EAW: Warlord - 6.0 - TME Reviewed by Stellar Magic

[Stellar_Magic]

EAW: Warlord - 6.0 - Total Mod Expansion

Reviewed by Stellar Magic

 

Well, with the final release of EAW just around the corner many of us have begun to turn to mods for our fill of Star Wars combat until then, among the best of these mods is the Warlord Total Mod Expansion.  Its designed to allow you to fight the galactic civil war from a perspective you hardly see presented, an Imperial Rogue, a Warlord.

 

The mod is based on the rebellion of Grand Admiral Zaarin shortly after the Battle of Hoth, and does its best to present the battle within the limits of EAW’s Demo.

 

In terms of actual game-play and mechanics the mod is almost identical to the normal game; the primary difference is the strategic game-play where you organize your forces and work to defeat the imperial and rebel forces.  Here the game play is different in one important way, it’s more difficult.  Much more difficult because your starting resources are stretched so thin because you only have a single system under your control (Corellia which you’d think would have a higher credit value).

 

There are also a plethora of more subtle changes, like the hardpoints on Zaarin’s ship, the Imperial II Star Destroyer Glory.  The Ion Cannons are now a combined turbolaser and concussion missile battery.  It really gives the ship some extra punch.

 

Most of the rest of the mod is actually just unlocking and debugging features buried in the game itself and balancing them.  Almost all the units that are in the game are activated in one form or another in the game.  I must give Cain credit for debugging and stabilizing the demo, I didn’t have a single crash while I played.  I also appreciate Cain’s changing the hyperspace speed to one which is more manageable.

 

Fun: 8 out of 10

 

Well in terms of how fun it is, the mod is on a par with other mods like Bryant’s Mod.  It enables a lot, but it doesn’t change many of the things which increase or decrease how fun the mod is.  To me, fun and challenging can go hand and hand, and playing as Zaarin is more challenging, but not by all that much.

 

Game-play: 8 out of 10

 

There isn’t a steep learning curve like in my mod ROR, you can easily jump from the vanilla demo to the mod and play without any challenge or unlearning what you’ve learned.  The game mechanics are the same as EAW, and its more playable thanks to slower hyperspace velocity.

 

Realism: 4 out of 10

 

Like EAW itself the mod isn’t very realistic.  Tie Fighters are way to big, capital ships are too small.  A turbolaser hit won’t kill a starfighter outright, and the capital ships seem to be able to accelerate and decelerate far too quickly, not to mention the respawning of starfighters once their destroyed.

 

Balance: 9 out of 10

 

Balance is something I normally don’t care about, but since Cain decided to include it in his analysis of my mod I should do the same to his.  The mod seems very balanced, Zaarin may be a small force but he has slightly better ships.  Of course if the units are the exact same with a few minor changes as those in the original game it’s kind of hard to unbalance a game that’s already thoroughly balanced.

 

Stability: 10 out of 10

 

The mod doesn’t slow down a machine and lacks most of the bugs other mods face (invisible bases, indestructible bases…)  I didn’t once have an exception appear and the game didn’t slow down (ROR slows down most machines quite a bit because it processes a lot more data due to how many ships the can be built or moved at one time).

 

Overall: 7.8 out of 10

 

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http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=2275.0