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 Great game & not your typical RTS July 21, 2008
This is a great game and extremely entertaining. I've played a lot of RTS (real-time strategy) games and unfortunately, most of them follow a very formulaic and unrealistic approach to combat - overwhelm your opponent by building a massive horde of cheap units (first instituted in StarCraft (the infamous "Zergling Rush")). Well, I'm pleased to say this game does not follow that model - expect massive hordes of weanies to be crushed (finally, a game where the static defenses actually do help to repel invaders). The game requires you to think and plan out your moves (if you can play a game of Axis & Allies, you can play this game quite easily). I enjoy games that aren't over in 15 minutes - when you play this game, expect to spend a good chunk of time playing it and have to think about strategic placement of forces and development of same.
The expansion pack adds in a new faction and you get everything in one box, so the Gold Pack is well worth it.
Bottom line: If you like deep strategy, you'll enjoy this game.
 Fun, but hogs resources and gets repetitive June 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It may matter that I'm a Star Wars Geek. Actually, I'm a polygeek. I geek out on all sorts of things, but I do like Star Wars quite a bit.
So this set of two games appealed greatly to me. The characters, planets, and actions all reflect fairly faithfully the expanded Star Wars universe, which I never got much into but it beats the Star Trek universe (Luke Skywalker never tried to hook up with a green alien with sucker-fingers, for instance).
What the game got most right from an RTS perspective is the comprehensiveness of spacefaring combat. You must defeat orbiting defenses before landing to assault planets. This is something that some games (the aged but respected Imperium Galactica II) got right, and others (the disappointing Master of Orion 3) got dead darned wrong. Every battle is, strangely, centered on a planet, rather than in midspace, and the planetary maps are pretty tiny, but the idea is there. If you want to conquer territory you need a space fleet and a sizeable landing party.
The coolest feature of the games is undoubtedly the "movie mode" where your camera view attempts to follow the action. When it gets it right, it's bloody cool. When it gets wrong (the camera is stuck behind an asteroid or somehow grabs the wrong section of space), it's a little lame.
However, the game gets a bit repetitive. There's unfortunately not a lot of strategy - overwhelming force is really what wins, especially since there are a lot of artificial limits on how many units you can bring on ground battles. I mean, c'mon, if I've got 11 platoons in my landing party, why only let me land 3 at a time? Command and Conquer is often dominated by the tank rush strategy (though the Generals games often sidesteps this through terrain and technology, forcing a technology-oriented solution), but there's no getting around it in Empires at War.
Space combat is entirely 2-D, which is really disappointing. Considering that Homeworld, Hegemonia, Imperium Galactica II and every space-based shooter since 1998 have successfully implemented 3-D battles, there's no excuse for a lack of a Z-axis. True, the ships kinda hover around the Z-axis on their own, but there's no surrounding your enemies in 3-space. You simply mass your forces, use their special abilities (some of which are lame) and hope to destroy them. That's it.
Dragging down the fun are the system resources required. The game says it'll run on an NVidia 3-series chip. I've got a 6-series on a very new dual-core HP 5600+ with 3 GB RAM, which I know means I'm a year behind on technology, but any more than a dozen units and the game DRAGS, especially in ground combat. I fault the game design here - I can run Generals:Zero Hour with 100+ units going at once with no slowdown or frame breakup, but for whatever reason, Empires at War just crawls.
And it has crashed twice to the dreaded BSD while playing. I've run every maintenance check and can find nothing wrong with my system. Maybe there's a patch I'm missing somewhere out there?
In conclusion, this is a fun game for die-hard Star Wars geeks, but RTS fans will want to look elsewhere.
 LucasArts does it again! May 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm an avid fan of PC strategy games and have been having trouble finding a good game. This changed when I found Star Wars: Empire At War. Although I jumped into it after the expansion came out, I still find the game a blast. It takes the aspects of a turned-based strategy game and puts it in real time. Both space and land combat are simple and straightforward to understand, and the Consotium gives the game added spice. The rollover unit info helps a ton when in the middle of a chaotic skirmish. In addition, the ability to watch sections of battle using theatrical camera angles makes it very a la Lucas. Long story short, this game is definitely worth any strategy gamer's credits, er, dollers.
 Lucas comes short again April 20, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have played many Star Wars games, I guess I buy alot of Star Wars related products.
I own Galatic Battlegrounds, many of the SW Shooters, RPGs, and the entire line of Rogue Squadron type games. Empire at War is better than Galatic Battlegrounds, but Lucas still comes up short, the Gameplay isn't excellent, I still prefer Command and Conquer, the Characters that make up the Star Wars galaxy seem to be there just as an afterthought.
I bought it beat it and tried to resell this product to a used store but they wouldn't take it.
AMAZON'S PICTURE IS MISLEADING (thanks JJAV) January 9, 2008
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
I like Star Wars as well as your average 30-something red-blooded American male, but I am by no means a fanboy; in fact, I have found that most Star Wars related games in the past decade are kind of 'meh'. With that said, I loved the original Empires at War, it was a great game that combined a strategic game of planet conquering with two types of RTS games in which you fought for control of planets on land and in space - it didn't rest on the Star Wars Franchise to please the user, the Star Wars heroes, vehicles, and troops are just an added bonus. User created mods are freely available on the net, and that expands replayability immensely. I pulled it off the shelf the other day to find some of the new mods use the expansion - the original expansion no longer seems to be available from Amazon, but the gold package has both the original and expansion. The original was a great twist on the basic RTS style of game, and one of my favorites, gameplay-wise. Eye candy isn't as good as more modern titles, but gameplay has held up well. IMHO, the original game is still worth the price, and I'm sure the expansion just sweetens the pot.
Note that their cover art for this product is for the original game, not the gold edition; I was waffling on whether to buy it until I saw the customer pic, as it didn't seem the gold edition had the expansion and there is no mention of it in the product description. Per Lucasart's website, the gold edition does indeed have the Forces of Corruption expansion included (and looks like the second picture in the gallery). Thanks to 'JJAV' for the clarifying customer pic.
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