Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

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.