First I'd like to say "Wow." No seriously... I took a few minutes to take stock of the story and this is actually some pretty incredible stuff. Some of it kinda thought provoking. Layered mysteries and characters you start to care about without ever laying eyes on them. And then there are the epic battles from AoA and WiH:P1 So again, "wow" and "bravo."
WiH Part 2 was good, but I do find the direction a bit troubling. Seems WiH part 2 moved very dramatically away from space-fighter combat. Don't get me wrong, I like a good stealth mission as much as the next. The
assassination mission where you assassinate the traitorous Elder
was easily my favorite mission of the campaign. Played through it probably 12 times till i got the outcome I wanted (GTVA really needs to maintain their automated beam turrets better
). But the missions with the cruiser and tanks were rather unpleasant to me. And I felt some what let down by the final mission.
The cruiser mission is probably just a case of me not liking that mission type. Objectively it seems like it was rather well implemented and all, especially considering the base engine was never meant for such. I eventually cheat-moded my way through it. It's not that I couldn't beat it... it's that I didn't want to learn to control the cruiser well enough to beat it as cleanly as I tend to insist on. I guess what I'm saying is that missions like this are interesting and I would be fascinated as a techy to see how it was implemented... but this just isn't FreeSpace to me.
On a similar note the mission with the tanks placed on cargo containers wasn't all that fun to me either. But this time I can say implementation was my main issue. I ended up just parking my stealth fighter and doing the entire mission up to the evac in overview mode. The mission was a cakewalk once I managed to get tanks placed... but i had to seriously fight the controls to make that happen... and it was the time that I spent fighting the controls that kept me from switching back to ship view and going and fighting myself. In the end I just told my wingmen to break and attack and spent the rest of the mission wrestling the controls to put the tanks in place.
The final mission was obviously more about providing answers to a lot of questions than it was about the combat and I felt the pressure ramping up as I tried to escape and all... but it just didn't have the "Wow" factor that the battle against the Lucifer Class SuperDestroyer from AoA or the battle for the Carthage from WiH:P1. I suppose one could see the strike on the Carthage in WiH:P2 as it's true final battle but that had other issues, namely that I didn't really feel like I was part of it cause it was always some one else doing everything (on my orders but still).
I guess I'm just an old tiger at heart. I want the thrill of slamming my ship into a corkscrew as missiles dance around me trying to restore their lost lock followed by a high-G inversion and going fangs out on the poor fool who made the mistake of not killing me when he had the chance.
Anyway, to be clear, the only reason I mention this is to make it known that at least one person out there still likes good old dogfighting and bombing runs... and the more of that I get the happier I'll be. I'm really hoping there will be more of it in WiH:P3 than was in WiH:P2... P1 seemed to have it perfected to me. Otherwise keep up the great work and I'll be back for the next update.
