OK, so I promised myself I wasn’t going to play any more Star Wars games after a brutal string of disappointments. Seriously, how many times can you mess up this amazing franchise, LucasArts? But there’s a new Star Wars game sitting on top of the App Store charts right now called Star Wars: Commander, and I decided to give it a go.
First thing: this game is a very obvious knock-off of Clash of Clans. It is similar to that game in almost every way, but given how well Clash of Clans has performed for the past two years, you really can’t blame the people at LucasArts and Disney for making a copycat game. The combination of that style of gameplay and the massive universe of Star Wars makes a very compelling game.
Star Wars: Commander is fun. If you’ve already played Clash of Clans, then the learning curve is very small. Even if you haven’t, it’s likely that you’ve played some form of Real-time Strategy game before, and SW: Commander will seem very familiar to you. If you need help, there are lots of Star Wars: Commander cheats and tips sites popping up all over the place.
The biggest question you have to answer right away is whether you will play for the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire. In many ways, this is just a personal preference. Your decision doesn’t really impact the game down the road. But you do need to decide at the beginning, and you cannot switch later, so it’s an important choice to make.
What I really like are the campaigns. The single-player version of the game is much more interesting than Clash of Clans, and that’s mostly due to the rich Star Wars storyline that the game pulls from. For Star Wars nerds, the game takes place in the period of time between Star Wars Episode IV (A New Hope) and Star Wars Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back). For many fans, this is the “glory period” so it was a smart choice to base the game in this time period.