Old school review; Shadows of the Empire had some great moments, but could have been so much more....
Summary
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was one of the first games available on the N64. The gameplay was really varied, and so was its quality unfortunately. The graphics and sound were quite good though, resulting in quite an enjoyable game.
Gameplay
Shadows of the Empire had 10 levels with varying gameplay. In short there were 4 kind of levels:
-Shooter (FPS optional), as in e.g. Doom/Jedi Knight without lightsaber , this includes a less conventional run&jump level on a train
-Flying as in Rogue Squadron
-Arcade Space Shooter; being inside a cockpit and shooting down enemies w/o controlling the spacecraft
-Racing
The flight levels were really spectacular with great clear and crisp graphics, clear objectives and tight controls. Especially the first level of SotE became the blueprint for the Rogue Squadron series later on.
The other levels however weren't as good. The space shooter levels were still fun but quite simple, the racing was a little annoying, and the FPS levels varied largely in quality. The FPS controls didn't feel as tight, and especially in levels with small ridges the controls were really annoying at times.
Although some of the better designed FPS levels still hold up to this day.
All in all however, the varied gameplay could still be called solid, however the difficulty level made it a little less enjoyable. The medium and hard difficulty were insane at times, especially taking into account the save feature (the game only saves a completed level). But the easy difficulty was really way easier than the medium one, indicating that the game wasn't very well balanced.
Graphics
SotE had awesome graphics in the flight levels; clear, crisp and with no fog whatsoever. The FPS levels however were a little less appealing with quite some fog all of a sudden, but luckily not enough to harm the gameplay. In short the in-game graphics were great.
The 'cutscenes' however were merely some SNES style pictures with low-res text below it. This was no problem in the 2D SNES era, but in the 3D N64 timeline this felt a little less satisfying.
In general, the graphics were still very good, but a little extra polishing would have helped this game a lot.
Sound
The original John Williams score was amazing as always, but the complementary work done by another composer was a little less brilliant. Some of his tracks were really good, but a lot became a little repetitive.
The quality of the music and sound effects was pretty good for an early N64 game (although some sounds were pretty bad).
Value
SotE wouldn't last very long if you'd only play the 10 levels on the easy difficulty. However the other difficulties were so hard that after playing through 4 levels you would lose all interest in playing the game any further.
Some bonuses could be unlocked by collecting so-called 'Challenge Points', however these bonuses were simply not worth it.
It was interesting however to see that the endings are different for the several difficulty levels (does Dash -the main character- survive?), but I would have preferred to see extra unlockable bonus levels as seen in the Rogue Squadron series.
Closing comments
SotE was and still is a very fun game. But it wasn't consistent enough to be absolutely amazing.