There's so many things wrong and yet so many things right with this game, it's hard to recommend buying or not buy it

User Rating: 6.5 | Star Wars: Force Commander PC
From what I hear, Lucas Arts was almost done making this game, when they decided to push the release date back and redo the entire game with a 3D engine. From what I know from playing this game, this is probably true. And in my opinion, that's what ruined this game. The gameplay is, in many ways, great. It is one of the most realistic RTS games out there. And it's realistic in a good way. For example, every other RTS has done one of three things with troopers. They either make the troopers unrealistically powerful, cheap and weak, or make the game focus on troops and have little if any vehicles or air craft. This game makes troopers necessary, but not powerful. You fight mainly with vehicles, AT-St's AT-PT's, AT-AT's, and the like, there's also some deep strategy elements with Ion canons, fighters, bombers, and spy droids. Everything feels like it should in reality, it's amazing! I don't know if I have ever seen this type of realism done so well ever before! It's just incredible. Then, you have troopers and building, Troopers can be useful in battle, but their main function, is basically the same as it is in reality. They can storm and take over enemy buildings (If they successfully kill the enemies defending units inside). They can also mount and dismount certain vehicles, and cross any terrain that vehicles can not. This adds a great variety of different strategies and options on the battlefield. Plus, all of your units also earn experience during battle.

The units, by the way, are not "built" as in standard RTS's. They are ordered and brought to your location by drop ships. You order units by spending command points. You earn command points by eliminating enemy units, completing objectives, or capturing and holding bunkers for continuous command point flow. Another use for command points is in the hanger bay, which you are taken to in between the campaign missions. Here you will have 1 or more drop ship(s) preloaded with units that you can't change. You will also have 2 drop ships which you can load-up with surviving units from the previous mission, buy spending your unused command points from the previous mission. You won't get to keep any of the units you don't load into the drop ships. But don't worry, for a few command points, you can put them in a storage bunker and save them for a future mission. The whole setup just works great, and I think it's one of the high points of the game.

There are a few problems with the gameplay. Path-finding can be a serious problem, some crashing issues, and general technical problems. But the single greatest problem to the game is the camera. It is very hard to learn how to use. And it has the horrible problem of you having to continually zoom in to see where your troopers are, then zoom out to be able to get a tactical view to be able to move them. The game can also be ridiculously hard at times. I'm talking pull your hair out, scream bloody murder, pound your head into the wall until it's just a bloody pulp type of hard. I had to try one mission 15 time, and then when I finally beat it only the two hero's that I had to keep alive survived with extreme amounts of luck, and to this day I can hardly believe I beat it.

Graphics: They are horrible, If you zoom in close enough, you can even count the pixels on your units. The explosions are hardly worthy of the star wars name, and the maps are just plain ugly. If they wanted to do a 3D RTS, then they needed to make the graphics a lot nicer.

Sound: The voice acting is good, and the sound effects are okay. But you will likely feel insulted, by what they did with the classic star wars music score. But hey, at least they tried something new, then the same old music. And it’s not bad once you get used to it.

Value: Well, this game will take you a loooooooooooooooooooooong time to get through, but you probably won't want to replay it. It'll probably take you 20 to 40 hours to get through, and much of that will be very frustrating gameplay. There is also a skirmish mode, which can be fun, as well as an online multiplayer mode. So you do have some options.

Conclusion: A good game with a ton of problems. Most of which are probably because they decided to redo the whole game with a 3D engine. Yet, there are many great and unique gameplay elements that it probably would've been a great game if they hadn't screwed it up with their stupid 3D engine. Still, if you think you can trudge through the first hour or two it takes to learn the camera, you should be able to find some enjoyment