Addicting and accessable, as it was before, but now it's even more painfully unbalanced.
So now you can play as the Empire, Rebellion, or the Zann Consortium. The Consortium differs because they get their resources from corrupting other planets, and buying their technology from the black markets they establish on the various planets. All in all, it's an entirely new way to play, but at the same time is still the same gameplay, but gone about in a different way.
Because of this new way to play, you'll find that playing as the Zann Consortium is considerably easier than playing as the Rebellion or the Empire. The Zann Consortium was made incredibly powerful-it makes both of the other factions seem very.. small. They have access to illegal weapons that the other factions can't get a hold of, like Mass Drivers that devastate fighters and plow through shields. A lot of times, there are some even matches, but a lot of the time-The consortium dominates. It's much easier to get a lot more money a lot faster, and though they make pretty much everything for the consortium much more expensive, it still gets to a point where you can pretty much afford to build entire fleets consisting of nothing but like 50 expensive capital ships or something.
Playing against the consortium, especially if your not too experienced, is a joke. One of the new frigates not only has amazing fire power but also very VERY durable armor that can withstand anything.
Now it's not really the consortium that's overpowered, it's a few of their weapons and ships that are way stronger than they should be. Some of their resources like their corvette, and their unbelievably slow pulse cannon tank things, that are so easy to take out because of their slowness and the fact their only weapon is this huge pulse cannon that can only fire after being charged for about 30 seconds.
The other factions have unbalanced units too. Most notably the rebellion, whom have two major problems: The new "Capital ship destroyer" which has two proton torpedoes that fires something like six torpedos EACH. It can take out a Star Destroyer in a couple of minutes with ease, and also seems to have very capable shielding AND can jet away in no time if in danger. The other is something that was in the last game as well and is the biggest problem in the game I think. It's basically a giant rocket launcher on wheels, that can fire MILES away and kill an ARMY of infantry in one blast. They're easy to take out.. if you can get close to them, which is no easy feat, because it normally blows you up first.
Another major problem with the expansion is that it gives you no option to play a galactic conquest with only two factions present. With all three, it gets pretty chaotic and you don't have much downtime, which is a lot of fun and a lot of excitement sometimes, but can be tedious at times. So can taking out these ridiculous units like the capital ship destroyer and the stupid rocket launcher.. These were some cruel developers, man. They like the sounds of people screaming their lungs out as their getting an entire fleet or ground force reduced to a joke by one unit.
But despite all of these issues, Empire At War: Forces Of Corruption is still a very enjoyable and very addicting game. Hours go by extremely fast as I play this game-I could do it all day without much problem-although I always go through a session with a lot of screaming.
If you don't value your vocal cords much, don't think twice about getting this game. I know I focused a lot more on the negatives, but it really is a great strategy game that's very accessable and very addicting, and the third faction adds even more value to a game that could already eat up hours.