Star Wars: Rebel Assault 2 - Hidden Empire Review

This was a surprisingly decent little game, I wasn't expecting much out of it and I was also expecting to either eventually use cheats or drop the game entirely but I got to the end of the game at all. I did play on easy mode since it's an on rails shooter without a mouse. I only checked the game out at all because it was on PS Premium Classics a few months ago and it was a quick short game to beat.

The game was also made by Factor 5 who would later make Rogue Squandron but I never played those games.

To best describe Hidden Empire it's basically an on rails shooter for most of the game with Sega CD style live action FMV sequences. Watching these cutscenes I did find charming in a corny 90s game kind of way much like Disruptor's cutscenes. It also felt like a weird novelty at the time of the game's release since Phantom Menace was a few years away and the last live action Star Wars anything was Return of the Jedi. This was back when the series in terms of live action output or media with a lot of money put into wasn't as over done as it is now. This and Dark Forces 2's live action can be considered corny by today's standards I find charming due to how much the devs tried to create that "movie like" SW experience while being on a small budget by comparison.

The actual gameplay consists of traditional rail shooting on starfighters, cover shooting on foot sections, sections where you have to dodge debris, an FPS sequence very reminscent of Star Wars Dark Forces, or one speeder bike scene where you dodge debris and shoot enemies.

Most of these are doable and are pretty reasonable in challenge on an analog stick or D pade and save states and rewind on PS5 especially helps, but mission 3 on the Millenium Falcon was just awful and requires you to be way too precise with how much is coming at you, any debris dodging section was a pain, but this one in particular was so bad that I almost considered turning on cheats, luckily after this, the game never gets that hard again, but it is a pretty notable difficulty spike. The amount precise movement and timing on mission 3 just felt impossible at times.

The rest of the game is decent and solid fun but there will be lots of trial and error and memorizing enemy patterns and spawns much like a lot of games from this era, however save states, rewind and if you choose to play on easy will make these parts much more bearable on a first time through.

Overall, not much to say, this was pretty much about as experimental 90s games as experimental 90s games can get. It has it's good parts, it's bad, but it's a charming game especially if you like Star Wars. I'm sort of one so I got some enjoyment out of a game that was a pretty random addition to PS Premium Classics.