When I think of Star Wars, I think of epic battles on distant planets, or edge of your seat space combat. And when I heard Lucasarts was doing a 2D RTS game, I was overjoyed, despite that whole
Force Commander incident. Yet, when I played the game and realized that it was nothing but an
Age of Empires clone, I was forced to swallow my pride and face the truth that there was another bad Star Wars game in the world.
The 6 sides you can choose from are taken out of all the movies currently released, so expect some familiar faces. However, not all of the units will be immediately familiar to even the most die-hard of fans. In order to balance the game, the designers had to cut some corners and include troops like Mounted Wookies, or anti-air Gungans. And it might seem out of place to see a horde of Jedi running around the field converting enemy troops. The number of units and buildings might overwhelm some, as might the inclusion of 4 different resources. On top of all this is a mass of upgrades you can give your troops, and they are all job specific. This is a result of the diversity of each side, as there never really was any military balance in the movies. Video games are another story, and in the name of fun, the designers decided to up the unit count for every side instead of cutting it down to a manageable number.
What has stuck from the movies is the look of each side. There is a definite contrast between the sleek underwater buildings of the Gungans and the dark, sharp edged buildings of the Empire. Each side has its own Campaign, all of which are quite different from each other. No matter how you present this universe, you can't help but avoid a bit of uniqueness. If you don't like the composition of the campaigns, you can create entirely new ones. The Map and Scenario Editor allow complete control over what you put into your campaigns. Here's your chance to test your game development skills; you can make almost anything the developers could without altering the code.
The Multiplayer mode is a bit too dry to help this game out much. You might get a little fun out of a few battles, but there aren't really enough options to make it worth while. There's your basic Deathmatch, a kill the king type of game, and a few other minor ones.
