Pros: It's possible to control six of the major Star Wars races.
Cons: They all play the same. There are also some technical issues. Same old RTS gameplay.
The Bottom Line: If you have the suicidal urge to play a Star Wars RTS, buy this. Otherwise, there are much better games coming out for you to spend money on.
c_squared_smm's Full Review: Shadow Of Destiny for Windows
Well, I won’t, at least. Particularly if the sequel is of this quality.
Being a very big Star Wars fan, I was very excited about this game when it was released, and bought it the very day it hit the stores. After having about 5 hours of fun with it, my excitement began to taper off. As my enormous Rebel army smashed into the pitiful Imperial force and wiped it out, I realized that there was something wrong. By the end of the week, I had all but given up playing it. Despite its popularity, (It is currently one of the top 20 multiplayer games) and its Star Wars setting, there is a fact that I have to come to grips with:
I do not like this game.
Maybe it’s my DNA. Maybe it’s the water I drink. I simply do not like this game. Don’t worry though, this isn’t a fanboy rant. (I hope its not, at least) I’m still going to give plausible reasons for why I don’t like this game. They follow:
Overall: 2/5
It could be a solid strategy game, except that there has been another just like it: Age of Empires II. There are a few additions: Air units, for example. Unfortunately, the game still feels the same and plays the same. It doesn’t cash in on its 6 playable races, either. While each should be very different from the next, this is not the case. They all play exactly the same. There is nothing here any self-respecting RTS fan hasn’t seen before.
I’ve seen these graphics before, too. They looked a lot better before they became obsolete. (That’s the case with a lot of things, isn’t it)? Using the Age of Empires II engine, Galactic Battlegrounds simply cannot compete with the current crop of Real-Time Strategy games.
Then there’s the sound. While probably the least worrisome aspect of the game, the sound is by no means great. In larger battles, there can be some annoying technical problems, and I found many of the voices themselves to be annoying.
Gameplay: 2/5
As I said, this has been done before. This game isn’t built upon the Age of Empires II engine, it is the Age of Empires II engine. Despite the fact that my entire life’s experience with Microsoft’s RTS equates to about 3 hours, all the basic gameplay was instantly familiar to me. This might be considered a good thing, but I do like to have to alter my strategies just a bit from game to game. There are a few additions to the engine: Air power, more ranged units, and shields, to name the major ones. Other than that, though, this is just the same game with a new coat of paint. Trebuchets are now cannons, monks are now jedi, catapults are now artillery. Lucasarts didn’t even bother to make up new tutorials for the game.
There are six factions you can play: The Rebel Alliance, the Royal Naboo, the Gungans, the Wookies, the Trade Federation, and the Galactic Empire. Anyone who knows a thing about Star Wars knows that these are all worlds apart from each other. Not so in this game. Unlike StarCraft or Command and Conquer, these guys all feature the same units. The only difference is that same coat of paint applied to the rest of the game. Each faction gets a “special” unit(“special” as in prducable by only one side in the game), a special technology or two, and token advantages/disadvantages in resource harvesting (i.e. Rebels gather food 10% faster than anyone else), but these are so small that they’re almost unnoticeable. The only major difference for any race is that the Trade Federation doesn't have to build any "shelters" to support its units. It would have been great if there would have been more differrences, perhaps giving the Rebels a stealth advantage and setting the Trade Federation’s unit limit much higher than anyone else’s. But alas, the key to victory is the same no matter who you play as.
There are also some balancing quirks that weren’t quite fully worked out. Most of these involve the new additions: Shield Generators, Air Units, Jedi, and the anti-jedi weapons, bounty hunters. Basically, Shields and bounty hunters are way too powerful; while Aircraft and Jedi aren’t powerful enough. Another addition to the “too powerful” side is the cannon. It is easy to create a “victory fleet” of 12 or so cannons, defend them with some normal troopers, then lay into the enemy base. This worked against all the computer opponents that I played. They never tried it against me, though.
Which brings about the subject of multiplayer. The last time I checked (admittedly, that was a while ago), there weren’t very many people playing. 300 or so on zone.com, (not a very large number) and about the same number on Gamespy (Which is not the best for people with low bandwitdth, like me). Obviously, people are playing it somewhere, because it is one of the 20 most-played multiplayer games. I’m not sure where, though.
As for the gameplay itself, certain balancing issues make the game a rather one-dimensional affair. Why use strategy and tactics when you can just use cannons? I have no answer to that. There are specialized units for destroying other kinds of units—mech destroyers for taking out mechanical units, for example. Hotkeying these types of units into groups and ordering each group to attack a specific unit is another quick tactic to victory, though I wish you good luck in trying to accomplish this. The sketchy pathfinding will keep you busy enough without having to worry about what exact thing your units are attacking.
Before I move on, I have one final complaint: The default hotkeys make absolutely no sense. To build a farm, hit “e”. To build a “prefab shelter” (A structure that lets you increase your unit count), hit “q”. These are the same keys used in Age of Empires II, so they might have been kept to help fans of Empires ease into Galactic Battlegrounds. They still make no sense.
Graphics: 2/5
I mentioned before that this game was simply Age of Empires II with a new coat of paint. Well, it one old, ugly coat of paint. While they don’t look very good, they don’t look very bad, either. However, the real problems here are the technical issues. When the game was getting intense, it got somewhat choppy, making it even more difficult to issue orders. I’m running the game on a system with 4 times as much RAM and 8 times as much CPU speed and Video Memory. I don’t expect my system to handle all the newest features of the newest First-Person Shooters, but I do expect it to handle the somewhat ugly visuals of a Real Time Strategy game that is using a somewhat dated engine. (Note: I don’t think that my system is the problem here).
That is my graphics diagnostic
Sound: 3/5
The sound isn’t particularly bad. It’s not particularly good, either, but it doesn’t fail as badly as the other elements of the game. Unit acknowledgements are what should be expected from a game, even if some of their flippant remarks are on the annoying side. (And there are a few on the stupid side—where do you think I got my title from)? Unfortunately, the sound has a few technical problems of its own thrown into the mix. When the action got intense, sounds would cut off whenever I panned the view around. This is not only annoying, it is hard on the ears, too. Battles can sometimes sound quite ugly. Besides the ugliness, though, there’s nothing wrong with sound.
The real problem I had with this game, though, is that it just isn’t Star Wars. To insure that every race had equivalent units to every other race, about half of everything in the game is completely made up. There are huge tanks that bear more resemblance to an oil truck than something from Star Wars. There are shielded TIE Fighters, and ships with two or even four separate hulls. There are even Gungan Jedi. (A laughable concept). I simply didn’t like it.
That is all.
Also, if you are wondering why I’m reviewing a game that I supposedly bought 8 months ago…I’ve been busy.
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