[Mars]

I'm assuming your question includes the FSport as FS1... a distinction not addressed in your question.

Freespace 2 combat is kinda boring... you can basically sit there and lob Trebuchets at everything... honestly I like the gameplay of FS1 more than that of FS2... and now that people mention it, the storyline was better as well... the only place I think it falls behind is in voice acting.

[Snail]

Actually, I was talking about the authentic FS1, in which the nebulae were just streaks, which made space seem more mysterious than FS2's OMG PUT SPACE CLOUDS EVERYWHERE OMG OMG OMG!!!

[jr2]

the only place I think it falls behind is in voice acting.

'xcept for Command.  FS2 Command is e)
a) Loudmouth
b) Know it all
c) Pompous
d) Doesn't have a clue
e) All of the above

[miskat]

Possible spoilers below, but I think most people know what happens anyway... and I'm going to be vague.  =P





Admittedly, I haven't played FS2 yet, but after beating the FS1 conversion... it's going to be tough to find a game that had atmosphere that excited me like FS1s did.

The way the game starts off fealing like you're doing things that are perfectly normal, and then you get the Shivans.  Terrifying, unstoppable, unbeatable.
 
And you kill one.  And it's thrilling.  (At leat, the first time I killed one without having to use the reticle... just spamming Fury's, I was elated.)

And things seem to pick up... at first.  And then the game spirals downard, all hell breaking loose around the Lucifer and HoL.  The way the events play out, and the briefing voices, really make you think, "Oh ****... We're doomed."  It really get's desperate.  Especially as the missions get harder and more hectic.

Couple that with a joystick, and the game is one of the most immersive I have ever played, which is saying something since my imagination never lends itself to immersion.  =/  I'll be amazed if FS2 even comes close, when I get around to playing it.

[m]

FS1 was better; it had more a sense of vulnerability, etc.  IOW, what everyone else said.

ALSO:
-FS1 had much better cutscenes; esp. the first one.  The more human faces shown, the better.
-FS2 seemed (to me) to be just a rerun of FS1.  "Hey, there's bad guys!  Crush them!  O-NO-ITS-THE-SHIVANS-AND-THEY'RE-KILLING-US-RUN!  Augh, we lost a system!  But they're gone.  Goody."
-FS1 had a much better ending.  You lose contact with your home planet, and then...
-FS2 (like others have said) is basically just blowing up shipaftershipaftership in a scary(?) nebula/storm.  FS1 actually had you doing missions like capturing shivan technology, protecting cap ships in an asteroid field against superior ships, etc.  In FS2 it's just "hold off the fighters until our cap ships get there and take over with their lightsabers."
-In FS2 Command was unrealistically cocky.  Anybody with a brain could see that the Colossus was not "superior" to the Sathanas.  The Sathanas just happened to be half dead.  Heck, they TOLD you to half kill it.

Also, the Shivans being invisible at first was just... freaky.

-m

[Snail]

I felt that some of the FS2 nebulae missions were monotonous, which is why I personally do not like nebula missions. I prefer the mysterious black void of [sub?]space...

Nebulae is more like flying through clouds. It would've been cool if you had to dodge lightning too....

[jr2]

Subspace is blue, or sometimes red (I think), note the mission where you take down the Lucy.

[Snail]

Red subspace was never canon, it was added by fans very early on to make Subspace Shivan-ish.

[Dark Hunter]

Said fans probably got the idea from the FSRefBible, which reveals that Shivans originally were going to have red subspce vortices.

[Fergus]

I just have more fun playing FS2

[Polpolion]

-In FS2 Command was unrealistically cocky.  Anybody with a brain could see that the Colossus was not "superior" to the Sathanas.

 

Heck, they TOLD you to half kill it.

:


Maybe thats why they told you to half kill it.

[CP5670]

Freespace 2 combat is kinda boring... you can basically sit there and lob Trebuchets at everything... honestly I like the gameplay of FS1 more than that of FS2...

Yes, there is something to be said for this. The missiles were not nearly as powerful or accurate in FS1 and you mainly had to rely on primary weapons, so battles between fighters lasted a lot longer. On the other hand, anything involving larger ships was better in FS2 due to the addition of flak and anti-fighter beams.

Although I almost never use trebuchets; they take forever to reach their targets. In most situations, you can rack up kills much faster using tempests.

-FS1 had much better cutscenes; esp. the first one.  The more human faces shown, the better.

Well, that mainly applies to the intro. I think the Bosch cutscenes were much better than the Ancient ones. Actually, I was pretty confused by the Ancient ones the first time I played through FS1 and only figured out what they were about later on. Even now, I don't think they add a whole lot to the game. Several cutscenes in the reference bible that were dropped from the final game look like they would been much better.

[Mongoose]

I played FS1 for a few years before I ever so much as touched a FS2 disk, but I'll never for the life of me understand for an instant how anyone can call it better than the sequel.  FS2 took everything that FS1 did right and improved upon it exponentially.  The combat was so much more intense and fast-paced; though it's been said so many times before, capital ships went from being the equivalent of trash barges to being something to be feared and avoided at all costs.  Oh, and missiles started to do something other than, you know, miss.  The storyline was so much more involved and continuous; as much as I loved FS1, there was a whole stretch in the middle of the game where you were flying pretty much nothing but random sorties that didn't contribute at all to the overlying plot.  FS2 had no such down-time; as soon as you finished off one angle of the story, it was right on to the next.  The nebula environment was incredible to fly in; I was never so much on-edge in either game than when I was flying a patrol out into that near-impenetrable fog, straining my eyes for any sign of hostiles.  As for FS1's so-called "superior atmosphere," maybe I'm the exception, but I just didn't feel it all that much.  Oh, it had plenty of amazing moments, but FS2 was the game that really sustained the dramatic tension throughout the entire campaign.

So yeah, it's no toss-up for me; FS2 earned those Game of the Year awards and amazingly high ratings.  Beam-free-all and light it up, baby. 8)

[Snail]

I guess FS1 was more spooky, but FS2 had a more popular epic (as DH said) atmosphere.

A good example is the music. Compare the music such as Spook, Haunted or Monolith to Joshua, Leviticus and Revelation.

[Sparky]

I liked taking a Valk and hiding in a Demon class destroyer... Prometheus cannons and Avengers all day long. Massive points on multiplayer... think that's how I got Capitan (highest i got during fs1 multi).

FS2 was great during PXO, I played a lot online and loved using the lag to my advantage on Rebel Intercept. shooting like 4 helios torpedoes at once. it's a toss up for me

[Mars]

The combat was so much more intense and fast-paced;

In fighter to fighter combat, I find honestly the complete opposite. In Freespace 1 I get a sense of speed,

In Freespace 2 it feels like a constant slug match, I often feel like I'm playing underwater

[jr2]

I think that depends on your combat style, I dunno.

[S-99]

Fs1 ships were slower on average. A whole bunch of terran fighters were 65ms, with the valkyrie as the exception of the fastest, and the hercules bombers slower than average space superiority fighters. Now while the fs2 fighters were a lot more powerful (more gunbanks and more missile space), and a lot faster, usually the fighters in fs2 were 65-70ms with the exception of the horus and the perseus as the fastest and the hercules mark2 and the bombers slower than the average space superiority fighters.

While the fighters in fs2 were faster they had good afterburners to get by on, until you play with the slower fighters in fs1 that have afterburners that made you think the developers were on crack to give you so much afterburner reserve.

I really like fs2 ships much better than fs1's. Of course fs1 had me at athena and apollo. The only ships i hate to death in fs2 is the artemis variants(gtva should have stuck with an upgraded athena on that one).

[jr2]

Heh, for max speed I love the BtRL ships... the AB on them sucks, though (only +40 speed )

[wtf_cl0vvn]

They both have a distinctly "different" atmosphere. FreeSpace 1 seemed a lot more hopeless and tragic/epic...the music helped that idea. It was like the GTA and PVN, already bleeding to death from the 14 year war, were going to die no matter what, and they knew it. The opening cutscene kind of pushes that across, as does the loss of the Galatea, and the loss of Vasuda Prime, and the story of the ancients paralleling yours. Which makes the end that much better.

FreeSpace 2 was a lot more desperate and heroic/epic, it seemed...the NTF civil war is pretty much at its apex, 18 months in, during FS2 (i guess the high water mark for the NTF is at the Epsilon Pegasi campaign), as opposed to stalemated 14 years later. The sudden appearance of the Shivans, the Colossus and the Sathanas, the blockades, the sacrifice of the Colossus, the HUGE ups and HUGE downs...

idk. i like both. The one thing i did wish that FS1 had that FS2 had is definite squadrons...just a small thing.