Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

The Good
Well, the idea of a Star Wars RTS is certainly cool. The controls are simple and serve their purpose. Nothing here stands out as amazingly good. The graphic animations are competent. The interface has an appropriate "Star Warsy" feel.

The Bad
The game is essentially a (if you will excuse the expression) clone of Age of Kings. Almost all of the techs are the same, with different names and icons. All the buildings have their AOK clones, most of the units are pretty standard etc.

The engine (which uses the AOK engine) is frankly, outdated and old, even at the time it was released. The game's graphics are ok, but nothing to look at. Sometimes the scale and overall look of the game creates a rather gaudy atmosphere, in contrast to the more laid-back, eye pleasing style of AOK.

The game's strategy element is poor compared to that of AOK. Air units are really the game breaker here. Air units being overpowered and difficult to destroy, it just adds another annoying level to the elegant strategy of AOK.

The sounds are also often overpowering, with blood curdling, melodramatic screams. It's extremely annoying not to mention somewhat tacky.

The campaigns that comes with the game are pathetic compared to the ones in AOK.

The Bottom Line
This game is a cheap Star Wars cash in on Age of Empire 2.

The Good
When it was decided to make a real-time strategy game set in the Star Wars Universe, Lucasarts had the bold vision to use a 3D engine, let the player switch viewpoints to experience the action firsthand, and do away with conventional resource harvesting for a point-based system. Unfortunately the game, Force Commander, was hammered for having a bad interface, poor controls, an unwieldy camera system, and uninspiring graphics. As a result, their second foray, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, is a completely conventional RTS game basically modifying Age of Empires II for the Star Wars Universe.

After a well edited, but grainy, montage of famous Star Wars battles, the player has the option to choose one of six race-based campaigns (including a tutorial level narrated by Qui-Gon Jinn). Each campaign has around seven missions: usually six of which offer a loosely tied together narrative and then one or two bonus or challenge missions. The races, for want of a better term, offered are the: Trade Federation, Gungans, Empire, Rebels, and the Wookies.

Missions have variable objectives ranging from the typical base-building, enemy-crushing ones to ones where you have limited numbers of troops to complete a series of tasks or ones where you need to accomplish certain objectives in a limited amount of time. Some missions nicely fill-in the blanks in the Star Wars history, like what happened after the Death Star was destroyed above Yavin IV while others expand on side remarks, such as the Trade Federation mission where the objective is to disable Naboo’s communication array.

SWGB does have resource management (food, carbon, nova crystals, and ore), but there are at least five ways to get food, carbon is plentiful and nova and ore can be found. You spend the harvested resources to buy more workers, buildings, units, etc. Once you have certain levels of resources and buildings, you can then increase your technology level (up to level 4). Each level allows more upgrades, from studying the latest in armor design or a more efficient way to harvest carbon.

Each race has equivalent buildings and units, but the manual hints that there is some balancing—for instance, the Rebels have better aircraft than the Empire and the Trade Federation have better troops than the Naboo. I found in SWGB, more than in most RTS games, that it is important to balance your armies. Aircraft will need support from the ground to take out anti-aircraft turrets, naval units should have anti-air support, and ground troops will need to support your artillery. For the most part, there’s no tank rushing here. Artificial intelligence is mostly good, but I think that it’s more scripted (cued by certain events or time) than off the cuff.

Graphics are functional (see below) but each race has a definite look to it. Sounds are lifted from Ben Burtt’s archive and the score is a nice mix of John Williams’s familiar themes. Voice acting is… good. Hero units aren’t voiced as convincingly as the other ingame units but the campaign narrators are pretty good.

Not really sure where this should go, but on certain levels it pays to cheat a bit. You’ll find Mara Jade observing Vader’s activities, a ripple in time and space that connects Kashyyyk to Tatooine, and more.

The Bad
I really enjoyed the first 75% of the game. After that, the repetition set in. It’s nice that SWGB offers so many races, but in every campaign, the early levels have a tech level cap while the later (or last) levels let you use the full potential of the race. After a while, starting from scratch really bothered me. I came to a point where I said, either I can keep playing “more of the same” or I can move on to another game.

Mission difficulty is all over the place. Sure there are three difficulty levels for the game itself, but within each race there’s no progression of difficulty, so the level of challenge varies.

I’m not sure how much I can fault the game’s graphics. They are definitely functional rather than beautiful, but the game is limited by its 2D isometric view. It isn’t a game where snowspeeders fly under AT-ATs, tripping them with tow cables. Rather the snowspeeders hover next to AT-ATs and pummel them with laser blasts. Likewise, you won’t see TIE Fighters chasing X-Wings or vice versa.

Final quibbles: carbon from trees? Tauntauns on Bespin? After Darth Vader says, “Now I’m the Master,” being told he can’t convert a building because he’s not a master. Hero units you have to hide away so they won’t get killed. Tauntauns in space?

The Bottom Line
With Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, you get six campaigns, over forty missions, maybe 80+ hours of gameplay, and a fun and well-supported multiplayer game.

You also get average graphics and much repetition.

In the end, it’s worth it. I would recommend this game and playing it in short bursts rather than marathon sessions. You get a lot of value for your money.

The Good
Unlike the previous Star Wars based RTSs, (Rebellion & Force Commander) SW:GB is a traditional isometric view; gather resources; build a base; build an army; blow the enemy to scrap game. In short, it doesn't try to be overly ambitious, and focuses instead on making a fun real time strategy game in the Star Wars universe based on the Age of Empires II engine.

One real strength that AOE has passed on to SW:GB is the multitudes of research possibilities. Most combat units have around 5 upgrades, thus your Stormtrooper may be stronger or weaker versus an opponent's depending on the amount of resources and time you've spent on making him all that he can be. Furthermore, each unit has armor that protects it from different types of assault, so a siege unit may be all but impervious to blaster fire, but melee attacks are lethal. This creates battles that aren't comprised of only "Big guns" but instead encourages armies of varied units for maximum efficiency.

My favorite aspect of the game is the bonus missions. After you complete each campaign for a certain race, you are rewarded with a historical recreation of a battle from Star Wars lore. So far my favorite has been the Trade Federation's, which allows you to wage war on the Gungans as in Episode I, but this time the Battle Droid's control-ship wasn't destroyed. Needless to say, chaos and utter destruction ensues as your mechanized armies lay waste to those salmon colored swine.

There is more to say, but nobody wants to read it, so I'll just highlight: Six races to play; Battle of Hoth; you can win by controlling Jedi Holocrons, building and protecting a monument, reaching a specific score, or by destroying the enemy entirely; random multiplayer maps; map/scenario editor included.

The Bad
All six races are very similar, each having their different versions of the same basic unit. It's true that the Empire's basic starfighter is weaker than the Rebellion's, but many of the naval units are exactly the same on each side, just different art. Every RTS doesn't have to be like StarCraft, but they should at least aspire to have the same kind of difference between races.

My real complaint is with the Wookies. I would have expected them to be different than all the other races, yet there they are, with all the same types of buildings and all the same kinds of weapons. Granted they are a civilization similar to any other race, and their home planet is an elusive one, thus little is known about how they fight their wars, but I wasn't expecting to see anything similar to a tank, or airborne fighters.

The Bottom Line
Great Star Wars strategy game. If you like Age of Empires, and you like Star Wars, it'd be hard not to like Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds