Veteran RTS Player Review
User Rating: 4 | Star Wars: Empire at War PC
Not as innovative as most people are claiming. Space battles are nice to look at but restrict the player to only 2-dimensional movement. Hoping to take your fleet of Star Destroyers in for a sneak attack from far above, Homeworld style? Well too bad. Instead you'll have to throw your forces against the enemy just like any other warcraft style RTS battle. Just make sure everything is attacking what it is "strong against" and that it stays away from what it is "weak against" and everything will be fine. If making movement in space battles 2-dimensional isn't bad enough, space also apparently has an invisible boundary that your ships may not cross. Want to swing a couple of Destroyers around that asteroid field to flank the enemy position? Tough. It's too close to the edge of space so you can't go there. The maps are so small that most space battle are limited to a single strategy; amass your ships and attack. Land battles are even more boring, as the maps are very small and usually offer only one attack strategy. The units look great but the terrain is very bland. After a few land battles they become very repetitive.
Conquering the galaxy would be fun if you did not have the boring battles in between, but then this game would just be a remake of Rebellion. In fact, that's more or less what this game is; Rebellion with up-to-date graphics and RTS battles instead of automatically calculated battles.
I am a huge Star Wars fan but I just could not get into this one. If you are looking for a deep strategy experience, you'll not find one here. 
