Impressions are as follows:
First of all I thought Age of Aquarius was awfully mediocre. It felt just out of place within the FS Universe. Too much focus on character drama and fulfilling your destiny and adding in Vishnans which seemed like a "oh we need a good epic ancient race to counter the evil epic ancient race" The cold militarism of the Freespace universe was gone and in it's place was a load of spiritual crap. This is FS, not BSG(or at least BSG after it became stupid)
Now, War in Heaven. I'll start with the criticism.
The POV seemed skewed somewhat heavily towards the Ubuntu side. Now, I know that the viewpoint of Laporte is different than that of the authors, but still. It's just that the overall campaign seemed to portray the GTVA as the big bad imperialistic goons fighting against a peaceful, enlightened race. I see that both sides have a point to their argument, even though I think the GTVA is right in the long term. I think a few missions from the GTVA side are in order, simply to keep things balanced. The UEF seemed almost flawless when from the backstory it appears they are just as flawed at the GTVA except in another way.
Although it was much less than Age of Aquarius, the visions and spirituality should be toned down a bit. The briefings should be a little bit more formal. One of the things I like about FS is how the Command Briefings convey almost no emotion, simply facts and objectives. It lends an air of authenticity to everything. A problem with many custom campaigns that makes them lose professionalism and turns them into melodramatic fan fiction(not saying that BP is) is that they try to inject emotion and feelings into Freespace. FS has always had a very militaristic atmosphere while being dark and mysterious. I hope that whatever new projects you guys release will try to keep this intact as much as possible.
Now on the other hand, War in Heaven has excellent missions and gameplay. I don't say this lightly, but it's probably got the best missions of any FS2 campaign.
The last mission in particular was amazing. This is what war is space should be like. Every other mission in the FS2 engine was shamed after playing that.The amount of ships
and flak and beams and general firepower on display made it feel like it was a fleet engagement of the highest order. Even when other campaigns claim to have big battles, I am usually let down. I didn't think
the engine was capable of this.
Great use of "Budget Meeting" from the King Arthur soundtrack. Might want to take Globus - Preliator out and replace it, since it's a little bit overused in the sense of being epic cliche music, but at least you didn't use Reqium for a dream. But otherwise great music overall.
I have high hopes for whatever new campaigns are released. I just hope that more of the FS style atmosphere is used and there is less focus on characters and more on the overall war.
Also I just realized I have 3 posts over 6 years. Is that a record or something?