Warning: Geeky post ahead...
As I keep saying, I love to play games...however, we don't have much free time every day, so we tend to use it to do things together like watching a movie or series. Sometimes we play together, but it needs to be some special game, with a plot, interesting to watch too.
Anyway, that means I have a big waiting list for games....not necessarily new games, since I also love replaying. And just now I have been(and I haven't finished ) re-playing Star Wars: Rebellion.
I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I'm...well, cannot really say a Star Wars fan maybe, but well, a fan of the universe described in Star Wars, or fan of the original trilogy and of several of its games. Some people like the force and the lightsabres, some people may like the story...but what attracted me since I was little were the spaceships.
I loved the spaceships. I loved the small fighter types, the transports, the capital ships..and I especially loved the Imperial ships.
I mean, look at an Imperial Star Destroyer..it's a city-sized monster with lasers. Look at a Super Star Destroyer dwarfing all the other ships....look at the Tie Interceptor, sleek and menacing, agile and fast...look at the spotless decks, the white polished ships, at the superior technology....of course I like the Imperials.
Also, the Imperial March kicks ass...
Anyway, that's something that I always remember being attracted to, the ships and the space combat, although it is in the games that I really started to love it...Games like X-Wing, Tie Fighter and the corresponding successors.
So imagine my emotions when, as a kid/teenager, I heard they were making a game, a strategy game, where you could expand your side, conquer planets, make fleets, etc. I remember hearing about it and salivating, basically. Most other games made by LucasArts were pretty awesome, so a Star wars strategy game where you controlled all that seemed a dream come true.
I remember the game took some time, was delayed, etc...and when it came out it was not a success.
This was because the game has big flaws.
The first one is the interface. Playing the game is more like managing windows and trying to copy files from one folder to another. Everything opens windows and plenty of times you need to rearrange then and move them around to do what you want. With a rather low resolution, this becomes a problem fast..
The available actions are not evident, and it is actually a bit annoying how you manage building things and assigning them to planets. Mission assignment is also not very clean, and movement without confirmation means that a mistake can send something the wrong way without you realizing it or being able to do anything about it.
Then you have the graphics. They are not good even for the time, with plenty of low resolution images and less than stellar original drawings.
There is also the space combat area, which uses a different interface. It still is pretty clunky, not comfortable, and hard to operate efficiently. The graphics in this section are also not good, with 3D models without details and without realistic shapes and forms. To put an example, the SSDs should look impressive as hell, but they look kind of small and short. Also, the combat lacks detail, showing only the occasional laser. The internal engine maybe only does a combat simulation once every so much seconds, but only firing once in so much seconds looks bad. In the end you have the option to let the computer to take charge of the battle, and plenty of times this is better.
The game itself also has a lot of little annoying bugs, like needing to click several times to make someone start a mission and similar issues.
There is no plot, you just start after the first death start and continue your way, and the planet assignment and forces makes no sense, starting with a few planets and spaceships even if you're the Empire. The game mechanics have some flaws that you can abuse and make the game easier, and I think it's not especially hard once you figure a few things out.
However, I loved the game. Even with all these flaws, I enjoyed it a lot. I loved designing new advancements, building capital ships, fighting in space, performing missions, recruiting and using diplomacy...one of the things I liked most is that you can rename all the ships, so I could recreate fleets from the X-Wing games...
The game has sectors with around 10 planets each, and you have a few central sectors and lots of outer sectors. Central sectors are populated and can be neutral or support the rebels or the Empire, while outer sectors tend to have just a few populated planets, and you can colonize the rest. You can control a planet that doesn't support you by assaulting it and leaving troops in there, but it is better to maximize support by making a character do a diplomacy mission on it. You have characters from the movies and expanded universe, and you can make them command troops and ships or perform missions, with each character having its strengths and weaknesses. You have ships, ground troops and buildings. Resources are quite simple, you can have mines and refineries, and this gives you maintenance units. Everything uses maintenance units to be build and maintained. Factories can be built in planets, and the more you have the faster things are built, but planets have a limit on buildings they can have.
Building and moving around takes days, and you can change the speed of time passing. Usually the game is played by triggering movements, missions and constructions, and then speeding things up until something interesting happens.
The game is hard to win and hard to loose: you need to capture the 2 leaders of the rival side (the leaders cannot be killed) and destroy the rebel base (you only need to do it once but the base can move around) or capture the planet Coruscant (you need to maintained control of it but you always know its location). This means usually you will need to conquer everything or be very lucky to win the game.
In these games without plot, you create the plot. You create an internal narrative, and you get attached to squads and characters without there being a real plot, just based on random events. And there's plenty of those, that make the game extremely interesting, at least for me. I'm going to explain some of them....
For starters, one of the most common stories that motivates you to play this game is as follows: you have control of some planet with big support, and then the other side comes with a fleet and bombs the place. You have some fleet situated somewhere else, and you move it there. You arrive late, and meanwhile the enemy is now in another close planet, bombing it. You start a nice chase around the sector, but every time you encounter them they flee. Then you finally research the interdiction technology and create a ship that blocks hyperspace jumping, and when you finally catch again with them you disintegrate them and feel quite rewarded...
Another good one is when you send a diplomat to some neutral planet. Diplomats are usually the nicest characters, and some of them get really good at it, so you develop certain care for them, also because not so many characters can do this. However, this time the planet changes sides before they reach it, and when they arrive they get captured or even wounded.
Of course what follows is a epic rescue mission across the galaxy, searching for the fleet that had them and hoping you didn't blow them up in that last combat...and when the mission is successful you feel pretty awesome^^
To finish the post, one last story...
If you control the Empire, you can make death stars. They are very expensive, hard to maintain and take forever to build, but once you have one you can destroy planets. The downside is that this lowers Empire's support in all planets in the galaxy (usually your actions just increase or lower support in on planet or one sector, so this is a big deal, you can end up losing all planets).
The first time I played the game, I was having difficulties in capturing the enemy leaders and in convincing sectors to like the Empire. I had maintenance problems and ships were falling apart. Tired of this and just to see what happened, I managed to get a death star and I proceeded to visit planets that supported the rebels and blow them to pieces.
Fast enough I had whole sectors rebelling against me. Of course, I was a bastard leaving a path of destruction on my way...I even started to destroy planets that had slightly lost support, but I was leaving no land to hide.
And then something magical happened, that I don't know if it's a bug or was programmed like this....the sectors that I still controlled, not that many by that time, started being indifferent to me blowing up another planet. Not only that, support for the Empire started to increase galaxy - wide after each new destroyed planet. Planets were cheering around for every new explosion.
It was awesome, I had manage to obtain support by pure fear somehow, or by tiredness. I think it was a bug maybe, but it was extremely funny.
With the support of these sectors too afraid to complain, I laid waste to half the galaxy, and eventually managed to capture the rebels (because they ran out of planets :D )
It was one of the best narratives I've ever seen in this type of game :D
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