This game is quite possibly the most in-depth Star Wars game of all time.
User Rating: 9.6 | Star Wars Rebellion PC
I picked this game up back in Summer of '98, and have been playing it ever since. I was amazed by the depth of the star wars universe that was portrayed. The ships for both the Alliance, and the Empire, were true to the series, both in design and implementation. The learning curve, at first, set me way back, and the game largely sat in the drawer for the first month while I poured over the game manual multiple times. (Granted, I was 11 when I got the game, it took me a while to figure out). But once I figured out the controls, and what to do in various situations, I played the game non-stop. The fact that no two galaxies are ever the same, even right down to attribute points for the characters, is a major draw. You *can* use the same strategy time and time again, but to truly succeed you have to be able to be flexible. About the only issue, game play wise, is the wait times. You can sit there for 5 minutes, waiting for something to happen, and then be hit with an onrush of different events all at once. While this keeps one on ones toes, it also gets tedious, and sometimes, depending on the scope of the events, downright annoying. On a whole, as far as the strategic part of the game, its a bit enveloping. Its serves well to have a strategy set early on. You can change the information displayed about each planet at will, so you can keep up with what planets have what buildings/troops/ships/fighters, and how many. The game also incorporates intel gathering, making it so you have to gather intelligence on the other side, in order for the GID (the main display for the entire game) to update information for enemy planets.
And now, onto the tactical part. You can engage enemy ships in orbit around a planet. This isn't as tedious as the strategy part of the game, although it can be a bit dis-heartening when your ISD gets run off by 3 corellian corvettes. The graphics in tactical mode are poor, compared to the rather nice detail (for a game of this era), in the strategy mode. One of the downsides of tactical, though, is that if you want to sit through a battle, you could well be sitting through a battle for 30 minutes, if both sides have large enough fleets. Even on the Novice setting, later in the game, when the AI finally starts sending fleets that are more than 3-4 ships, you'll maybe see 5-6 ship fleets. Depending on the make-up of the fleets, the battles can go quickly, but, like said, they normally take a good long while. 
