Customer Reviews

Star Wars Empire at War (Prima Official Game Guide)

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I bought this book because the documentation that comes with Empire at War is so scanty, and unfortunately I must say I'm rather disappointed. The most important bit of info you'll need is a chart telling you the income, trade, value per mine and number of build slots per planet - something that took me about 1 - 1 1/2 hours to research on my own and manually enter in the planet entries. It would have been even simpler to count hardpoints, prices, etc. for the ships and list that up on the various ship entries, or even better, on a 1 or 2 page chart - again, something that would have been very simple and basic for a researcher to have done.

There are some nice tips for the multiplayer game, but I wouldn't depend on them unless you fancy being eaten alive by the other players. Most of the tactical and strategic advice is basic, common sense stuff - get your income up, balance your unit and technology builds, etc - but again, the excellent charts and data tables that one expects in a Prima Guide and that one would use to make such decisions are entirely absent.

Spending an hour or two collating important data like this into the book before publishing it would seem basic to me, but clearly not to whoever put this book out. The fact that it's about a third more expensive than other Prima Guides (probably because the game it covers is a hot Lucas Arts title) doesn't help matters.

All in all, unless you're a collector or have money to burn, I wouldn't bother with it. If you really feel the need to get it, at least check any major bookstore or game shop and read the insides BEFORE you buy it. Because failing to do so is how this particular gamer got took.

Has some nice maps of the planets so when you cannot see what is there, you have a clue. It helped me get the most outof the game, but it is not necessary to play