[InsaneBaron]

Hi guys! I just finished Frontlines last night, and wanted to post a few comments before writing up a full-scale review.

-After playing FS1, I came to the conclusion that pre-Shivans, pre-sheilds, TV-War combat was unlikely to be viable from a gameplay perspective without massive rebalancing. As such, my interest in Frontlines was motivated largely by curiousity- could it be done? Turns out Frontlines gameplay was, in fact, balanced and appealing. Kudos for proving me wrong!

-Good job with the new(old?) gear. Those Pheonix III warheads are good for hammering light capships, but still limited enough that even pre-beam capships are competitive as far as damaging eachother. For that matter, capships as a whole are pretty threatening compared to FS1.

-Those Vasudan missile gunships are nice touch- small, fast, a serious threat to capships, requiring some good aim by the player to counter. Fun and dangerous opponents.

-During the first mission, Iota one gets disabled, and Iota two takes it's place. At the end of the mission, command gave an RTB order... but left Iota One to fend for themselves. Did I break the mission?

-During the second-to-last mission, there's a small but confusing message error where the GTC Odin identifies itself as the GTC Iron Duke.

-The post-battle action reports are pretty cool- I would've liked to see them more often. It helped that I did well enough to bag a medal both times they appeared.

-Oh, and thanks for throwing in the Orff.

-Overall, an enjoyable mini-campaign with a few bloopers; I'm looking forward to the next one! 

EDIT: one little question. The credits include music, but I didn't hear any music other than the regular FS1 OST (and I think some of Dan Wentz's remixes, correct me if I'm wrong). Did I miss something?

[Lorric]

Nice.

Hi guys! I just finished Frontlines last night, and wanted to post a few comments before writing up a full-scale review.

Looking forward to it!

-After playing FS1, I came to the conclusion that pre-Shivans, pre-sheilds, TV-War combat was unlikely to be viable from a gameplay perspective without massive rebalancing. As such, my interest in Frontlines was motivated largely by curiousity- could it be done? Turns out Frontlines gameplay was, in fact, balanced and appealing. Kudos for proving me wrong!

This is the most interesting part to me. I always liked the early gameplay, and that was what drew me to this long before I ended up working on it. It makes me wonder why you thought it wouldn't be gameplay viable.

EDIT: one little question. The credits include music, but I didn't hear any music other than the regular FS1 OST (and I think some of Dan Wentz's remixes, correct me if I'm wrong). Did I miss something?

These are in the cutscene. Which amusingly I haven't actually watched, because it was made by Lepanto right at the end of the development process with Black Wolf giving feedback, and then Black Wolf tested it and put it in right before release. I've deliberately left the cutscene alone so it will be a nice treat for me when I decide to play the campaign again, which will be some time in the future, because I tested it to death.

[Black Wolf]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm glad you liked the balance aspects - balance was definitely the hardest part to get right, particularly since we were deliberately limited to retail AI and (mostly) FS1 weapons (particularly on capships). Where e did break with canon, it was primarily to add things that missions needed for balance purposes - that was the source of both the Phoenix 3s (to let the player have a noticeable impact on capitals) and the gunships (to provide an enemy that could change the battlefield relatively suddenly and quickly). Sounds like they were successful too.

As for the bugs, they both sound very familiar - I thought they'd been fixed to be honest. Out of curiosity, did you download the campaign just before you played it, out perhaps just after it came out, but just waited until now to give it a go?

[InsaneBaron]

@ Lorric: Honestly, now that I've been disproved, it's a little hard to understand why I thought that way in the first place Part of it might have been Shivans: Phantoms, which was interesting in terms of story but (IMHO) would have been intolerable from a gameplay perspective if it weren't a mere four missions (not to mention being bundled w/ Echo Gate, which gets my prize for cramming the most appeal into the fewest missions).

About the music: I see; they would've been pretty brief. I saw "AC4" in the credits and got excited because Ace Combat 04 has IMO one of the best OSTs in gaming history. Turns out it was something else. Ah well.

@Black Wolf: Well, the balance certainly turned out pretty well. A little on the harder side, but not problematically so.

I checked my download; turns out I downloaded it when it first came out, then re-downloaded it three days ago, got up to get a cough drop and forgot to replace the old folder with the new one. Facepalm. Anyway, good to know the bug have been fixed; I'll leave them out of the review.

[niffiwan]

Since the balance has been brought up, I thought I'd leave a few of my thoughts on it 

I found that the balance was really good on medium, missions were challenging without being too hard. However on both hard and insane I feel that it was far too hard.  The lack of shields (i.e. no health that can regen) combined with very accurate AI, waved enemy wings, "real" firerates, inbound missile spam and unlimited AIs targeting the player made it practically impossible.  I finished the 1st few missions (the "dogfight" training + one other?) on insane through dogged perseverance, maybe completed the next one on hard, before completing the rest of the campaign on medium (to avoid ragequitting ).  Now, I'm no QuantumDelta, but with some perseverance I can manage to complete the retail FS2 campaign on insane. Maybe there's something you could do to balance the higher difficulty levels a bit better?  Maybe reducing the size of some enemy wings could help, or maybe reducing the number of AI's that can target the player from 99 to something just a little above medium/hard? Or even simply adding something to the README about it being balanced for medium, and being damn hard on hard/insane

(yes, I realise it's a bit... odd, to be complaining about it being hard on the harder difficulty levels )

[Lorric]

It is indeed balanced for play on medium.

Also, something I should mention for everyone that isn't in the OP: The campaigns are designed to be played at medium difficulty.

Come on BW, put it in the OP. My bright yellow text clearly wasn't enough.

But well done for managing to beat some levels on higher difficulties.

Please though people, don't go breaking your necks trying to defeat this campaign above normal. (Cue everyone trying now.)