Star Wars: Empire at War could have been a great game. But it falls shorts of its potential.
Upon starting the game, I must admit I was a little overwhelmed. There were about 45 planets with a pretty even split between the Empire and Rebellion. At first, it was difficult trying to figure out what planet can build what units and just managing all the planets I had control of. Since I was playing as the Rebels I had to steal technology. There were about 5 or so technologies I had to steal before I managed to get the larger units. Needless to say, the first hour was a lesson in learning how to steal and how to keep an eye out for the Empire.
I lost 5 planets during my first hour of play, but that was the end of it. Once I started getting ships built in greater numbers, I was able to defend my worlds from attack but even then, the AI didn't come at me like I was expecting. For the most part, the AI left me alone, which forced me to go on the offensive sooner than I expected. But I noticed the AI was obsessed with some planets. For instance, I sent a fleet Manaan, I took out the space forces there and let my fleet sit there. The AI would constantly try to take it back, but eventually it stopped. This same thing happened with a couple other planets too. I was expecting the AI to do that sort of thing from the beginning but it didn't. As I started to take worlds, I noticed that the space battles were relatively easy. Even though I was playing on Medium, I was expecting the AI to put up more of a fight. Regardless, the space battles are awesome. Perhaps when I try the Hard difficulty setting the AI will be tougher. The land battles, however, were a different story.
The land battles are dull, but not terribly poor. Certain planets, like Byss for instance, were very hard to take control of. The AI aggressively defended the worlds that had big boosts for certain units. Byss gave a boost to AT-AT reactors, making them faster and stronger. It took me at least 30 minutes, if not longer, to successfully take control of Byss because it gave a big boost to the AT-AT. I will also say that some land battles are very easy to win. The AI will aggressively defend certain planets while letting others slip more easily. The major drawback for land battles is that you can't bring in more than 3 unit groups right away (on most planets). The idea of reinforcement points is nice, but is very annoying since you can get overwhelmed quickly. The added weather effects were OK. Nothing too spectacular. Perhaps it was a glitch in my game, but I found the land battles to be more of a challenge.
The Battle of Coruscant: Coruscant was not the last planet I took. In fact, it was one of the first 10 planets I managed to snatch away. I mention this because I was expecting Coruscant to have some of the strongest defenses to go up against. I was stunned when I took the space battle, but even more stunned when I attacked the surface and won as well. The Emperor couldn't even do damage to me as I managed to kill him just moments after he attacked once and started to flee. I was expecting the Galactic Capitol to be the toughest battle of all, but it wasn't.
As for graphics, they're OK. They could be a lot better though.
The sounds were excellent. Definitely feels like Star Wars.
It took me about 20 hours, maybe a little longer, to win on the largest Galactic Conquest map of 45 planets. But most of that time was spent building ground forces and my fleets. I had the AI blocked off from attacking deep within my territory by essentially blockading key routes. The AI would have to attack there first in order to get any farther. Of course, since the AI wasn't really attacking me I'm wondering if that even helped me or not.
What really shocked me was how the AI was getting such a low amount of credit income. This really concerns me. As I took planets, I built mines and other structures, and on some planets I built as many mines as I could. By the end of the game, I was getting a daily income of 11,500 credits with a grand total of over 1.2 million credits before I took out the last Imperial planet. I didn't have a shortage of money, but it's obvious that the AI did.
The end cinematic sequence was a nice touch. The only part of that I thought was stupid was showing Luke, Han and Chewie getting their medals from A New Hope. I know the game goes through that movie, but I don't think that needs to be in there. The first part was the best, that last bit was just dumb. I'll probably get ripped for saying that, but it's true.
Star Wars: Empire at War could have been a great game. But it falls short of its potential. From everything I read and heard about this game before its release, it sounded and looked like it could have been the best Star Wars game to date. But it failed. I don't know what it is, but there is something missing. Perhaps as I play more I will change my mind as I try different things with the game settings. The hype was too great for this game. It is definitely better than the demo, as I expected, but there needs to be more to it. If there's an expansion, I would like to see the rest of the trilogy be included, as well as include the prequel era. This is a good game if you're a Star Wars nut, otherwise you're better off looking elsewhere.