February | 2006

Archive for February, 2006

Star Wars Empire at War

2006/02/20 in gaming

I just finished it (Rebellion Campaign/Medium Difficulty)! Believe it or not, to finish it, all you have to do is to destroy the Death Star! What happens inevitable after you won the battle at the Death Star’s current location with Red Squadron/Luke Skywalker present. And since the Death Star begins to destroy every planet in its way directly after its introduction, you have no other option than to attack immediately, or otherwise you’d risk to have a universe full of asteroid fields. And even if not (haven’t tried it) who would ignore the Death Star wandering around? No, of course you throw everything at it you’ve got – as soon as you can.

In my case, the Death Star destroyed Alderaan and then destroyed Correllia only 1 gameday later. No fight at Coruscant, no nothing. 50% of the map were still Empire-controlled planets. As fantastic the game is and no matter how much fun I really had with it, this is a serious flaw in the game design. Okay, Episode IV also ended with the destruction of the first Death Star, but Correllia wasn’t destroyed in the film (nor later), so you can’t argue that it happened to go along with the well known Star Wars story. The game was going own ways – uh well, anyways.

Further – I thought there was Obi-Wan Kenobi in the game as a major hero. Well if he was, the game finished too soon before he could show up. Darth Vader? I haven’t seen him! The only “evil” major hero I’ve seen was Boba Fett. Once.

Have I mentioned that I wanted to fight at Coruscant? Since 50% of all planets were in Imperial hands, you also don’t get to see all those space/land maps.

The tech tree grants you the max level shortly before this. So the air speeders (the things they use in Episode V on Hoth against the AT-AT walkers) need max tech level. I build NONE of them! I wanted to use them against an AT-AT? At least once? A-Wings were also max tech, I build 2 squadrons, but never brought them into action, not enough time before the end.

And yes, where was Darth Vader, while I was destroying the Death Star? Hiding because of my mighty fleet?

Really, it was a mistake to declare the destruction of the Death Star as the end. The empire should have just build another one, OR make the campaign totally fitting to the known story.

And, what’s up with the planet “Biss”? This planet was still grayed out (most planets are still grayed out in the beginning and become visible as you move through the story missions) when the game ended. I only played ~6 story missions, is this all?

And where was Mara Jade? I’ve seen her in the demo (with Chriz Mod V7.1, and below) but not in the full version of the game?

Mon Mothma was killed, because I had her, of course, on Corellia, right before the Death Star destroyed it and there was no time to move her out. Most heros re-appear after they’ve been defeated, but Mon Mothma was completely gone after this. Damn, she’s very important because of her 25% savings (okay okay, it doesn’t matter anymore when all that’s left are the outro and the game credits), whereever she’s stationed. Well and because she’s the leader of the Rebellion.

I liked the story very much, the missions were cool. But because all of the above, it seems that you have to play it in skirmish (without the story) to see all the maps and all the heros and all the units in full actoin. Story AND everything at once seems to be impossible. That’s sad. I really expected something else entirely. I don’t think a future patch will change this, but I would think of it as an improvement.