starwars galactic battlegrounds review

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kiryan
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starwars galactic battlegrounds review

Postby kiryan » Fri Mar 01, 2002 12:55 pm

just finished it mostly on hard mode, a few scenarios on normal. The average scenario prolly took around 3.5 hours (a bit long imo).

the scenarios were fun, but sometimes the story lagged or was just plain uninteresting. A few times the objectives were abstract and difficult to obtain. I spent 4 hours chopping down trees ( i mean harvesting carbon ) and exploring the map trying to figure out how to "escape" when what i needed to do was build a transport ship and take them to a magical unmarked area on the map. that sucked giant donkey dong.

the gameplay was mediocre. it was very intersting how they specialized every troop type so they were uber effective against either troops, vehicles, air, or buildings, but it became tedious and uber lame managing hordes of troops and having to abort attacks because you didnt bring enough of unit x (or they got killed). Destroying a building with laser fire would probably take a long long time irl, but in a game if i have 20 laser rifles blasting a building, i expect it to fall within 60 seconds not 3 or 4 minutes per building. It was annoying and air got so owned by anti air units it made them unviable. The heros got hardcore owned too... 1 on 5 ouch, 1 on 10 your reloading your last saved game because when one starts going down it goes down fast.

The formation code was awesome, selected troops (of different type) marched at roughly the same speed with some intelligence (big bad vehicles at front ground troops further back). There were some issues, medics still rushed deep into enemy lines to attack units (medics have no attack btw), and when your wondering where all those newly created troopers you need so deperately on the battlefield are its because you told them to march with a super slow unit, and there was also some sort of lag/bug with adding additional units to a selection. the code kept chunking away at something what i dont know what, but dragging a select window was fast and not lagged if you didnt have any troops selected, but if you already had 20 troops selected and wanted to add 20 more, the operation was lagged about 20 seconds. Another interesting idea was if you had assigned a troop to unit 1 (crtl 1) then assigned him to unit 2, he was removed from unit 1. Id have to say it was more useful than not but it probably caused the select lag. You could also bunker workers inside turrets and the command center and they would gain weak laser attacks. That was kinda cool.

There was one hillarious point where i was controlling han and chewie and i told them to board a transport, chewie went but han said "gimme a minute" walked over to some trees stood there for a second then came back and boarded my transport. I swear looked like he was taking a piss. I doubt that was coded prolly some sort of patrol bug, but it was funny as hell.

personally i like starcraft a lot better. Even those gimpy starship troopers scenarios with the UED.

[This message has been edited by kiryan (edited 03-01-2002).]
belleshel
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Postby belleshel » Fri Mar 01, 2002 2:14 pm

The game is crap played in single mode, its really designed for multiplayer. I suggest logging into the zone and playing with/against other folks, it then becomes a very intresting game, lots of strategy, ect.
And don't try an expert room right away, you'll last 2 mins Image
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Postby taelin » Fri Mar 01, 2002 6:55 pm

I really enjoy the game multiplayer. I have to admitt that the scenarios leave a lot to be desired... they are either really hard or just very time consuming. Generally I found the computer AI at hard pretty decent. The unit complexity is a blast and I find the racial balances pretty good all things considered.

I also have to agree without a doubt that you may as well remove the air units from the game with the exception of the transports because the basic anti air trooper is effective enuff that 1.5 can kill any 1 air unit with no upgrades. I find this really disapointing.

For a game having so many resources to manage its quite excellent and the variety of gameplay is huge given every terrain and setting skews toward one or more resources and away from one or more others changing tactics pretty extremely. Also, water units are everything one would hope for in the air units, why they made anti air so effective I'll never understand but the water battles are a blast.

herding was a great addition and the food resource is great in its variety.

I really enjoy some of the racial bonuses
Droids not needing to build population buildings is great and the gungan underwater dwellings(cloaked) are damn cool too.

I think Jedi are a great addition but too expensive for players whereas with the AI resource bonus you WILL face jedi rushes.

Lastly the fortress is a damn cool concept, but I think its a tad too strong, especially when you garrision a bunch of troops in it... if someone gets a fortress up in your main line of attack or too close to your base theres no clear path to recovery... you basiclly lost.

Sobu
belleshel
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Postby belleshel » Fri Mar 01, 2002 7:08 pm

Actually air is extremely powerful as a t3 rush, many times you can catch your enemy without AA and the game is over. I'll use air in a rush, but rarely after my enemies hit t3, too mana expensive, to easy to counter as posted. The fortress is strong in t3, but you can usually cruise from t3->t4 quickly if you did things right and didn't get rushed, which means with cats a fortress can fall quickly without firing a shot. Fortress can be used as an extension of a tower rush but most folks on the zone know how to defend that quickly, and you've blown a lot of ore resources.
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kiryan
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Postby kiryan » Fri Mar 01, 2002 8:29 pm

buildings get owned by pummels, nothing else really damages then, I agree with Taelin that taking out a poorly defended fortress is rough (let alone one defeneded by a few troops), but id rather do that then try to take out 3 or 4 turrets for the same resource cost.

If you brought less than 3 air craft before your opponent had anti air hes going to recover easily imo, I found that one anti air trooper is almost enough to take out 1 air craft, so taelins 1.5 to 1 sounds about right. 4 anti air will rape 2 air craft and eek out against 3 (well not fully upgraded shieled xwings). One air turret will rape 10 or so air craft with out being destroyed. one vehicle or ship anti air will handily defeat at least 4 air units. Air is next to worthless in this game imo 0-2 shot wonders, but it also seemed to be pretty cheap. I didnt experiment too much with hordes of air. Hordes of pummels and and basic upraded troopers were pretty strong against the AI.

Ships totally owned, but the long range ones were a bit insane, gawd they have like 1.5-2x starcraft guardian range and hit buildings harder!

As for the game being much better in multi player, ill take your word for it. I already deleted it. As for strategy, dunno, attack first is always good and keeps the pressure off your base. If you go at them with something they not prepared for its like a gut wound, may not kill you in the first 5 minutes but its only a matter of time. That is one thing, seems to be somewhat difficult to actually outright kill a player in the early game. One turret will eat 15 troopers, garriosining your workers will fend off most other attacks with only time and attention lost but it goes both ways.

The herding owned.

Were grenadiers good for anything?
taelin
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Postby taelin » Fri Mar 01, 2002 10:09 pm

grenadiers are good for defending walls and taking out troopers... pretty much sucked otherwise
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Postby Grintor » Sat Mar 02, 2002 2:59 am

the graphics could have been better. reminded me of the original command and conquer.


type enter, type in 'simon says' and massacre everyone with your super ewok simon!

i used him when a mission would piss me off hehe.
kiryan
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Postby kiryan » Sun Mar 03, 2002 7:36 am

defending walls? laser shots werent blocked by walls, or so it seemed.

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