Star Wars Empire At War
Does anyone here remember that god-awful attempt at a Star Wars RTS that was Star Wars: Battlegrounds? Well, if you do, please, by all means, forget it.
I say this because redemption has arrived in the form of Empire at War. First off, I will start with the good. The game utilizes its own engine this time, instead of borrowing yesteryear's "Age of Mythology" engine and dropping Star Wars skins on them as was done in Battlegrounds. This lends itself to displaying 3D units on the battlemap that, while not stunning, (at least on my mediocre rig), are quite good and actually respond to the laws of physics, behaving as they would in the real world.
Believe it or not, the battle system on land is actually rather refreshing, compared to other RTS games. When playing in Campaign or Galactic Conquest mode (more on those later), you do not simply gather resources, dump them off at a command center, and pump out gargantuan armies. Instead, you follow what might happen in a real battle.
As an attacker, you must first gain control of the space above the planet. Then, with a secure orbit you must bring in ground forces from one of your planets, and land them on the surface in an attempt to gain control of the planet. In order to land your units on the surface, you must take control of landing zones, which both increase the number of units you can have on the ground at once, and where you may land them. For example, as an attacker, you start out with a single landing zone which allows you to have a maximum of four units on the ground at one time(sometimes as few as two). If you want to land a larger force, you will have to send out infantry to capture other landing zones and land more units. You cannot, unless you download a mod changing this, have more than ten units on the ground at a time. There are no buildings to capture and build more units. What you have in orbit is all you have to capture the planet with. Granted, you may very well bring a massive invasion force and not care for casualties, but unless you are playing on the easiest settings, this is a sure-fire way to lose the game.
As a defender, you have the opposite objective. You want to destroy all of the enemy land forces that have landed on the surface of the planet. Your forces are composed of garrison units, which come with their associated production facilities (i.e., a Barracks will have a garrison of a couple of infantry squads, a light factory will have recon units, and heavy factories will have tanks as their garrisons), and whatever units you have stationed on the surface of that planet. If all of the forces landed on the surface are destroyed, the battle is won. If all of your structures and units are destroyed, you lose.
In skirmish mode, this changes somewhat. While you still must bring units to the battlefield through landing zones, you do build bases that allow you to build units and upgrade them. Gathering resources is, thankfully not a pain. There are a set number of mining platforms throughout the maps that produce credits at a steady rate. The more pads you control, the more money you have. It really is that simple. No worthless worker units to protect. It is all about the combat.
In addition to the mechanics of the battle maps, the battle maps themselves are part of the gameplay as well. No, I am not talking simply of terrain and choke points. Each planet map is unique, including weather conditions. On some planets, there is constant rain, which slows down units significantly if they have not been upgraded to overcome it. On another, there are electric fields that prohibit repulsor lift vehicles from deploying, such as some tanks and speeded bikes, or Rebel airspeeders. On Mustaffar, the planet from Episode III in which Obi-Wan battles Anakin, there is a rain of ash and magma that slowly kills infantry. The list goes on.
The space combat is something that is truly the defining feature of the game. Now we can finally fight out the Battle Above Endor from Return of the Jedi. It is relatively straightforward. Much like land combat, you build a fleet at your planets, fly them to an opponent’s planet, and combat ensues with the forces at hand. The defender will (almost always) have a space station, which has a garrison of fighters, and the forces in orbit around the planet. The attacker must destroy everything, including the space station to gain control of the orbit, while the defender similarly wants to wipe out or at least repulse the invading forces. (On a side note, in the higher difficulty levels, the AI is relatively competent, and will retreat if the battle is not going well, rather than risk annihilation.) The ships of all sides are well modeled, and behave like they should, with capital ships sweeping anything larger than an X-wing before them, light cruisers sweeping fighters before them, gunboats unloading missile barrages from afar, fighters and bombers swooping in to take out hardpoints on capital ships, and heavy cruisers taking on anything the capital ships miss. One thing that is worth going into detail on is the existence of hardpoints on the larger ships. Instead of just having a health bar, the ship’s health is instead a composite of the health of the various hardpoints on the ship, from it’s engines, shield generator, turrets and hangars. Each of these can be destroyed individually with different effect. Destroying the shield generator will take down the shields and keep them from regenerating, and destroying the engines will leave the ship dead in the water, so to speak. (Again, a tangent. If a ship’s engines are destroyed, the ship will be lost in the event of a retreat, even if it is not destroyed in full. This makes since, as a ship with no engines will not be able to make the jump to hyperspace.)
Now, for the campaign/galactic map. This is the one thing that is rather disappointing. While I have nothing in mind to make it any better, it is just so very linear. There is not much to explain on this. The planets are laid out on a 2D map, with hyperspace routes connecting them. You move units by click and drag, build units and building by selecting the planet and clicking on the corresponding icon. Again, not too complicated or different from any other campaign map. However, there are some defining features that partially redeem the campaign map. First, capital ships such as Star Destroyers or Mon Calimari Cruisers can only be built on specific planets such as Kuat or Mon Calimari with fully upgraded space stations. This helps differentiate the planets from one another. Secondly, not all planets can support the same number of buildings, or the higher level space stations. Some can only support 3 buildings, some 8. Some can support a level 2 Space station, others a level 5.
I hope this helps. Feel free to leave feedback of any sort. There will be updates and edits coming.
Originally Posted by Legio XII
