This is my original review posted to Steam on May 30, 2021, with 12.9 hours logged at time of review.
I’ve had this game since its original PC release date. Although I’ve only played this version about 12 hours, since I’ve had it I’ve played thousands of hours. Through the years I’ve had to tweak it to make it work on each new version of Windows, and that’s been a fun project in itself.
If you love strategy games that include troop management and battle merged into the Star Wars universe, you’ll love this game as I do. I have been playing it all these years on older desktop PCs in my home — we would have old school LAN parties and play this game for hours on end.
I am quite happy to find it now available on Steam and immediately gifted it to three other Steam players. I was sad to realize that even with its release on Steam, multiplayer is still limited to LAN local play. I have read that Game Ranger and voobly.com will work for online play, but I haven’t personally tried that — I do wish someone would recreate the online game experience to include matchmaking from the Internet.
That and the lack of achievements for this game leads to my disappointment after the excitement of finding out it was released on Steam. Fortunately there are so many other alternatives to this style of game, including Starcraft and the Age of Empires games.
That said, this game is exactly like the OG version, complete with the campaigns originally released, and I like that there are new campaigns included that were not found in the original game.
Verdict: Recommended — 22.5 hrs on record