What can I say? It's a beatifully rendered, hell-of-a-lotta-fun classic RTS.
Am I being a nostalgic fool? Maybe. No one however can argue the cult and entertainment value of either the old school RTS games of yesterday or the original Star Wars Trilogy and it's delightful to see a solid, well rounded game to back it up. Empire at War has your standard fare of progression and micro management of resources and upgrading for better and badder units. However, everything is almost TOTALLY focused on units. No building fortresses, raising (or leveling) walls, nope. That's where things start to really shine, and the pace of this RTS goes into hyperspace.
Empire at War takes a new approach. Everything you need basewise is already there for you. Its up to you how you allocate your forces and obtain funds in order to improve what you have. You also need to watch yourself; like Warcraft 3 and its expansion you can only have a certain size of an army no matter how far you progress.
Battle is handled by grabbing up nearby 'nodes' such as mines and abandonded satellites to set up defenses and aquire credits. These nodes can change hands often and while not totally necessary for the construction of a new unit, they do ensure victory. Everything is done by a tech level, too, meaning that a good amount of income must be spent non-material upgrades before seeing super weapons like Star Destroyers or AT-ATs are seen.
Another point seen only on planetary battles are landing points. these clearings are essentially spots where new troops and equimentment are dropped down by carrier shuttle. It would have been nice to be able to ambush/destroy these shuttles in transit, but instead the points on the ground themselves are controlled by maintaining your forces near it. The less enemy harassing your troops by said point the faster it becomes yours. This may also have you spending valuable ground units on protecting an empty peice of ground, which can be problematic since ground forces are a great deal more restricted in size than space ones.
Sapce battles are a bit more intense. Your units can deployed just about anywhere meaning backup is only a click away. the only restriction would be you can't deploy right by the enemy's space station.
What Star Wars game would be complete without familiar faces? Darth Vader (easily the most sickly powerful ground unit ever in a RTS game) Han Solo and Chewie, R2 D2 & C3-PIO make apparences along with lesser know names from the Star Wars universe such as Kyle Katern and Mara Jade. Each and every hero unit has a special ability that makes them shine. Vader can pick up and crush a tank like a beer can with the power of the force (not to mention when he attacks a building he shakes it to death with a freaking EARTHQUAKE). Chewbakka can hijack an enemy vehicle, Han has his smartmouth and his Melinnium Falcon. Was that a Boba Fett sighting? Yep. Slave 1 really IS the most feared fighter in the galaxy.
Aside from the thourghly enjoyable nostalgia and very fast paced gameplay the sights and sounds of this game are all Star Wars. Familiar blaster shots, explosions and of course that one-of-a-kind sountrack blare out while easily recogizable units clash for supremecy. The graphics are adequete in planetary battles, in space however is where things really shine. Ships break apart and explode, every single tiny (and I mean microscopic) fighter zooms in and out majestically in almost coreographed fashion while dogfighting. Even the debris floating in orbit around the varios planets looks impressive. Take Genosis for instance: its a graveyard of cruisers and star destoyers with lightning kinda dancing between them; the attention to detain is superb in that this graveyard isn't just the imperial Trilogy ships but some Clone Wars ships are floating there too. Deffinetly must be seen. This was rendered well even on my primitive GeForce 440 MX with minimal load or frame loss.
Gameplay is flawless on single player modes, but a slight imbalance can be seen in multiplayer. There some massive advantages the rebellion has on the ground and space with normal units that allow for easy credits early on. Conversly Empire hero units are the most powerful in game hands down. I mean Vader creates and EARTHQUAKE for Pete's sake. Still, while everything has its vice and counter its a certainty you will see people grabbing for particular units and producing them in mass quantities.
Still, Star Wars: Empire at War at end does succeed in everythign it attempts. It is a great peice of Nostalgia, a great RTS and especially if you're a fan of either RTS games or Star Wars, a great buy.