Alternatively, some fights will be ground based, and you'll have to fly in ground troops and assault vehicles to take control of objectives.įorces are persistent - if you manage to complete a battle with few casualties, you can pull those troops back off the planet they're on and redeploy them elsewhere. Capturing an enemy space station can lead to an increase in resources to build ships. Some planets have little on the surface, and the battles will take place in space, using your fleets of X-Wings, Star Destroyers, space stations etc. Upon arrival at a planet, you can begin the battling nitty-gritty - taking out the other side. Troops and fighters can be moved between planets that you control. The aim of the game is to control planets, increase resources, increase troops and then expand your empire / rebellion, in line with a campaign-based mission structure. Alderaan, as a densely populated capital, is a great place for foot troops. Each world can do different things: so Yavin 4 is a world that is well-equipped to build vehicles, being the home to the Rebellion's space fleet. You can also use worlds to research new technology and produce troops and vehicles. Worlds generate income for you, and you can build facilities on worlds that can increase that - such as mining colonies. You start as one of the two Star Wars factions, the Rebellion or the Empire, and are given a couple of planets - out of a galaxy of 20 or so - as your starting worlds. Gameplay takes place on two different levels - a 'battle' level and 'galaxy strategy' level. Lather, rinse repeat.Įasily they flow, quick to join you in a fightEaW, as I shall henceforth refer to it, attempts to take a rather different tack. Gameplay was ever thus: bring up a new map, make as many units as possible as fast as possible, rush across a 2D map to capture points and kill the enemy before he had time to generate a decent amount of units. It is fair to say that later versions of C&C epitomised, for me, everything wrong with the genre. This was always the potential pull of previous Star Wars strategy games, but Petroglph has managed to pull it off rather more effectively.Įmpire at War is not your average RTS. It takes all the units you know and love, such as AT-ATs, X-Wings, Stormtroopers and even the Death Star, and lets you build them and play them. It takes a few liberties with the half-established backstory to the films, but in general it is mostly faithful. The game itself is set before the events of Episode 4 - the original film - and documents the rise of the Rebellion.

Anyone with a memory longer than goldfish will know that Westwood created Command & Conquer, making them a fairly safe pair of hands in which to place a RTS game. However, Empire at War does have one thing in its favour - it's been coded by Petroglyph, a studio formed from a bunch of ex-Westwood people.

Star Wars strategy games, however, have less of an endearing legacy - Galactic Battlegrounds and Force Commander both utterly failing to set the world alight. No space game can start without contemplating the awesome original X-Wing. No review of a Star Wars FPS can start without some back reference to the incredible Dark Forces and Jedi Knight. No, it's not A New Hope - it's Empire at War, the latest Star Wars strategy game.Įvery review of a Star Wars game starts with a recap of where the particular genre of the particular game has been before. Wedge Antilles makes a strafing run on the Death Star. X-Wings divert power to the engines to sweep round a group of launching tie fighters and pepper them with Fire. Star Wars - Empire at WarCorrelian Corvettes blast away at Star Destroyers.

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