To be blunt, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is basically Age of Kings with Star Wars units. You have the option of playing as one of six factions from the movies: the Rebel Alliance, the Galactic Empire, the Wookies, the Gungans, the Trade Federation, or the citizens of Naboo, each of which comes with its own set of buildings and units akin to Age of King’s civilizations. In fact almost everything in this game is akin to Age of Empires II, from the interface, resources, main menu, gameplay and research model, which isn’t necessarily a terrible thing.Building up feels the same as well, though of course you first have to learn what each particular building is for. You spend a good five to ten minutes hyper-organizing the orderly, continuous influx of four resources—food, carbon (wood), bright green nova crystals (gold), and purple ore (stone). Food is still the mainstay. You hunt and fish and build farms exactly as you did in the parent game, all by hand (Gungans and Wookies apparently have similar diets).You eventually produce Jedi Masters in the same humble fashion. Among the additions are structures called power cores, which function a bit like Protoss pylons.

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Without one nearby, most of your structures perform at 25% efficiency. You can also make shield generators that protect any structures and units within its nimbus; the Gungans enjoy the benefit of a mobile generator like that in Episode I, although the one in the game is carried on the back of a skittish dinosaur that will frequently move out of position unless ordered to stand ground.

Star Wars fans who have never played Age of Kings will probably find the translated concepts of evolving “tech levels” and building a monument that will bring you instant victory if it stands for 200 days (yes, days—the Star Wars universe is fast-paced) more interesting and inventive than Age of Kings veterans will, though they may be puzzled by how fragile the air units are or by why so much of the terrain looks earthly and pastoral. The graphics are rather retro for a 2D Star Wars game, and the art doesn’t quite live up to Ensemble standards.Sometimes the fusion of styles actually works. Imperial walkers look right at home cresting Kashyyk’s verdant hills and the pink bulbous Gungan structures and ornate cannons stand out as genuinely exotic (the Empire’s buildings, by contrast, are difficult to distinguish).

The sound effects, especially the plethora of agonized metallic warblings, are all spot on.But the balancing had to go into overdrive, and so all factions – even the Wookies – are able to train Jedi Knights and Masters. Like priests, these units fight and convert enemy units to your color, but they also seem to crumble just as fast as upgraded regular infantry, especially when confronted with their specially designed counterunit – the bounty hunter. And to my disappointment, their flickering lightsabers never even deflect bolts of incoming blaster fire.

Air units are similarly less powerful than you might expect.The AI doesn’t appear to have been imported intact.

. Q: I get an error during installation that says: ' An error has occurred while trying to replace the existing file: DeleteFile failed; code 5. Access is denied.'

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Or ' Error creating registry key: -//- RegCreateKeyEx failed; code 5. Access is denied.' . A: Reboot your PC, then start installation again. Q: I get an error during patching to widescreen: ' Didn't find interfac.drs reference at expected location. A: You have a multiple monitor system, so patch may work not correctly.

You need to deactivate the second monitor and run the patch on the primary monitor, i.e. Monitor you want to play the game on. After patching process will be done, you can activate back the second monitor.

Q: Nothing happens when I start the game, i.e. It crashes immediately. Q: When I run widescreen patch the window command gets full of red messages. A: You need to install/update '.NET Framework 3.5'.

After years of sync errors, this patch finally fixed it. Got through a few LAN games without desyncs. Major kudos to the patch creator.

This game has such potential. I wish Disney would put some money into it like Microsoft into HD/DE.One glitch this patch did seem to introduce is when creating LAN games (didn't try IP), the creator of the game gets hung at the loading screen (the one that says if you don't connect in 15 seconds, escape out) even though their party members can get in.

Work around is to alt tab out to another window then go back to it. @ )in-d1n, I don't suppose you could add an update to BOT worker AI's? I've been having several instances where an ally or an enemy will send the majority of their workers to (I assume) fish/harvest from my Aqua Harvesters. While this is great fun to be able to put and aqua harvester right next to an enemy base and immediately nerf them to the ground until one of their military units blows it up it kinda ruins the game and makes AI allies practically worthless in late game.Thanks for your efforts, and I'd appreciate it fi you would be able to do this as well.