Fans of the Star Wars movies will need a period of adjustment as they
begin to play the game. They may at first cringe at the possibility of
Rebels battling Gungans on Tatooine, but will soon get used to such potential
match-ups. Those that need to be eased into such potential 'fantasy'
situations should begin play with the game's campaigns. Six are provided,
including a tutorial campaign, which take the player through a series of
scenarios which take place in the Star Wars timeline between the movies.
For example, the Empire campaign begins shortly after the destruction of the
Death Star. Those Star Wars fans still having issues at this point might
want to try the included scenario editor which will allow them to recreate any
conflict from the movies. The editor can also be used to create
interesting situations such as the anachronistic, but oddly satisfying
one-on-one duel between Darth Vader and Jar-Jar Binks on an ice-covered mountaintop
that we created on our test machine. [For those who are curious, Darth
Vader swept the best of seven series that we ran, 4-0.]
The AI, for the most part, is as strong as it is in Age of Empires II.
The higher skill settings will provide most players with quite a
challenge. It does occasionally exhibit some strange behavior,
though. In one test game, the Empire had beaten my Rebels back to the wall
when I started producing a mass of air units. The Empire AI in this game
seemed to forget that it could generate anti-air units and the tide of the war
was completely reversed. Perhaps there are a few gaps in the AI when it
comes to facets of the game that weren't present in Age of Empires II.
Overall, the game is quite enjoyable, especially to those who can live with
certain compromises such as the need for droid armies to cultivate farms and
space empires that still need to make use of water-going vessels. The
combination of the great Age of Empires II gameplay and the Star Wars mythos
work together to create a pretty good real-time strategy game.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 86%.
Age of Empires purists and Star Wars evangelists might balk at some of the
liberties taken by the game, but most gamers will find it to be a challenging
and enjoyable game.
System Requirements: 233 MHz Pentium II CPU; 32 MB RAM; 2 MB
Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 500 MB Hard Drive Space; Mouse.
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