Now now, I know I'm leaving a negative review, but I love this game to death. I have fond memories of being 8/9 years old playing this on my dad's old windows vista after beating AoEII: The Conquerors. My dad helped capture the magic(force?) of Star Wars for me at a very young age when we would play LEGO Star Wars TCS on our Wii. This was a natural continuation, and getting to commandeer the Rebels in the fight against the Empire, and vice versa, as well as play through TPM, TESB, and RotJ in a form I already understood through AoE2 caused me to spend hours and hours sitting at the computer just playing this game.

As the years progressed, I no longer had the means to play STGB, since it was restricted to CD only, and my CD for it broke. So for roughly a decade as I continued through life, I had stopped playing this game, and my memories of playing it faded with time.

And then I discovered the game on Steam. I bought the game basically instantly, installed and hopped right in.
Only for it to crash. Yep. I maybe should have seen that coming, since Ensemble Studios basically doesn't exist anymore so they wouldn't be able to patch it for systems other than windows 7 and up. Fortunately, the SWGB All-in one patch (which you can find here) allows me to play the game and adds more music, as well as widescreen support, which I greatly appreciate.

But so far, I've only talked about positive things, so why am I leaving a negative review? Allow me to get into the meat of my critique.

After 65 hours of play on steam, I can safely say that my rose-tinted spectacles have been thoroughly broken by issues with gameplay that I've encountered. Aside from the all-in-one patch, I should note that I am playing completely vanilla.

Issue #1: The Pathfinding.
Yes, I'm gonna be that guy and complain about the damn pathfinding. After playing a lot of AoE2:DE, I've gotten very used to the buttery smooth pathfinding that seamlessly allows units to find even the smallest gaps and squeeze through them. However, experiencing SWGB pathfinding was like getting slapped in the face. I would task my workers to gather carbon from trees outside my wall of prefab shelters with most of them touching, and a 1 tile gap that the workers for some reason just could not figure out, leading to them just giving up and going idle, requiring me to use the waypoint system with shift+right click. But, that's not even the worst part, as the pathfinding affects the AI as well! I've discovered many varieties of cheese (which significantly kill the difficulty in some of the harder missions!!) against the AI using the awful pathfinding, allowing me to make minimal military and just build wall mazes with turrets in them for the AI to run around and die in as they funnel into a choke instead of attacking walls and such. I'm also taking up issue with the Patrol function, as it does not work properly. Normally, when units are on patrol, they are supposed to attack any enemy they see. However, in my experience, it's a 50/50 of whether or not it does it's job. In the cases it doesn't, you get a very comical exchange where you watch your entire army bump shoulders with the enemy army and be like "oh, my bad g let me get out of your way" and continue as if nothing happened. Honestly, it's a little infuriating.

Issue #2: The AI (or lack thereof sometimes).

Now, unlike what a few people on the forums will tell you, the AI is not that challenging, and they are not bad at the game. They're just losing to a computer that is bad at the game. It is pretty easy to beat the computer as long as you know how to position your buildings defensively to take the most advantage of hill and cliff bonuses (25% more damage attacking an enemy downhill and taking 25% less damage from an enemy that is downhill, and a 25% damage boost if your unit is attacking from the top of a cliffside) and further, know how to manipulate the crappy pathfinding (see Issue #1 above) into forcing the AI into a choke where you can hold off a lot of army with a few units. But that is not why the AI is bad. In some games, the AI literally does nothing. NOTHING. In the last level of the rebel campaign on the hardest difficulty, a challenging mission where you fight against an enemy that has a tech advantage over you. I prepared hard and pushed my strategies to their limits, preparing for a fight, and then waiting, securing more space, and then waiting, pushing to just outside the enemy base and waiting.... wtf is the AI doing? I easily demolish their whole base while still in Tech 3, and win. I check the society stats and guess what? They had a worker high of 3. Three. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ THREE! 3 workers, on the hardest campaign difficulty. They were building additional buildings, and I even denied a fortress that they had 1 worker working on, but that was the only tactically interesting thing about the whole level. Killing a single worker to prevent a fortress from being 25% done. Wow. A fantastic waste of time and the only fun was the tension of preparing for an imaginary threat. And when the AI isn't lobotomized, you can still cheese it using the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pathfinding! Here is a very easy cheese method to stop the AI from doing Assault Mech spam:
1: Create Mounted Troopers to attack and surround the Assault mechs. Fun Fact: The AI will always try to attack the unit that is attacking it AND closest to it, so it will aggro the mounted troopers, but since they are in minimum range, they will just freeze in place and not attack anything else.
2: Train Troopers and Mech Destroyers to assist the Mounted Troopers. Mech Destroyers to counter strike mechs, Troopers to counter other troopers.
3: Choose between fighters and anti-air mobiles to counter air units.
4: Choose between cannons and pummels (artillery is trash tier siege) to destroy buildings
5: Congratulations, you can now beat every campaign on the hardest difficulty! This deathball™ method will work 100% every time, since jedi are NEVER used in the campaigns so you will have no reason to train bounty hunters or worry about making jedi of your own

Skirmishes against the AI tend to be a lot different in my experience (where the AI finally grows a brain outside the spinal column and actually plays the game to an OK degree) so you'll have less opportunities for cheese and more opportunities for a fun-ish game.

Issue #3: Multiplayer (is dead, long live Multiplayer)

There is no multiplayer support for SWGB. Not supported through Steam that is. If you want to play multiplayer, you'll either have to meet up in-person at a LAN party, install antiquated software like Voobly or Gameranger, or be extra weird and use virtual LAN connections to play multiplayer. There is no workshop support either, so getting people to play your custom maps or mods is a hassle. I've tried to install some of the unofficial campaign expansions but it all resulted in failure, so it's up to you to know what you're doing.

Given these conditions, I do not recommend buying this game unless you are here for the campaigns, or just really like Star Wars. I really hope they do a Definitive Edition of this game, many aspects desperately need an overhaul and some of the balance changes made to the original AoE2 need to be mapped over to SWGB as well in my opinion. And with that, that is all I have to say regarding this game.

Now now, I know I'm leaving a negative review, but I love this game to death. I have fond memories of being 8/9 years old playing this on my dad's old windows vista after beating AoEII: The Conquerors. My dad helped capture the magic(force?) of Star Wars for me at a very young age when we would play LEGO Star Wars TCS on our Wii. This was a natural continuation, and getting to commandeer the Rebels in the fight against the Empire, and vice versa, as well as play through TPM, TESB, and RotJ in a form I already understood through AoE2 caused me to spend hours and hours sitting at the computer just playing this game. As the years progressed, I no longer had the means to play STGB, since it was restricted to CD only, and my CD for it broke. So for roughly a decade as I continued through life, I had stopped playing this game, and my memories of playing it faded with time. And then I discovered the game on Steam. I bought the game basically instantly, installed and hopped right in. Only for it to crash. Yep. I maybe should have seen that coming, since Ensemble Studios basically doesn't exist anymore so they wouldn't be able to patch it for systems other than windows 7 and up. Fortunately, the SWGB All-in one patch (which you can find [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636984276]here[/url]) allows me to play the game and adds more music, as well as widescreen support, which I greatly appreciate. But so far, I've only talked about positive things, so why am I leaving a negative review? Allow me to get into the meat of my critique. After 65 hours of play on steam, I can safely say that my rose-tinted spectacles have been thoroughly broken by issues with gameplay that I've encountered. Aside from the all-in-one patch, I should note that I am playing completely vanilla. Issue #1: The Pathfinding. Yes, I'm gonna be that guy and complain about the damn pathfinding. After playing a lot of AoE2:DE, I've gotten very used to the buttery smooth pathfinding that seamlessly allows units to find even the smallest gaps and squeeze through them. However, experiencing SWGB pathfinding was like getting slapped in the face. I would task my workers to gather carbon from trees outside my wall of prefab shelters with most of them touching, and a 1 tile gap that the workers for some reason just could not figure out, leading to them just giving up and going idle, requiring me to use the waypoint system with shift+right click. But, that's not even the worst part, as the pathfinding affects the AI as well! I've discovered many varieties of cheese (which significantly kill the difficulty in some of the harder missions!!) against the AI using the awful pathfinding, allowing me to make minimal military and just build wall mazes with turrets in them for the AI to run around and die in as they funnel into a choke instead of attacking walls and such. I'm also taking up issue with the Patrol function, as it does not work properly. Normally, when units are on patrol, they are supposed to attack any enemy they see. However, in my experience, it's a 50/50 of whether or not it does it's job. In the cases it doesn't, you get a very comical exchange where you watch your entire army bump shoulders with the enemy army and be like "oh, my bad g let me get out of your way" and continue as if nothing happened. Honestly, it's a little infuriating. Issue #2: The AI (or lack thereof sometimes). Now, unlike what a few people on the forums will tell you, the AI is not that challenging, and they are not bad at the game. They're just losing to a computer that is bad at the game. It is pretty easy to beat the computer as long as you know how to position your buildings defensively to take the most advantage of hill and cliff bonuses (25% more damage attacking an enemy downhill and taking 25% less damage from an enemy that is downhill, and a 25% damage boost if your unit is attacking from the top of a cliffside) and further, know how to manipulate the crappy pathfinding (see Issue #1 above) into forcing the AI into a choke where you can hold off a lot of army with a few units. But that is not why the AI is bad. In some games, the AI literally does nothing. NOTHING. In the last level of the rebel campaign on the hardest difficulty, a challenging mission where you fight against an enemy that has a tech advantage over you. I prepared hard and pushed my strategies to their limits, preparing for a fight, and then waiting, securing more space, and then waiting, pushing to just outside the enemy base and waiting.... wtf is the AI doing? I easily demolish their whole base while still in Tech 3, and win. I check the society stats and guess what? They had a worker high of 3. Three. Fucking THREE! 3 workers, on the hardest campaign difficulty. They were building additional buildings, and I even denied a fortress that they had 1 worker working on, but that was the only tactically interesting thing about the whole level. Killing a single worker to prevent a fortress from being 25% done. Wow. A fantastic waste of time and the only fun was the tension of preparing for an imaginary threat. And when the AI isn't lobotomized, you can still cheese it using the shitty pathfinding! Here is a very easy cheese method to stop the AI from doing Assault Mech spam: 1: Create Mounted Troopers to attack and surround the Assault mechs. Fun Fact: The AI will always try to attack the unit that is attacking it AND closest to it, so it will aggro the mounted troopers, but since they are in minimum range, they will just freeze in place and not attack anything else. 2: Train Troopers and Mech Destroyers to assist the Mounted Troopers. Mech Destroyers to counter strike mechs, Troopers to counter other troopers. 3: Choose between fighters and anti-air mobiles to counter air units. 4: Choose between cannons and pummels (artillery is trash tier siege) to destroy buildings 5: Congratulations, you can now beat every campaign on the hardest difficulty! This deathball™ method will work 100% every time, since jedi are NEVER used in the campaigns so you will have no reason to train bounty hunters or worry about making jedi of your own Skirmishes against the AI tend to be a lot different in my experience (where the AI finally grows a brain outside the spinal column and actually plays the game to an OK degree) so you'll have less opportunities for cheese and more opportunities for a fun-ish game. Issue #3: Multiplayer (is dead, long live Multiplayer) There is no multiplayer support for SWGB. Not supported through Steam that is. If you want to play multiplayer, you'll either have to meet up in-person at a LAN party, install antiquated software like Voobly or Gameranger, or be extra weird and use virtual LAN connections to play multiplayer. There is no workshop support either, so getting people to play your custom maps or mods is a hassle. I've tried to install some of the unofficial campaign expansions but it all resulted in failure, so it's up to you to know what you're doing. Given these conditions, I do not recommend buying this game unless you are here for the campaigns, or just really like Star Wars. I really hope they do a Definitive Edition of this game, many aspects desperately need an overhaul and some of the balance changes made to the original AoE2 need to be mapped over to SWGB as well in my opinion. And with that, that is all I have to say regarding this game.