Hi there,
just registered to sing some praises, and since I found this nice thread, I thought might just as well write here
10/10 effort
That's 100% correct. I bought FS2 only recently from gog, finished it on 'hard', can't even remember when... I mean the game is fantastic. What really hit me was how awesome a sim+shooter+strategy (okay, I might stretch it a little on the last part) game can be WITHOUT such a thing as a "map" or "level design". Sure, the missions are designed and constructed, but they all take place in a, well, free space. And yet, the replay value is still huge.
I've finished the main campaign and thought - that's it? So here I am. The BP seems harder, so the 10-minute missions often stretch to multiple trial-and-error attempts. I am only halfway (I think) through AoA, but the stuff is so well polished that I know I'll play it till the end.
Then there's the effort to fix the mod. I couldn't run the BP release executable. The DEBUG mode worked, however - strange. Lazy as I am, I don't mind playing DEBUG, but having to click through several warnings on each mission load was a little too much. I am sure I saw a thread about it somewhere. Well, nightly build 9677 to the rescue. All is fine in full detail and full effects.
11/10 ideas
Nothing to add here... a standalone campaign is what a lot of us casual FS players are looking for. Not the set of a few single missions.
Love the new ships, love the beautiful backdrops. Love seeing the original FS2 campaign continued.
9/10 execution
Nothing's perfect (un?)fortunately. What got me a little irritated were the cutscenes. Not the content or the visuals, mind you. These are very well done, voiced, scored and whatnot. What I mean are two cases that got me a little off.
- First one, the
Frankenstein's Monsters mission. This one really was a challenge initially. The "replay value" has it's limits, too
. Therefore, having to watch (click through?) the opening cutscene every time got a little tiresome after a while.
- Second one - same mission. After finally beating the mission the
Temeraire is supposed to jump in and mop up. Well, it kinda did... except it was invisible during the whole cutscene. That wouldn't be a problem, the Shivan ship exploded still, the cutscene played nicely till the end, although without showing the arrived ships. And then what? Ooh, the final objective - "Enter the
Temeraire fighter bay". Now this is going to be a little tricky, isn't it? I want to kill myself!
Except that I can't! To add insult to injury, no doubt
. I've read that I am rendered invincible as soon as
Temeraire enters the scene. Restart.
The next time everything went OK, phew!
The above rants are so minor, that I am not even sure they count. This mod is really great and - what I think is as important - still alive. Seeing the forum threads alive and the nightly build releases thread updated every month is what actually kept me from ditching BP after initial crashes of the non-DEBUG version.
So, cheers to the team, big thank-you and of course - please keep up the great work.
