DL'd it yesterday. Haven't finished yet. In fact, I'm still fighting Aeshdarians. Inferior bastards!
Some comments, things I think should be said. Some (contructive?) criticism there, too.
The Good: very nice storytelling.
EXCELLENT writing, especially concerning the Ancient language/ mannerisms/ ethos/ hybris/ civilization.
I'm an archaeologist, and I must say I loved the idea of using the phoenician alphabet as wing callsigns. BEAUTIFUL intro.
Pretty nice mission balancing.
Interesting ships (although the target profile of those Darts is a nightmare.
The only way of killing them in under five minutes is to get the ultra-fast ROF cannon and spray the spiders into oblivion.
)
The Bad: Mainly the interface.
I know, it probably took you ages to fix right, and it shows (
), but there are a few things that grate on my nerves. Namely, in the ships/weapons selection screen, it's VERY hard to see the blue-green ancient ships (in the 'available' list, in the lower left corner of the screen), over the blue-greenish background art.
Is there any way you could put a darker 'bar' behind the ship list, to make them easier to see?
Also, the water-ripple effect for the weapons kinda annoyed me.
I'm not asking for FS2-like weapons schematics, but at least make the weapon data easy to read...
One more thing:
in the second mission, where you destroy the Damocles, I chose to kill the destroyer before taking on the cruisers. However, the message chaining seems to take for granted that the destroyer will be downed after the cruisers. As such, I got a message that confirmed my kill of the Damocles only AFTER all three cruisers were down. Nitpick, I know, but it definitely killed the atmpsphere. It was kind of like:
"Aleph one, very good job! You killed all three cruisers! Now go after the Damocles!"
and then, after two seconds:
"Well done, the Damocles is destroyed!" (and I had taken out the Damocles like fifteen minutes ago...)
Fix that, please.
All in all: one of the best campaigns I've played. Excellent work! Keep it up, and may the Shivans be with you!
because you don't want them to be against you...