User Reviews (41 - 51 of 81)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Emperor: Battle for Dune by Electronic Arts

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: November 01, 2001
Author: Amazon User

How many of you enjoyed the DOS version of Dune II? What about Dune 2000? Did you enjoy the books and movies? Well, you have not seen anything yet!

Emperor: Battle for Dune by Electronic Arts is unbelievable. The graphics are fantastic. The buildings, units, and personnel for your armies are outstanding. The Fremen, Sardaukar, Ixian, and Guild additions are great. A mobile repair vehicle replaces the repair pad and wait to you put the Freman on the worm to control it! Occassionally the worm comes up and you get to view down its throat!

This game has four CD-roms, with each House (Ordos, Harkonnen, and Atreides) having one for their individual campaigns. The other CD is for installation and some single skirmish battles. A familiar voice and face from "Star Trek's: Next Generation" and "Deep Space 9" is the Atreides Duke. Wow, I could go on and on, but I have to go back to the game. My son and I find it very entertaining and addicting, so be warned.

So far, we have only been using the CD-rom for the Atreides Campaign. Just when you think you have found all the improvements and changes in the game, and think it can not get any better, you find more changes and it gets better! The next Dune release by Dreamcatcher Interactive in December 2001 will really have to try hard to beat this version.

Long live the fighters...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Alright, here we have the next step for RTS games, FULLY 3D-rendered battlefields. Some have said that the Dune landscape doesn't offer much in the way of asthetics, but if you have a powerful enough computer to crank the detail it looks absolutely stunning, and downright real. That said, eventhough you DO need an accelerator card to run Emperor, the basic requirements don't seem very steep. I've got an Athlon 650, 256 RAM with a 32MB Geforce 2 card and it runs pretty darn smooth with medium detail at 1024 resolution. Enough with the techie-talk tho...

So far as unit balance and diversity, Emperor is one of the best RTS games I have ever played, each side has clear strengths and weaknesses you must expolit and defend. This game is far from just a "rush n attack" style RTS. The Subhouses do well to somewhat make up for certain weak-points in your army, as well as let you tailor your forces to your specific strategies. Battles are typically pretty quick, as opposed to other RTS games which can drag on endlessly.

My only gripe, really, is that there's only one mode of play for Skirmish/net games. Red Alert 2 had diffrent "rule" sets you could download to make a battle all infantry, extra money, etc, and older Westwood games had the Tech Level slider... Weswood neds to bring one or both of those features back!

The acting and storyline are kinda lame... but, eh... they serve their purpose.

Traditions...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Some traditions are best kept alive. They bring enjoyement to the public nd consumers. Dune is one of those traditions being kept alive for ten years.
The first Dune II was pretty good. Still, the graphics, music, soundeffects, and difficulty were not the best.
Dune 2000 had its graphics and difficulty amplified, while disregarding music and sef.
Now Emperor has everything. The plot is intricate and interesting. Graphics are amazing, so are the new units. Great music and sef. It is a little difficult to play, so I would advice playing Dune 2000 first.
In Emperor you play three houses: powerful harkonnen, loyal atreides, deceitful ordos- and five unique subhouses. Each has unique technology and strengths. You try to defeat the computer and take control of Dune.
You play so many levels. Every new level you get new units and structures. The units get veterancy bonuses.
Good Luck!

Awesome Graphics and Great Action

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: February 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Don't be fooled by the DISTURBING movie. This game is awesome. Great graphics and sound. The campaign is awesome. Each house starts with some territories. Then you pick a place to attack and see if you win if you do you get one step closer to your enemy. There are also sub-houses, like the Imperial Sardukar and the Evil Tileaxu, that play a HUGE role in your victory. This game doesn't only take place on Arrakis. You also fight on the dropships and on your enemie's homeplanets. Once you attack it's your enemies turn. They MIGHT not attack you but if they do you can either defend or resign if you don't want to defend. Your units will get upgrades over time. And one thing that is one of my favorite tactics is that you can runover your enemie's infantry. Overrall this is a very great game that has an in depth story line that will keep you playing for a long time. (And yes, there is a skirmish mode, and a tutorial for you people who are new to the world of Dune)

Dune, one of my large collection

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 6
Date: February 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I realy like this game. I only by games that I can play agenst my PC or my wife. It realy hase great graffics. The only thing I do not like about it is during the story bord line that shows the beging of the next plot of the game you are going to play, it drags and jumps before I play the next game on Dune. I have a HP with a Pentum 4, with a Voodoo5 5500. But other than it plays great, no stalling after I start playing the game. I am 48 years old.

Too Unbalanced.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I wanted to like this game because I am a huge C&C fan, but this games "Houses" are not well balanced. The Harkonen are pretty cool and have fast units at a decent price, but their turrets (which is typically a flame thrower) are not very good and get picked off by the simplest ranged attack units. The Atreis have much stronger units and cost more, but they are so slow that smaller quicker units run circles around them before they can target. The Ordos have the best balance, but since the Harkonen can build up faster, the Ordos get run over. And the air units for any of the Houses stink.
The landscape is bland also. Theres nothing to the landscape at all. Just a bunch orangish colored ground with a darker orange color that is the Spice you have to harvest and a bunch of brown areas where you can build. Not very pretty at all.
But not all is bad. In those orange areas where you can't build are sand worms that attack from time (although it seems like they spent alot of time destroying my spice harvesters all of the time) to time. Plus you have tornadoes that do some damage to your buildings, but can sweep away your infantry units rather quickly. The tornadoes look pretty cool. And the units and buildings have decent detail. And last, the cut scenes are very well done, though the story and your mission don't make alot of sense. Plus you get Dune 2000 with this, though this wasn't rated very well and rightfully so.
This game definitley needed more work as evident by the poor sales. This was first and probably last (its hard to pass up on a Westwood game) trip to the Dune universe.
C&C:Generals anyone?

awsome game !!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is my first strategy-type game and I think it's awesome. The 3D graphics and colors are great, the sound is terrific, and the game play is really cool. You can have up to 8 players (human and/or computer) on a local area/home network or up to 4 players on the internet (if you have a fast connection--56K or better). You can play by yourself against 1-7 computer players too. There are 36 screens to choose from with varying terrain. You can configure just about every option in order to tailor the game to your desires. I can't believe it's [really cheap]. I'm an avid Dune fan, so it was easy to relate to the names, places, and story-line; that helped in understanding the game. The game will work with Windows ME (that's what I have) and a friend of mine has Windows 98 2nd Ed. We networked our computers together and play against each other and/or other computer players. It's really cool. This is the best birthday gift that I've received in a long time!

Worm Sign!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It was that darn Dune II that addicted me to computer gaming in the first place. It was the first strategy game ever made and it was brilliant! Weekend after weekend I looked forward to going to my mother's job so I can play the Dune II on her office computer.
Because of my fascination with the first game and Frank Herberst's books I bought and will buy every Dune RTS computer game. So I the fact that I have Emperor Battle for Dune is not a surprise for me.

While I enjoyed the game initially I notice that my interest in it diminished dramatically after few days of playing it. The game looked great but at the end the gameplay was simply unsatisfying. I could just build a small horde of Saurdakar on every mission and easily beat the level. Some of the units were poorly thought out while others were just too powerful.

The atmosphere of the desert was also lacking. The sand and rock terrain felt too much the same. For example, units did not slow down when in sad vs. when on rocky terrain. They did not leave any sand tracks!! A small but a brilliant touch employed even in the primitive Dune II.

I could go on and on about Emperor's shortcomings but overall I have to say that it was a decent game. It had many downfalls but the story was interesting and cut scenes were satisfying.

Not the best Dune game out there, but still not the worst

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Emperor Battle For Dune is a mixed bag of a game. As a RTS its formula has been oftenly used and abused many times in other titles (especially the Dune II or Dune 2000 series), and the leap to 3D isn't entirely that spectacular.

But considering the production value, this game is quite worth mentioning. There's a top actor Michael Dorn (of Star Trek's Lt Worf fame) playing the Atreides duke, and the costumes and props are all used from the 1984 David Lynch movie.

Of course the storyline is a bit absurd... supposely to take place centuries before the main Dune storyline during the 'War of the Assassins'... serious Dune fans might have difficulty understanding it.

The dynamics aren't too heavy... and most missions are pre-scripted and the campaign unfolds the same ways no matter what.

But this game is quite worth playing (if you can find the hours the spare for it).

somehow playable

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Great gameplay, the best base building formula RTS i've played in a long time. Right up there with Ground Control. Only downside is the fact that you're fighting on arrakis. what a horrible planet. ah, yes, and the game plays a little too fast.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next 

Actions