cottrell's Full Review: Star Wars: Rebellion for Windows
This is a great game that almost anyone can enjoy playing. Lead either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance in an effort to find your opponent's headquarters and capture their leaders (Vader and the Emperor or Luke and Mon Mothma). Build up fleets with a variety of ships and fill them with attack units. Send your special characters on missions of diplomacy or espionage or have them go out and recruit more characters (all from the Star Wars universe). Some characters can lead your fleets while others can research new ships, military units, and advanced facilities. You may send out special forces (possibly with the help of some characters) to try and abduct enemy characters or to rescue your characters when they are captured (hope they don't get captured, injured, or even killed!). Send out probes to explore the outer rim planets for a good place to set up a colony. And just when you think everything is under control bounty hunters show up and take Han Solo to see Jabba or Luke runs off to see Yoda!
I've been playing this game for a few months on and off now and I give it very high marks. I started off playing the Rebel Alliance in a small universe (you can choose this at the start of a game) and I managed to beat the Empire pretty easily (it does take awhile though). I am currently playing the Empire in a large universe in a "Headquarters Game" (I only have to capture the Rebel headquarters to win instead of having to get Luke and Mon Mothma also) and the Rebels are putting up a pretty good fight, but they don't stand a chance with me giving orders to Vader and the Emperor! There are significant differences from playing the Empire and the Alliance, but either side is equally capable of winning the game. The difficulty in playing the Empire is that you don't know where the Rebel Alliance headquarters is located, whereas the Imperial headquarters is Coruscant no matter what. I should mention that both games I've played were set to Easy. I would imagine that at the harder levels things get a little more tricky.
You can have the computer take over certain functions if you don't want to concern yourself with them, such as building up garrisons and maximizing production capability with mines and refineries. Using this function late in the game helps speed up play as well. Another option to speed up the game is to have the computer simulate all of the space combat. I used this almost all the time because the combat controls were crude at best and the graphics weren't anything to write home about. Besides, I had better things to do with my time than spending an extra couple minutes fighting it out in space when I could get the same result (more or less) by simulating the fight. Trust me, this game takes long enough to win without worrying about every little detail.
The ability to play either side and the high degree of variability from game to game reminds me of some of the other classic strategy games like Civilization/Colonization. The researching is more like that found in the X-Com games, but you don't get to specify what you get to research, just whether it is a facility, ship, or military unit. The special missions that the characters do is what separates this game from some of the other strategy games I've played in the past. With 30 different characters on each side this is a critical part of the game.
The last thing I'd like to say about this game is that I think kids would enjoy playing it and there are a lot of good things to learn by playing strategy games like this. There's no shot 'em up violence and they'll enjoy the whole Star Wars aspect of the game!
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