More like a waste of money. Not for Hardcore Star Wars fans.
User Rating: 6 | Star Wars: Empire at War PC
Star Wars lacks any good RTS titles. Rebellion was a fun game but didn't do so well. Galactic Battlegrounds was a shameless rip off of AOEII. (It even says so on the case). So having a new star wars RTS was exciting but nothing to get your hopes up about. First if all if appearence is anything then EAW is a boring game indeed. The Grahpics are lacking in many areas and the scale is terrible. Star Wars fans might find it a little strange that Darth Vader is only a few feet shy of an AT-ST. And the Millenium Falcon is about 1/5 the size of a star destroyer. The gameplay is mediocre at best. Land battles and space battles are essentially the same with little difference. This is a rusher's game. Defensive fortifications are limited and easily countered and you'll find many units in the game that have no particular purpose other than to be cannon fodder for the enemy. Petroglyph tried a grotesque rock/paper/scissors/balance which ends in several horrible situations. For example: You have an ATAT walker. You see a rebel infantry squad. You order the ATAT to attack them. Those of use familiar with games like Star Wars battlefront know that being shot by an ATAT means instant death for you and those around you. The ATAT shoots and those rebels are still alive. It shoots again. One of em might have died. In the end your ATAT spent 3 minutes trying to kill a sqauad of rebel infantry that was not even moving. But this same ATAT can destroy a rebel artillery piece with 2 shots. Realism was thrown out the window. Common sense does not apply often in this game.
The single player galactic conquest mode is an interesting yet flawed experiance. It's remiscent of Rebellion but sped up much more so that today's generation of gamers with short attention spans can stand it. I never played galactic conquest mode much but the thing I found immensly annoying is that you can only get some units depending on what planets you hold. For example, to build star destroyers you need one of a few planets in the galaxy. Without control of these planets you cannot bulid star destroyers. Which once again. Defies common sense.
So really if you want some good star wars RTS action Empire at War is not the way to go. Go for rebellion and Warlords (the star wars mod for homeworld 2) 
