I spent some four+ years of being an ber Star Wars fan and spent a whole three years anxiously anticipating Star Wars Episode III (which blew me away), and I saw Empire at War as something with great potential!

Except I wasn't very excited about it, and didn't rush out to buy it.

Now I got the chance to play it and... I'm very disappointed.

The campaign map for galactic conquest moves very very slowly, with a sluggish start for credits, super expensive ships, and an assload of buildings to be built before you can even start building capital ships of any importance.  Also, auto-resolving any battle immediately unbalances the battle giving the enemy the upper hand no matter how strong or numerous your forces are, so unless you fight each and every single battle yourself, you're bound to suffer exuberant casualties, and even lose some surefire victories.

The land battles are absolute trash.  You start out with only enough room for five units (which is actually Troops, with one troop of AT-ST containing 4 AT-ST, 1 AT-AT, 6 Stormtroopers, etc) while the enemy can field as many units as they want initially.  It takes a long time to call in reinforcements, while enemy units blow away at your units with little effort.

The space battles are the real core of the game.  The space battles are the absolute best aspect of the game, despite their great flaws still.  In the space battles, you can only field units up to 20 population cap (a single Star Destroyer takes up 4 pop cap!!!) and it takes way too long to destroy even the smallest of capital ships, so you pretty much sit there watching ships blast the [...] out of each other, with realistic location damage, for many many many minutes.  Also, space battles can only occur when battling over a planet, so your mission is always either "Destroy enemy space station" or "Defend space station"  The maps are also way too small, with your forces constantly scrunched together, held even further tightly packed by nebulae or asteroid fields or big fields of debris which block your units and do damage to your shields.  Fighters are difficult to maneuver, also, and aren't very effective at anything save distracting other fighters.  It's all about the capital ships, basically.  And its all unbalanced in favor of the Rebels, who have the better variety of ships with better strengths and weaknesses (including the Mon Calamari cruiser, which is actually STRONGER than a Star Destroyer, and whose only weakness is the TIE bomber, which usually never survives to reach the hull of a Mon Cal cruiser)

All in all, terribly disappointing.  It manages to keep me hooked for a brief while, but only for that brief while.  This is no Battlefront, or Rome Total War, or Age of Empires, or Starcraft.
I spent some four+ years of being an ber Star Wars fan and spent a whole three years anxiously anticipating Star Wars Episode III (which blew me away), and I saw Empire at War as something with great potential! Except I wasn't very excited about it, and didn't rush out to buy it. Now I got the chance to play it and... I'm very disappointed. The campaign map for galactic conquest moves very very slowly, with a sluggish start for credits, super expensive ships, and an assload of buildings to be built before you can even start building capital ships of any importance. Also, auto-resolving any battle immediately unbalances the battle giving the enemy the upper hand no matter how strong or numerous your forces are, so unless you fight each and every single battle yourself, you're bound to suffer exuberant casualties, and even lose some surefire victories. The land battles are absolute trash. You start out with only enough room for five units (which is actually Troops, with one troop of AT-ST containing 4 AT-ST, 1 AT-AT, 6 Stormtroopers, etc) while the enemy can field as many units as they want initially. It takes a long time to call in reinforcements, while enemy units blow away at your units with little effort. The space battles are the real core of the game. The space battles are the absolute best aspect of the game, despite their great flaws still. In the space battles, you can only field units up to 20 population cap (a single Star Destroyer takes up 4 pop cap!!! ) and it takes way too long to destroy even the smallest of capital ships, so you pretty much sit there watching ships blast the [... ] out of each other, with realistic location damage, for many many many minutes. Also, space battles can only occur when battling over a planet, so your mission is always either "Destroy enemy space station" or "Defend space station"  The maps are also way too small, with your forces constantly scrunched together, held even further tightly packed by nebulae or asteroid fields or big fields of debris which block your units and do damage to your shields. Fighters are difficult to maneuver, also, and aren't very effective at anything save distracting other fighters. It's all about the capital ships, basically. And its all unbalanced in favor of the Rebels, who have the better variety of ships with better strengths and weaknesses (including the Mon Calamari cruiser, which is actually STRONGER than a Star Destroyer, and whose only weakness is the TIE bomber, which usually never survives to reach the hull of a Mon Cal cruiser)

All in all, terribly disappointing. It manages to keep me hooked for a brief while, but only for that brief while. This is no Battlefront, or Rome Total War, or Age of Empires, or Starcraft.