Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns Review
Battlegrounds brought to life the epic sweep of battles in the Star Wars universe, but this expansion pack doesn't add much to that epic sweep.
With Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the Star Wars universe is expanding. To stay comprehensive, a game like Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds has to keep up. Hence the Clone Campaigns expansion pack, which adds the Confederacy and the Republic factions to the game, as well as a few new features. Unfortunately, there's not much here that stands out, making this feel more like a series of tweaks than what we've come to expect from a fully featured expansion.
The two new sides should be the most notable additions, but there isn't a lot to make them stand out. Neither of them has much character beyond a few units that will look familiar if you've seen Attack of the Clones. The Confederacy is a civilization representing the secessionist systems united under Count Dooku, the villain played by Christopher Lee. They are characterized mainly by the Geonosians, insectlike aliens that live in hivelike earthen structures. They are unique in their ability to use their animal nurseries to build predators, each with a specialized function. The nexu are effective against workers, the reek are effective against buildings (they're basically fast, cheap units), and the acklay are the equivalent of strike mechs, effective against enemy troopers. However, unlike the neutral predators in Galactic Battlegrounds, the Confederacy's predators are instantly identified by other civilizations as enemy units and attacked accordingly. There's no opportunity to use them as stealth units. Instead, they serve only as relatively cheap mid- to late-game units.
The Republic consists of the good guys from Attack of the Clones. With their prefab shelter bonus and a late-game technology that lets them build troopers at double speed, the Republic is capable of quickly amassing lots of clone troopers. Their Jedi are particularly powerful, and their Jedi Starfighters give them air power on par with Naboo and the Rebels. They earn more nova crystals from capturing holocrons, and their "sight beyond sight" technology gives their troops long range that rivals the reach of the Wookiees and Gungans.
Each side has a single-player campaign set in the aftermath of the events of the movie. As the Confederacy, you are one of Count Dooku's generals, rebuilding his army and then foiling the Republic's plans to create a new weapon. The Republic campaign features a much better story about the rise and fall of a padawan to Mace Windu, Samuel Jackson's character. Unlike the campaigns in the original Galactic Battlegrounds, you have to play these campaigns in sequence, and when you complete them, you'll unlock only a single bonus mission--a disappointing one at that.
The rest of the new content in Clone Campaigns falls into one of three categories: the significant, the marginal, and the questionable. There are only a few additions that are significant. Air cruisers are perhaps the biggest shift in game balance. These are essentially flying trebuchets, able to fire devastating area-of-effect attacks from long range that can blast their way through chunks of resources. These cruisers put much more emphasis on developing and countering air power.
Also significant are the more powerful and less expensive Jedi. They don't crumble so quickly under bounty hunter attacks, and most of their upgrade techs are cheaper. The fact that Jedi Masters regenerate health automatically makes them an ideal addition to any ground force. Also more useful now are animal nurseries, which produce food faster and are thus competitive with farming and fishing. Mounted troopers, which are unlocked by building a nursery, are more powerful, with increased effectiveness against Jedi and buildings, improved armor, and cheaper upgrades.
