Vito

Report #44

This month’s theme is so great, that I already started playing games for it in January xD

After mandrill’s great rework of the game fetching mechanism, BLAEO now registers untrusted games as well. I took this as a chance to play the two games in my library that belong to that category. After those two games I wanted to play another space game (I didn’t know about the theme back then) and started Empire at War. Btw: I still haven’t seen the last SW movie…


Reviews

Space Pilgrim Academy: Year 3

5.6 hours, 9 of 9 achievements
★★★☆☆

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Short games get short reviews: Another continuation of the Pilgrim Saga, this RPG maker game has quite some charm to it. It's funny and sweet, albeit one of the weaker entries in this series.


Space Pilgrim Academy: Reunion

4.9 hours, 12 of 12 achievements
★★★★☆

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The last part of the Pilgrim Saga (for the moment?), this RPG maker game has quite some charm to it. For the most part, the game is average. Too much railroading for my taste. But the ending was superb and quite emotional. It was definitely a worthy ending to the Pilgrim Saga, which I think is great work for such a small studio!


STAR WARS™ Empire at War: Gold Pack

52.5 hours, no achievements
★★★☆☆ (look inside though)

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To be honest, this game is more like 3 "games". I'll divide my review accordingly.

Base game: A very promising setting. You play as either the Empire or the Rebellion on a strategic map representing the galaxy. You can build space fleets and land troops and use them to conquer enemy planets. This is done by first fighting a space battle and then using your troops for a land battle. Both change from the strategic galaxy map to a smaller tactical map, a bit like the Total War series. Add to that Star Wars characters, ships and lore and you have the recipe for a great game. Unfortunately this game isn't great. It feels bland and hard for the wrong reasons. The battles drag on quite long, because static defense is much too powerful. The defending side has a huge advantage and can hold out painstakingly long, especially in the land battles. There is an autoresolve feature, but it's way too costly. Autoresolving should loose you more troops than playing a battle yourself, but in EaW autoresolving looses you about 4-5 times the amount you would normally loose. And that's just unsustainable economy-wise. So you have a lot of boring and frustrating battle to fight. Therefore: ★★☆☆☆

Forces of Corruption Expansion: The expansion adds another faction, the Zann Consortium, a criminal underworld organization, which became so mighty that it basically became its own faction. I'm sure its debatable whether that's realistic or a good idea or lore-friendly or I don't know, but it's quite fun to play. Static defense received a hefty nerf in the expansion and for that reason alone, the game is much faster and more enjoyable: ★★★☆☆

Mods: Wow! After 14 years, this game has still an awesome and very active modding community. And the mods are excellent. There are plenty of mods you can try, putting the game in different eras of the SW universe: Be it the Clone Wars, an improved Empire vs Rebellion scenario or even the time after the fall of the Empire. They improve almost every aspect of the game, but the graphical advancement is especially impressive. Space battles become sooo beautiful. I don't think I've ever seen prettier space battles! I almost regret that I spend about half of the 52 hours playtime in the unmodded versions of the game. You still feel the limitations of the base game though. Apart from being beautiful, the games are still a bit shallow and become repetitive after some time. In addition almost all mods seem to suffer from performance problems. I don't think this can be overcome within the mods, so don't take this as the fault of the modders. After all, the game IS 14 years old and has some very basic design faults in my opinion. Therefore, the mods are really great, but the game itself drags them a bit down: ★★★★☆



Currently playing

None.


I’m looking for the next game right now. I want to participate in the monthly theme, since space is probably my favourite setting of all, but I’m having a hard time finding a suitable game in my library which I actually want to play right now. You’ll see in the next review whether I was successfull or not, so stay tuned ;)

Happy backlog-clearing to everyone,
Vito

Trent

How about Jedi Outcast or Jedi Academy? Those old games will get harder and harder to play on current hardware. I enjoyed both of them.
Or maybe Deus Ex: Human Revolution? One of my all-time favorites.

Vito

Thanks for looking through my games :) For now I already decided to play Startopia, but I think I’ll play Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy afterwards. It’s a very valid concern, that these games might not run in the future anymore, but I never really thought about it. Thanks for the suggestions!

Arbiter Libera

I’ve finally figured out I have a serious case of nostalgia goggles for Empire at War. Thinking back on it now ground battles were outright bad and even space battles were more of a spectacle than a tight system, even with hardpoints you can target on ships. It’s such a weirdly put together game I ended up recommending to others at various points. It just made me yearn for a Star Wars Total War title to some degree. .

Vito

Absolutely understandable, it was the same for me as well, before I played it again the last weeks. I really enjoyed it back in ~2010, when I first tried it. And I still think it could have been a great game. Yeah, a Star Wars Total War could be great :)