First off, I have to say this campaign is without a doubt my favorite Freespace campaign of all time. The missions are epic feeling and well made, the story is absolutely masterful, and the atmosphere, I can practically swim in the stuff its so thick! Hell, the last mission is practically like guiding the SD Lucifer to Earth, the whole ultra-nationalistic themes in this campaign as well as political intrigue are the things I love most in a game. It also helps that you participate in some truly epic battles, which I don't think suffer from BoE syndrome one bit.
But... I feel as if I'm going crazy, so I have to ask here, did anyone else find this campaign UNGODLY HARD? I was playing on normal, for reference.
Firstly... The new ship designs, lovely, the capital ships are awe inspiring, powerful looking, and all over perfect. The fighters were nice too, and while they are some of the best maneuvering and slickest snub craft I've ever seen, the Terran scientist apparently didn't know about GUN PLACEMENT. The guns on these little wonders are absolutely horribly placed. I'm a close up fighter, I get behind my enemy, shoot the hell out of there behind, and fly off as they burst into flames. When I try this with almost any of the fighters in this campaign, I'm lucky to get a single avenger hitting the enemy out of my 5-8 guns! This also is pretty damn bad for bomb chasing, you can be blasting away at a bomb and all your shots will just go around it. When I got to the EAI missions, I relished getting back my dear old GTA fighters that had guns that were placed more then a football field away from the cockpit.
And Secondly... THE GOD DAMN ULYSSES!!! Seriously, this little bugger must be at least 95% of the independent's fighters, these things pour out in floods whenever you start a mission! I hate these buggers now, I hate them with a PASSION. Its like fighting masses of dragons, its just horrible! Whats even worse is that when you're chasing one of these SOBs, they've got the thinnest target profile you could ever think of. This, obviously, is absolutely horrible when considering the gun placement, these guys are absolutely horrible in escort and anti-bomber missions. It takes at least a good 30 seconds to shoot one of these bastards down if you don't get him by surprise, and if you turn around to intercept those Ursa's firing Tsunamis at your cruiser, the bastard will pump your rear full of rockets and lazers before you can even press Q! Also, the Trident is a poor excuse for a replacement for the Harpoon, this thing is horrible, I'm not even sure its any better than the interceptor. I could get a Ulysses in my sights, missile lock, 500m away, and I would use ALL 16 OF MY TRIDENTS, and he would laugh at me as he danced around these pathetic excuses for fighter killing missiles. This is, again, on normal!
And Thirdly, some of the missions seem just damn unplayable for me! Case in point, the mission where you attack Saturn's HQ and they've got 6 cruisers that have been converted into Artillery Beam Platforms. They're separated into groups of 3, the two separated by a few KMs. Each is guarded by 4 Ulysses (GOD DAMNIT), some watchdogs, and of course the various blobs they carry around. Now, I played this mission at least 10 times. And for the life of me, this mission is virtually IMPOSSIBLE. I took the fastest ship, took all the energy away from my guns and just shields and engines, went only for the beam cannons on the cruisers and I still JUST BARELY stopped them from shredding my destroyers with invincibility on. Now how are you suppose to do this when you've Ulysses on your tail pounding the hell out of you and half the Saturn navy throwing up AA at you? You can have your wingmates cover you for the first group, but they get tied up trying to shoot down those F-ing Ulysses with their terrible gun placement, and if you zoom off to the next one you get shot to hell by a whole wing of those SOBs. If you wait for anything- and I mean ANYTHING- in this mission, your cap ships are gone, no questions asked. The only way to disable the beam cannons in time to save both your destroyers is to focus on NOTHING BUT THAT, which will lead to some fine Ulysses in rectum action.
Same thing with the mission where the Empress blitzed Earth, it went fine at first, got the Orion down to 50% health, thought it was good. I needed to rearm soon, so I surveyed the situation. Well, we've lost a bomber and a fighter, but that ain't so bad. Whats this coming out of the fighter bay? THE MOTHER ****ING ULYSSES COMING TO RUIN MY DAY HOLY CRAP YES! Suddenly alpha wing becomes a bunch of hollow circles, Beta gets splashed because they've already been softened up by the previous Hercs, and I'm left staring at the 0 torpedoes in my inventory, the 4 Ulysses bearing down on my fat little bomber firing all kinds of terrible at me, and the 6 minute time limit which has been ticking away for a long time now. I tried this mission a lot, in fact, I tried -ALOT- of missions a lot, but I ended up having to cheat on so many of them because they just burned giant, gaping, holes in my patience. I really hate cheating, it breaks the atmosphere, but I just couldn't beat these missions on any difficulty, the odds are so damned stacked against you in some of these! Especially in escort missions where you start out with 6-8 fighters, and your wing is SWARMED with those sons a' *****es Ulysses, through attrition they'll splash your squadron and you'll be the only one defending your objective! Also, defending a lone destroyer by yourself from waves of Ulysses and Ursas and somehow having it survive being attacked by 5 pirate cruisers afterward? What the hell!?
But really, the balance still doesn't outweigh the supreme -EVERYTHING ELSE- in this campaign. Excellent FREDing, Awesome Story, And the BEST DAMN ATMOSPHERE I'VE EVER HAD IN A FREESPACE 2 CAMPAIGN. Seriously, the Ultra-Nationalism spin on the whole EAI was without a doubt way too awesome to handle. Death to the Traitors, executions of POWs, massacres of civilian convoys, this is gritty and something very few, if any Freespace campaigns do. It presents a realistic image where most have the goody good GTVA commanding you. And really, there's nothing quite like watching the GTD Terra charge into the mists of the Rebel fleet and smash them apart without mercy.
But I really must know, was the campaign hard for anyone else, or do I just suck some hard?
