, and then leave with three quarters of his health, in spite of everyone who had been shooting at him. You drop 4 squads to replace those lost, and he just comes back. He also steals your reinforcement points, which makes it extremely hard to keep more than 5 squads on the map (when he can easily roast 4 without breaking a sweat). All this, on the easy difficulty setting. Holy crap.

So, as I said, I'm uninstalling this. Once again, LucasArts has taken one of my favorite genres and managed to thoroughly ruin it, as they've managed to do in every past attempt they've made at empire-building and RTS. The sad part is, the fact that it's Star Wars probably convinced enough people to buy it that LucasArts at least broke even. It's a sick world.