Hey, davidud!
Could you give more details about your game plans? You want to make 2d game with prerendered 3d elements, right?
Try to set RayDepth scene attribute to 3 or 4 for example, and lower antialiasing number of samples from default 16 to 9. It should speed things up a bit.
The simpliest way for environment map: you may try googling for "hdri", but in fact when using this way you'll need low dynamic range image, so download *.jpg instead of *.hdr/*.exr. Go to Material Editor/Textures to load your map into Anim8or, but don't click on "Env. Map" option, click on something other i.e. "Diffuse", load your map from file and set diffuse map to "NONE'. Click on "Env. Map" and choose your map, tweak strength.
Example of 100% reflection map below.