Star Wars: Empire at War -- Forces of Corruption (PC Games, 2006)

Originally I bought it because I enjoyed Empire at War, and saw it as an extension of the first. It became evident however that once you've added this expansion you now have an entirely different game.

To illustrate what I mean let me tell you my like/dislikes:

Likes: The single player campaign was great, the story was deep and involved and many of everyone’s favorite Star Wars elements were added in seamlessly. The addition of a "pathfinder" slot on fleets has been good (the unit placed in this slot will be the first one into any given battle, allowing you to choose which units come in next). Orbital bombardment is tailored to each factions' character (such as in the case of the Rebels-ion attack only, because the Rebels wouldn't choose to devastate entire worlds with bombardment). I have enjoyed the addition of corruption options as well, though in my opinion all factions should have some corruption options (though maybe you change the name and which options are available (because the Rebels wouldn’t kidnap or commit acts of piracy) for the different factions such as "Liberation" for Rebels rather than corruption.) The addition of the base layout function has been good, but this function is rather rudimentary and needs improvement. Lastly, the new units are a joy to play with, the Rebel B-wing being my favorite.

For my Dislikes: While I did enjoy the new Consortium faction I have found them to be unbalanced. At the end of the single player campaign I found myself sitting pretty with over one million credits! This is a bit much when you consider that the consortium's version of a Star Destroyer is less than 5000 credits. Further on unbalance, I found the Consortium to be overpowered on everywhere. I simply jumped from planet to planet with a relatively small group of forces killing at will, with little or no loss to myself. While my vanity suggests that I claim that my military genius is the reason for this, I know that it's simply not true. Playing as the Imperials or Rebels against the consortium is nigh on impossible, if that is they are allowed to gain the upper hand early. I have found that unless the Consortium is stamped out in the first few days of a Galactic Conquest game, then they will rule uncontested unless you get very lucky. For some reason the AI seems to have suffered in this expansion as well. In the single player campaign I found myself facing large fleets of Imperials arriving at some of my key defensive worlds, which of course was fun. However, other than these two or three worlds I was never attacked anywhere else. In Galactic Conquest its worse, the AI doesn’t attack much at all nor does it defend well in space. And so I have found myself spending hour after grueling hour fighting land battles (that have not improved much), and spending almost no time fighting meaningful battles in space. Finally, as in the original Empire at War the limited number of Galactic Conquest options hurts replay value.

The reader should be aware that I do not use multiplayer or skirmish functions. So I can’t give an impression of either.

In conclusion, knowing what I know now I still would have bought this expansion pack, and still do enjoy playing it. Please be aware that a patch has come out that has helped, if not fixed balance issues. This can be found on Petroglyph’s website. In the future I can see myself going back to the original EAW once in a while to play a classic Imperial vs. Rebel game.
Cheers, and enjoy!