[Ryan]

I think its a pretty cool game. Why do you all seem to hate it?

[Davros]

we dont
but we expected a free form starlancer and we didnt get it

[blackhole]

I think they're all crazy nuts, because I worship that game. They of course don't seem to realise how totally awesome it is.

[Ryan]

I meet a person on FL multiplayer last night who said he used to be on HLP...

[blackhole]

I thought they detonated the global server?

[Talon 1024]

Not that I hate it...  It is just utterly boring and pointless compared to a game like Wing Commander.

[Polpolion]

I think its a pretty cool game. Why do you all seem to hate it?

Poor gameplay was probably the biggest individual thing, but that is dwarfed by the absolute mass of medium to small issues. I could go on about physics, AI, balancing and dozens of other things, but I won't because I already wrote like 7 pages of stuff today, and I don't want to quadruple that number.

[BlackDove]

Multiplayer blew.

[Mr. Vega]

Because some of us actually believed it'd be a masterpiece, and cause Mikhael was so vocal in denouncing it.

[Hellstryker]

The only problems i had with it was the poor sandbox mode, bad scale (fighter is 1/8th the size of a ship.. so it could technicly only hold one in its hanger while it actually held about 50..) and the physics

[Flipside]

It wasn't that it was a bad game, I still play on occasion, it's just that it wasn't nearly as good as it was made out to be. Still, it had some of the best 'Nebula' effects I've seen, even if they did break the laws of physics

[IceFire]

Fun game but less open than I was expecting it to be.  Great atmosphere actually...had lots of fun.  Then it was over.  Made a tour of the outer systems...blew away waves after wave of hostiles and then that was about it.

The mouse control was accessible but a joystick setup would have been better for me.  The graphics were pretty nice as I remember.

[CP5670]

I liked Freelancer. It had its shortcomings, like the gameplay and combat being too easy and the story falling away sharply towards the end of the game (culminating in a silly and abrupt ending), but it generally had a good atmosphere and interesting campaign missions otherwise. The graphics and audio were pretty good as well, with some especially nice music pieces. There wasn't much point in playing beyond the campaign though, as the randomly generated missions became very repetitive.

[phatosealpha]

Not much variety in weaponry either.  Pallette swapped guns and missile were about the limit of it.

Grinding for missions is much more interesting if there's a chance your upgrade won't be a green laser + 4 to replace your red laser + 3.

[Ashrak]

yeh the missions were rather boring, and didnt drive the story at ALL


on the other hand i liked the story that was there, the escape from liberty etc, running through blakc clouds of death ETC was fun as heck


the backstory was excellent imo, but the whole mission thing was lacking, it was pretty much made to stretch the game, and throw increasingly harder enemies at you

[haloboy100]

Ah Freelancer...good times

I absolutely loved the idea of exploring deep space. With the discovery mod the game becomes so much bigger. And I love exploring the systems. For some reason in discorvery the combat took a surprisingly long time before it actually became boring. As boring as it sounds to wage my single handed-war against the red Hessians, hunting them down in their home system and blowing all their fighters up...it just didn't get old untill a month ago when I finally stopped playing

I wish there was more to do then explore asteroid feilds and find neutron stars and stuff. That, and fix the incredibly dumb scale i always found annoying (it especially took the epic awesomeness of plunging your fighter into the atmosphere of a planet, and watching it burn up, only too see it's peices literally bounce off the planet's surface texture )

I'm really sad that freelancer didn't live up to it's ambitions, as it would of been such a hit if it did, that it might even devote some more interest into space sims 

[Nuke]

it was ok. but there coulda been more stuff to do after the game was over. simply adding another 10 levels of weapons and a few more ships woulda made the game last longer. i tried modding it but that was a pita. multiplayer needed a better tech progression as well. i once chased a guy through 10 systems to crack his hull. an easy kill, too easy. if you were playing on a server for a while and had the best ship and weapons, nothing was a challenge anymore. i just flew around killing everything in my sights.

[haloboy100]

Nothing like blowing up the galaxy with your nomad blasters and getting all the woman with a +15 staff of penetration

[karajorma]

I see Freelancer as something as a missed opportunity. It had some really great moments (Escape from Liberty and forming up with the Cruisers to respond to Willard's distress signal being two of my favourites) but it wasted them with the constant need to grind between the missions in order to buy better ships.

Had they simply doubled or tripled the number of set missions instead and cut down on the grinding the game would probably have a much better reputation.

[Jeff Vader]

That, and also if the story would have been concluded properly. From what I've understood, the publisher gave a strict deadline at some point and that caused some panic, apparently resulting in the story being cut somwhat. The ending was so weird and hasty. I also remember hearing that there was originally supposed to be a branching storyline. It was a bit sad to hear that it had been dropped off.