Star Wars: Empire at War

The Good
The game captures the Star Wars flair quite well - nothing better than to lead Mon Calamari space cruisers and Nebulon-B frigates into combat. Same goes for land combat.

The skirmish parts of the game on planet and in space are well done. In both cases you can't just mass the "strongest" units and dash forward. Every unit has strenghts and weaknesses and the AI knows how to exploit these. In both cases it doesn't come out to "the one with more/better troops wins". The planet side part is quite delicate, you need to capture reinforcement points to call in new troops and certain structure pads to build bacta tanks or gun emplacements. In space combat you can target specific parts of enemy ships/structures and the way you handle it has impact on the outcome of the battle. The way space combat is done suggests the developers had a close look at the SW space combat sims.

Graphics are quite nice - the galaxy view of the planets is quite an advancement compared to e.g. SW Rebellion.

The interface is intuitive and the tutorials are well made. If you don't like reading into game manuals and play right away instead this game will not be a problem for you.

The Bad
The game is not very complex and after a few days of play it becomes quite monotone. The goal of the game is to conquer other planets which means destroying their space assets and then moving in on their planetary defenses.

To do this you just build the required units at your planets and then assault the other ones. The AI isnt very imaginative, does not really stage counterattacks and basically just waits for you to take over its planets. You do have a few minor choices other than space-planet-battle but these are more complementary. Now and then you get special tasks which don't require you to do anything out of the ordinary but just follow your usual goals.

The Bottom Line
The game tries to unite the RTS genre with a broader strategic approach but there are much better games on both ends. The Star Wars settings might be appealing but cannot cover the low overall complexity.

It's nowhere near Starcraft or GalCiv so I would only recommend it to Star Wars fans only.