I recently started playing this game and I've been pretty impressed with it so far. It's the first Star Wars game I've played in recent memory that has finally captured the essence of the movies. I think the biggest issue I've had with the game so far is the size the maps are and  the number of units you can pull into a battle. After a few nifty mods, everything is once again good except for the map size thing :( Before installing the mods it just seemed wrong to be the great Galactic Empire with a fleet of ten star destroyers and additional support craft and only have two star destroyers show up before the population cap was reached. It almost made you think the Empire was incapable of any type of coordinated effort.

The actual battles are quite beautiful with all the turbolasers and craft crisscrossing the screen and massive capital ships ponderously moving forward like the unstoppable behemoths they are.  Chunks blow off as hardpoints take damage and fighters swarm around like tiny bees. It gives you that life is good feeling right up until you realize that a fleet of 20 or so corvettes can be well nigh unstoppable even with half as many of the lower end cruisers.

Ground combat seems like an after though, too small, too repetitive, too fast. Unless you are really short of garrison troops, they are one of those things almost best left up to the auto resolve feature. One high point here though was seeing an AT-AT clomping around for the first time. I think it's the best I've seen them animated in a Star Wars game.

Overall I'd say if you want a good grand strategy game that is very intuitive and accessible with a touch of tactical combat, Empire at War is great, but if you are looking at it's individual parts you will come up a bit lacking.