Epinions Time Capsule: 'Star Wars: Rebellion' PC Game Review

Pros: True to the Star Wars universe, great sound and graphics, interesting premise.

Cons: It can be overwhelming. Too much info to digest at once until you master Rebellion.

Since 1977, Star Wars has inspired video games and computer simulations. And why not? Its storyline and visual effects-heavy battle scenes are ready made video game material.

Want to fly an X-wing fighter or its nemesis, the Imperial TIE fighter? You can, if you have a PC and the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter CD-ROM game.

Want to be a Jedi Knight? There are several LucasArts Entertainment titles that will allow you to wield your trusty lightsaber, face Sith Lords and assorted baddies, and join the ranks of the Jedi Order in either the Prequel or Classic Trilogy eras. In short, there is a Star Wars game for almost every computer game category in the marketplace. (There is even a Monopoly variant released as a joint effort between Hasbro Interactive -- now Infogrames -- and LucasArts!)

One of the entries in the strategy category is LucasArts' Star Wars: Rebellion (aka Star Wars: Supremacy in Great Britain). It's not, as you might expect, a new game by any means, having been published in the late 1990s for Pentium-based PCs running on the Windows 95 operating system. Luckily it runs on all subsequent Windows versions including the latest XP, although by early 21st Century standards the graphics are beginning to look, well, a bit primitive.

I: Basic Concepts

Star Wars: Rebellion is a "big picture" strategy game set in the nebulous years between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back in which you control the fleets, troops, and industrial resources of either the Galactic Empire or its opposition, the Rebel Alliance. Using those basic tools in conjunction with a set of characters from both the movies and Expanded Universe novels, your goal is to defeat your enemy (the computer for solo games, other humans through various modem/Internet/LAN methods) by different means: diplomacy to sway neutral systems, insurrection on thinly defended worlds, and by sheer force of arms in space battles and invasions.

 Ultimately victory is achieved by the Empire's capture of Mon Mothma and Luke Skywalker, in addition to the destruction of the Rebel Headquarters, while the Rebellion must capture Emperor Palpatine, Lord Darth Vader, and the Imperial throne world of Coruscant.

Whichever side you choose, Rebellion puts you in charge of all aspects of galactic conflict. If you want to build up huge fleets, for instance, you must first set up an equally large infrastructure by building mines, refineries, construction yards, troop training facilities and shipyards. Then you must set up deflector shields and ground-to-space batteries to defend each of your systems, building regiments of ground forces and fighter squadrons to garrison worlds and fleets to carry out defensive and offensive missions.

Finally, your major characters (Darth Vader and the Emperor for the Empire, Luke, Leia, Mon Mothma, and Han Solo for the Rebels) must carry out recruiting missions, which, if successful, increase the number of secondary characters that will perform diplomatic, espionage, sabotage, and command functions to complement the Fleets, Regiments, Special Forces, and Fighter Squadrons you will employ to control worlds and command a galaxy.

II: Playing Rebellion....The Good, the Bad, and the Mouse Clicks

Because the game is a big-picture strategy game (unlike cockpit simulators like the X-Wing series), you'll spend most of it in the Command Center, where you'll keep an eye on the entire galaxy (on the Galactic Information Display) as your campaigns either make headway or are met with heavy enemy resistance. Depending on the difficulty level you select and the "size of the galaxy" you want to attempt to control, the number of systems will vary from around 25 to about 100, give or take a few. Some of these will be color coded either green for worlds held by the Empire, red for Rebel-leaning systems, blue for neutral.

Worlds in the Core Systems (closer to the galaxy's center) are already explored, while others in the Outer Rim sectors are unexplored. That means you, the player, must also devote resources (in the way of fleets, troops, and special forces (probe droids or Long-Range Recon Y-wings) to survey and colonize these systems, for the more worlds with raw materials and energy you control, the faster your military-industrial complex will grow...and the stronger your side becomes.

To help you manage your resources, Star Wars: Rebellion provides several tools to keep things relatively under control.

The most important of the resource management tools is, obviously, the multifunctional Galactic Information Display, or GID. The GID is a map of the galaxy, which -- as Star Wars fans know, is divided into two major regions, the Core Worlds and the Outer Rim Territories. Each of these is carved up into 10-planetary sectors (Coruscant, the Imperial throne world, is in the Sesswenna Sector, while Tatooine, home world to Luke Skywalker, lies way out in the Orus Sector).

Only the Core Worlds have any defense, industrial, or loyalty data in the initial display on the GID; only exploration/colonization will reveal information about Outer Rim systems. This tidbit is VERY important for either side; if you play the Empire, the location of the Rebels' mobile headquarters is NOT visible to you unless you send out a fleet or two on a search-and-destroy mission or, as Vader does in The Empire Strikes Back, dispatch many probe droids to scour the vast reaches of space. (This means, of course, having to divert manufacturing resources from training stormtrooper regiments to building probe droids).

If you are playing the Rebel Alliance, be aware that the AI or other human on the opposite side of the modem can't see your HQ, but try to move it around from time, keeping in mind that you need a system with enough energy resources to maintain it, and make sure you have strong defenses ready! (Once you lose Rebel HQ, you can't get a new one!)

The GID is multifunctional. You can, with a click of the mouse, ask to see the status of your characters, fleets, ground forces, fighter squadrons, defensive shields, planetary batteries, and industries. In the heat of battle or even in the anticipation of launching a campaign, it is very easy to lose track of all your systems or activities, and you may find yourself yelping in dismay when one of your droids (C-3PO for the Rebels, IMP-22 for the Empire) suddenly announces, "The Empire (or Rebels) are bombarding one of our systems, you must help them!" This is bound to happen a great deal, so if you are playing Rebellion for the first time, don't panic.

The first half of the game will be a series of skirmishes as each side flings its fleets at weakly held enemy systems while simultaneously keeping characters busy performing diplomatic, command, espionage, sabotage, and other "special" missions such as recon and abductions.

The GID's functions include a Planetary System Finder, a Fleet/Ship Finder, a Personnel Finder, an Encyclopedia, and a Message Center. These are all vital to gameplay. Your droids are also important, as you can relegate many "housekeeping" chores (such as managing garrisons and automating production) to the computer while you focus on the strategic and tactical aspects of the game.

Although it is very important to build up huge fleets and armies to wage your war to control the Star Wars galaxy, do not neglect your characters. They, not the ships and troops you build, are the true source of your success. You can, and often will, send out fleets without characters to serve as Admirals, Commanders, and Generals, and if you have a huge fleet of, say, 10 Imperial Star Destroyers with 720 TIE fighters without characters and pit them against an Alliance Task Force of five Escort Frigates with 140 X-wings with an Admiral, Commander, and General aboard, you will probably win, but if you meet an evenly matched fleet with personnel aboard, your character-less fleet will either have to be withdrawn or it will be destroyed.

Why? Fleets with commanders -- especially with commanders that have high Combat ratings -- have better reaction times in combat situations. Characters over time increase their skills with each successful mission, and Luke Skywalker, unless captured early in the game and never rescued -- or unable to escape -- will, more than likely become a Jedi Master by the time the game ends.

The nice features about Rebellion are:

The Manual. Read it and take the tutorials, and you'll learn the basics of the game fairly quickly. The manual has more information than this reviewer can ever hope to provide, and it is well written and illustrated.

The Little Details. I love the beginning sequence that starts Rebellion as though it were a filmed Episode set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. True, all of the Star Wars PC games I have owned (with the exception of Monopoly Star Wars) begin with the famous "A long time ago,in a galaxy far, far away...." card and a title crawl just as the movies have (the "camera" even pans down to reveal a ship after the crawl, a technique George Lucas and his creative heirs used in four of the eight existing films; in Attack of the Clones, the camera pans up!), even though there are credits listing the main programmers and artists as we see various vistas of planets and starships. I think, considering the compromises needed to make this a playable game for Windows 95 and Pentium 1s, that the details of the Star Wars Universe that are included here make Rebellion worth at least a try-out.


Music, Sound Effects, and Visuals. Again, this is one area where Star Wars CD-ROM games excel. Whereas early games that came in 3.5 inch diskettes was ersatz John Williams -- the music had to be programmed and adapted into musical synthesizer formats like MIDI, the CD ROM can actually use tracks from the original score and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. The quality is far better and gives the game a true Star Wars feel to it.

The sound effects are also top notch. TIE fighters scream as they zip into battle, starships rumble and zoom as they maneuver in space, and ion and blaster cannon make their distinctive zapping and crackling sounds when fired.

The visuals tend to vary. The cutscenes boast very sophisticated effects that rival the late 1970s/early 1980s movie FX when major events occur. For instance, if the Empire finds the Rebel HQ with a fleet and defeats the Rebel defenses, a cutscene depicting a squadron of TIE bombers attacking and destroying a Cloud City-like structure appears, complete with dialog and movie-like graphics of spacecraft, explosions, and a falling sky-city.

In sharp contrast, if you zoom in too closely during a space battle (which occurs when your fleet meets an enemy fleet or fighter defenses when you attack an enemy system or the enemy attacks one of yours), spacecraft look slightly cartoony and fighter squadrons are represented by one fighter, no matter how many fighters are actually in a given squad....I don't mind this much, being aware that programmers wrote this in the late 1990s and for an older operating system, but other players might be put off by it anyway.

The not-so-good aspects are:

It Can Be Overwhelming. It is not the hardest Star Wars game ever designed. Indeed, I find it easier to play than first-person lightsaber action titles like Episode I: The Phantom Menace or even flight sims a la X-Wing Series.

However, the fact that there are so many things to keep track of -- resource management, production, research and development, garrisons, striking a balance between conquest, defensive measures, diplomacy, character management, and exploration, and maintenance concerns -- and the accelerated passage of time means that first-time players will be overwhelmed.

The AI (or other human player) is not passively waiting for you to build up your forces or get loyalty points; your enemy is actively carrying out missions and building up fleets -- even a Death Star or two if you are playing against the Empire. If you focus too much on capturing one sector's 10 systems to the exclusion of all else, your opponent might strike back in several other sectors, either militarily or by sending out characters with strong Diplomacy skills to sway systems to his/her side.

Other little quibbles I have is that the game is too reliant on mouse clicks -- though the manual does have a list of keyboard commands to alleviate this, the main characters' repertoire of spoken lines is very limited (you can, and will, get tired of hearing Leia mutter "I hope you know what you're doing," or Vader booming "As you wish" repeatedly), and the fact that you have to name your starships if you don't want to see such generic and boring vessels as "Alliance Dreadnaught 1" or "Imperial Star Destroyer 335." Oddly, the AI starts out naming its ships, but after a while it, too, just goes by ship class and number....dull as a Tatooine sand storm, if you ask me.

Nevertheless, Star Wars Rebellion is not a bad game. It can be fun and even, like Sid Meier's Civilization, become addictive.