Played on PC, at medium difficulty, capped at 30 FPS

Dude honestly this game is a lot of fun!

So let me start off by saying, this game will probably not be a 4 star for you, it might not even be a 3 star for you, but I just found this game to be a lot of fun and enjoyed it despite all its flaws.

So to start off, the biggest flaw is the controls. It controls like straight up shit, it is some of the most asinine controls I've ever encountered, but you can still kinda get used to them. One thing you can never get used to is the camera though, it's just really fucking bad. Typical early 3D game with horrendous camera.

Next flaw is the enemy placement: it's cheap. Enemies will literally be on every door or corner and they will shoot you the first frame they appear on your screen, hell sometimes they'll just shoot you through the wall.

Some levels can be relentless, there are pretty huge difficulty spikes sometimes and it can be quite painful. There's one level halfway through the game that takes legitimately 30+ minutes to get through, then you must fight Boba Fett, who has two phases. If you run out of the 4 lives you're given, you have to start all the way back. Most other levels aren't that long though so it's not that bad, it's just this level in particular was annoying.

So, if you can look past the control/camera/difficulty flaws, it's a really fun game. In terms of diverse gameplay it's like a prototype for future Sony exclusives if that makes sense. You can be flying and shooting, whilst cabling AT-ATs, then running and gunning, platforming, on a speeder bike, controlling a ship turret, tons of unique boss fights, there's just so much action packed into its 5 hour run time. All the levels are extremely unique and awesome as well.

Continuing on with that, the aesthetics of this game are so awesome, just really charming. This is the peak of gritty Star Wars aesthetics. Combining this with the legendary Star Wars music we all know while adding some new music that also goes hard as fuck, it's a game you can't help but be charmed by.

This game 100% deserves a remake, so far this is the best Star Wars adventure game I've played. I haven't even mentioned the story and characters but they're all awesome as well, and there's even a novel and comic books that tie into the story.

If you can get pasts its glaring flaws, you'll find a really fun Star Wars adventure. I can't imagine how hard this would be on Hard or Jedi difficulties, so if you're anything like me stick to medium.

(See all my Star Wars Rankings and reviews on my profile here, the list is titled "Star Wars Ranked.")

Cuando era chico los juegos 3D me producían cierto temor (y tengo que confesar que todavía me hacen sentir un poco de nervios los juegos 3D de esta época). Así que decidí intentar perder mis miedos jugando este juego.

Es un shooter 3D del montón, pero como tiene temática de Star Wars enganchará a más de un fan (como a mí).

Mención especial al nivel de Boba Fett, que fue cuando logré superar mi miedo a los juegos 3D.

Sure, the PC version's 60 FPS mess up a few things and make them either much harder or easier than they're supposed to since the game was made with a healthy, low N64 framerate in mind, but it's usually not a big deal and most of the time I was actually enjoying myself quite a bit while running around as Han Solo knockoff Dash Rendarr, blasting stormtroopers thanks to some pretty good level design which was usually linear enough as to never risk me getting lost, but also hosting a lot of secrets to be discovered along the way and off the beaten path. They're not the best levels ever or anything, but they get the job done and no level ever felt like it dragged and the difficulty felt pretty reasonable throughout (at least when playing on Normal), outside of Boba Fett's stage where Dash would just slip off the path and fall to his death seemingly at random, and then the Slave 1 fight that felt barely playtested.

The issue for me, unfortunately, comes in the form of the game's various vehicular stages. The first stage on Hoth is of course iconic (for some reason) and I guess it's fine, but the others are just awful, with the Speeder that is both too fast and slippery for its own good, and the auto-pilot sections where you can't really see what's shooting at you since so many ships attack from behind which means you'll just end up taking damage basically when the game wants you too. Even when you can see them and are able to shoot them down, the aiming feels awful enough that it's still a real hassle. Not like the spaceship sections where you're in complete control are much better either, especially not the final stage where you have to destroy turrets that constantly regenerate and I basically had to sacrifice an extra life for each one since a sort of kamikaze approach was the only way for me to deal enough damage to destroy them.

So not really a game that has to be played before you die or anything. The third person sections are fine, sometimes even pretty good, but not ever remarkable enough to really stand out, and the vehicles all control terribly. Honestly, what sort of makes playing this game interesting today is if you're taking part in the entire Shadows of the Empire multimedia project with the book, comic book and album. You almost have to at least read either the book or comic to get any sort of grasp of what's really going on with the story (and the book is actually surprisingly good, so I guess I can recommend it over the game?)

Wow this game was ridiculously hard, probably one of the hardest I've played in a while. I know people beat this in like an hour and a half to two and a half hours, but I took almost six and that was with me using guides on and off (which I highly encourage in hindsight with the last three missions in particular, the bike chase cause you gotta knock into people and not shoot them, and figuring out how to destroy the AT-ST in the first mission), only on medium difficulty mind you and I have a lot of experience with FPS's and these old style of shooters as well. I'm not saying I'm some kind of beast at these games, but I think I've learned enough to be considered above average without needing to learn all the ins and outs of a game just to cheese or speedrun them. Idk how they expected us to figure out certain features ourselves. It has bad hit registration, wonky controls, and some levels have very slippery terrain. I don't know if that was intentional or not. It's still a cool story though and experience you won't get anywhere else, but man I really wish somebody could make a single Star Wars game that doesn't have any of these issues I just mentioned. I don't think I could subject myself to the challenge of beating this game again ever. If you think this game sounds too difficult and off putting, then I'd highly recommend watching a walkthrough instead that's much shorter to watch versus playing it. You'll save a lot of hair trust me. Oh well, at least there's the comics and books that supplement the games. Glad I still played it though.

Shadows of the Empire manages to throw out most modern common game design sense (By way of predating it) in a clunky but ambitious action game that somehow ultimately has enough cool factor and atmosphere to make just fun enough to still keep playing.

Despite the loss of the more visually appealing still-cutscenes in exchange for chunky 90's CG cutscenes, the smooth framerate, customizable controls, and support for a number of resolutions makes the PC port the definitive way to play this in 2020.

Forma parte de los cuatro juegos de Star Wars lanzados para la gran N64 y siendo el primero de ellos, aun contando con un limitado aparatado gráfico y unos controles que sin duda alguna pudieron haber sido mejor desarrollados, es un cartucho con mucha calidad, que nos cuenta una historia digna de ser escuchada y nos presenta unos enemigos dignos de ser derrotados. Contando con una banda sonora orquestada completamente nueva e implementada en el gameplay, con una dificultad que raya lo absurdo en algunas ocasiones y presentando a un personaje bastante peculiar, Shadows of the Empire es uno de esos juegos que se consideran de culto y al cual muy pocas personas le dan la importancia que se merece.

theres genuinely a lot good about this game, but its very jank
not necessarily the bad jank (beyond dealing with a shoddy pc port bc i dont wanna deal with the fucking n64 version)
but its not that good jank either
it almost hits that sweet spot of good jank
but it doesnt
leaving this with a managable jank that still adds a level of tension, and immersion that really makes you feel like dash rendar
like for all its awkward clumsiness and clunk
its making me play cautiously, the autoaim is gracious enough that while i still need to line up the shot, i dont need to land the pixel on it, its kind of like goldeneye or timesplitters shooting, at least on foot
and the very VERY jank controls do add a certain tension to things, making the set pieces FEEL cinematic, and not in the modern sense of the word, but in the genuinely immersive way like im in my characters shoes
so like theres one moment where ice starts breaking apart in the second level, and the clumsy awkward jank and weird controls had cost me 2 or 3 of my 4 lives earlier in the level due to platforming, so when the ice started to break, my immediate reaction was OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD" as i was running and jumping down the rapidly separating hall, only to be greeted by 2 troopers as i was on 5 health, which just made me mash my mouse button before they could land one shot on me
its such a feeling that i genuinely havent felt in games in a long time, the genuine rush of a tense setpiece. not just a hard moment in a game, but a moment that catches you off guard, keeps you on your toes and doesnt hold your hand to show the character do all the cool shit, it lets ME have the cool action movie escape
its something i think games have kinda lost
but im making the game sound better than it is. it's genuinely a mixed bag, leaning on absolute mess
let's start from the beginning;
the opening level is a flying level, and its pretty fun, albeit slow. you remember those levels in star fox where you're not on rails but youre in an aerial dogfight arena? think that, but you shoot star wars shots. you do a section where you take out a couple droids and theyre piss weak, but hey its to get you used to the controls and feel so whatever. then you need to take down walkers, and theyre spongy, but not hard, though you might die crashing into them when you just want it to die already. then... you get to the camels and this becomes a problem. do beat the camels, you can either go back and forth around the arena shooting it for 5 minutes as each shot does a third of a percent of damage... or you can hook its legs. now, the game obviously wants you to hook its legs, but there are limited hooks. more than enough for the amount of camels, but, the camera, annoyingly, switches views when you hook the line to the leg, and you just need to deal with the clumsy controls and rapid camera change. ive lost so many lines from just being disoriented from the switch, you have no idea. after that, you get a stage with 2 camels, 4 walkers and several droids... its not hard but my god it takes forever, and god help you if you lose all your cables before you take down all the camels. so yeah the level loses some of its luster after you take down that first camel.
the next level is an on foot level, and these are the best parts of the game, this is the level i played when i described the feel of the game at the start of this. theres some simple fun in running around, blasting storm troppers, and having an on foot boss with one of those walkers from the first level but in an enclosed area... and then you can just cheese it by strafing around it from behind and shooting. it did not land a single shot on me. still kinda cool though
the next level is a short on-rails shooter where you can look in any direction and you need to shoot down like 60 ships or so and the controls are so terrible on pc, i dont even know how to describe it. its only 4 and a half minutes thankfully and i didnt die, so thankfully its not much of an issue
the next level is another on foot level but youre on a train and need to jump over obstacles and jump to other tracks... i dont want to talk to this level
the next level is another on-foot level but with an emphasis on platforming as well as shooting, and you get a jetpack. its fun, but i game over'd at the end, which kind of killed my enthusiasm, so i cheated my way to the next level
and im pretty sure this is further than i ever got as a kid, so i was curious to see what this biker level would be like

i played this level for 3 minutes, and decided to drop this game entirely
i really dont want to talk about it, its one of the worst levels ive ever touched in a game
i could just skip past it, sure, i used a code to unlock all levels, but the level was so bad it just killed any enthusiasm i had for the game

Just came out a bit too early in the N64 to have the polish for it to hold up. The Slave Zero fight almost made me drop the entire game, and there are absolutely other frustrating lowpoints on account of being a 3D game with flight released in 1996. That being said, within the context that it came out, this game kinda owns. This was well before the fatigue that the prequels/sequels/EU inundation would bring, and there were a lot worse Star Wars games coming out around this point.

Are the large levels obtuse and kinda empty feeling? Yeah, now, but if my only comparison to other 3D games on the N64 was SM64, I'd probably have a blast. It was still a fun enough ride to see all the way through. Apparently, this game had a ton of delays during its production, it honestly could have used another 6 months to turn into something special with a bit more polish.

Just Make the Shadows of The Empire Movie, Already! What's Your Problem, Disney?
Shadows of the Empire, which was a fully fledged Star Wars marketing cycle minus the movie, is unjustly overlooked nowadays. This would-be Episode 5.5 is absolutely SICK for a number of reasons. It goes deep into the criminal underbelly elements of the original trilogy and features characters like Boba Fett, IG-88 and some freaky green dude named Prince Xizor. Since Han is down for the count in between Empire and Jedi, we get a different renegade gunslinger type named Dash Rendar, a guy so cool he had to be disappeared immediately after the events of Shadows so as not to distract too much from the main event. This game has everything you could want in a Star Wars game in '96: OG trilogy vibes, jet packs, a Hoth stage, a Boba Fett boss battle, space battles, blowing up a Death Star type thing. Yes it's on the N64, so everything looks like garbo by today's standards but man what a time.