(this review was written by the time of the 1.1.4 open beta release)
i'll echo what everyone's so far has said on the presentation. superb, very nice, very cool. music choice is adequate enough, The Only One They Fear Is You was definitely unexpected but having an ear for metal it didnt really bother me. i wish it played in a different mission though. for a fourth campaign first publically released you nailed a lot of atmosphere
mission and, by consequence (and therefore spoiler'd), story designs:
ill get what annoys me out of the way first; you have either misintepreted the purpose of the kayser as an endgame fighter shredder that delivers high damage per guns, enough to kill things short of a cruiser in a single burst, or you completely forgot and/or botched the balancing of your civilian ships. the claymore is beyond disappointing as the kayser upgrade when the only thing it inherited is the energy drain. it's essentially the subach due to high ROF but none of the early game advantages the subach comes with it. even then, the civilian fighters are unnecessarily tough, and strangely in use by the enemy GTVA faction? let me chew through civvies with my kayser upgrade or dont call it a kayser upgrade at all
now that that is out of the way, i actually liked the missions. ive always been an easy player on M+KB but ive started leaning to medium. i like the frantic dogfights and they're easy to get into a rhythm. i like that there's not set-in-stone mission failures i can get away with such as the radio station with the three transmitter things. they're difficult, but doable imo, with the only major danger being what's shooting at the player. we've already discussed what i'd appreciate in our discord DMs and im sure others would have a better opinion as to what needs balancing or changing.
characters and story writing/plot...yeah ill just say it, alpha wing is forgettable, except for dice, who has too much dialogue of him just being the loose cannon.
I do like however the attempt at creating a cast, although they're just as forgettable and dull, but the attempt is there at giving them names and personalities. I also like that vasudans have a stronger presence than just passively sitting on their ass while the monkey terrans go off killing each other. very cool.
that's all i have to talk about reunion, really. i hope it doesnt fall into the trap of yet another freespace campaign being left unfinished, i think it was fun and worth returning to the community for, it's rough around the edges but it has soul into it. and good on you for not taking the inferno or blue planet route of an activated sol gate incident.
for what it's worth, this campaign has my (un)official stamp of KinoTM. congrats, first of 2021.
Thank you for the feedback, glad to hear you enjoyed the campaign!
Looks like I'm going to have to buff the Claymore, been also thinking about introducing a civilian HL-7 variant in the next update.
Also, civilian fighters are not in service by the rogue GTVA element, they're supposed to be two different factions fighting on the same side, bundled together for operations, but maybe I'll need to clarify that in the dialogue

Also fixed the "second lieutenant" mishap in the final mission, thanks for that too
