Well, I finished it. A good plot with fairly interesting writing (although some of the dialogue just seemed a bit cheesy). Good visuals- excellent weapon effects (EXPLOSIONS!), good models (only models I actually didn't like were the LSF ones. Too shiny, and I'm spoiled by HTL goodness from BP), and an interesting background universe. I like the idea of having several species rather than just a few, and it was really well-executed, although it fell into Planet of Hats territory on a few occasions (still much less than is typical). The gameplay was good and well-balanced except for the insane last mission.
WRITING (7/10)
The plot was engaging, interesting and well-executed. I liked the characters- not many of them were fully developed, but some were quite well developed and had me feeling as if I were actually flying with characters rather than blips on a radar. The only thing I can say I don't like in this department was, as I said before, some cheesy over-excited dialogue in a few places. It seems to me that fighting a losing war against an overpowered enemy and their various battle thralls (had to look that one up btw) lends itself more to a grim outlook than a "happy-go-lucky" bunch of characters like Mizusu and Crystal. Even so, the characters were believable, and I could look past the rose-tinted glasses they all seemed to be looking through to a dynamic group of well-developed characters.
GAMEPLAY (6.5/10)
I'll be a bit harsh here: missiles are completely and utterly useless. Swarm missiles track a bunch of targets I don't want them to, often (read: nearly always) miss, and are too slow to reasonably chase most smaller craft. I never got a good feel for any of the individual primaries, so I usually just ended up picking them on loadout descriptions alone.
The Ray was a good all-around fighter that I used in a similar fashion to the Perseus. The other available fighters I didn't use much since I was already comfortable with the Ray. That one other fighter- the one you use in
the mission where you rescue the Corvi Queen
is rediculously maneuverable to the point of being impossible to manage. If I were still using keyboard controls rather than kb & mouse, it
would have been impossible to manage.
Other than that, most balancing was well-done. I liked the tactic of going beneath capship shields to attack them.
EXECUTION (8/10)
I'll be serious here: I've never really gotten into anime or anime-styled writing. The first description I heard of WoD was, in fact, along the lines of "anime-like TC in an original universe", and that led me to believe I wouldn't end up liking it. I was pleasantly surprised. It's not just some anime campaign, and although it invokes or plays around with most of the typical anime tropes, it's still an epic FreeSpace campaign in its own right.
OTHER THAN THAT... (11/10)
What really impresses me about WoD is not the campaign itself but what it represents. First off, it's a completely original universe using very few FS assets. No other major campaign to date can make this claim (still waiting for End Project
). Second, it's a one-man effort on several fronts- effect creation, model creation, tabling/balance, story creation and mission design. Everything necessary for a good campaign was handled excellently by a single person. It's an excellent reminder of the fact that good campaigns certainly don't need to come from giant faceless teams of FREDders contributing to an SVN.
