It's like I can't even disagree more with Vidmaster and SF-Junky.
'Standard combat missions', we've had those. We've had like a hunderd of those now. They've become boring, dull. Saying that Act 3 is lesser because it lacks 'standard' missions is insanity.
It reminds me of this one comment I read on a review of Sol Exodus.
To be fair, this is precisely why the Space Sim genre has died off. I’m sure I’m not the first one to say or think this, but when you’re strapped into a space fighter/bomber, your options for interacting with the game world are very limited. You’re either on a seek and destroy mission, a scan suspicious cargo / it’s a trap / now you can seek and destroy mission, or a babysitting mission.
This part of that comment stuck with me. Especially since I read it shortly after Axem released JAD 2.21. Who's very existence proves this guy wrong. And now here we have Act 3 of WiH that again proves this person
wrong. The space sim genre is innovating full speed in its mission design.
Act 3 has you infiltrate a convoy, rigging it to blow. Making it all go down in an incredible blaze of fire. And it gives you multiple ways to go about it.
Then you stealth your way into an enemy staging ground and have to carefully monitor the communications to correctly identify and then eliminate a high ranking offical. But you can also hack large defensive beam cannons to just blow the **** out of the Elder.
After that you have to prevent a large asteroid habitat from being warped into Earth's orbit by either flying your capital ship into the asteroid and blowing it the **** up. Or securing the area in a sweet capital ship battle and sending in marines to take over the command center.
Holy **** are you still with me? These three missions alone give the player more options and innovation than the whole of Act 1 and 2 combined. And I haven't even mentioned the Dreamscape hub yet!
But it doesn't even stop there, no it just
gets even better. Holy ****s to the wall, what is this madness.
The next three missions are
unbelievable in their FREDing. Axem and Battuta are like the modern day Muramasa and Masamune (if you don't know who those two are, look it up you uncultured swine), crafting masterwork after masterwork.
Mission 21 has you affect a BoE like no one has ever done before. You aren't doing 'standard' **** like disarming beam turrets and intercepting bombers. We've all done those a hunderd ****ing times already. (All those missions didn't suddenly vanish over night, you can play them any time of the day if you feel like playing 'a standard combat mission'.) No instead, you hit tactical important targets that swing the balance of the capital ship battle in your favor. All the while you gather 'resources' for the final killing blow against the enemy Flagship.
The sheer FREDing scope of this mission is unrivaled and the execution of it is
excellent. You can approach this mission succesfully in so many ways its staggering.
You can even choose to never leave stealth yourself and just direct the battle to a good conclusion from the sidelines. ****ing glorious.
Then mission 22 is
Tower defense in Freespace Mother****er. Holy **** mang, this is just too stronk. Axem has done ****
Nobody has ever done before. He created a complete and working interface to deploy your tankturrets and it all
works. Pushing the Freespace open engine beyond its limits!
And then mission 23 is just... mind blowing. It lasts a good 40 minutes but unlike the disaster of a last mission that WCS had, this was nothing short of an amazing trip. I was flabbergasted after playing through this the first time. It intrigued and creeped me out at the same time. Today I played it again to check something that changed during the beta and release and found myself looking at the ingame clock going "what the hell, im 30 minutes in already? It felt like 5". That mission just graps you and doesn't let go until the debriefing. The FREDing, the sound and music usage, the excellent vocals and writing is just unmatched by
Anything ever released in the Freespace community. Hands down.
I was one of the bigger critics of Acts 1 and 2. I wasn't very fond of how 'standard' the gameplay was in some places and how often you were railroaded to a 'failure' of a mission. Act 3 has none of this and is all the better for it.
Is it flawless?
Nothing ever is.
Act 3 definitely has some issues with data overflow and indeed, the critism that it introduces a new gameplay element each mission without letting the player ease into them is very valid (And the BP team is not ignorant of this at all). But all of this only really means that you probably have to redo the missions a couple of times before you figure out how to approach it. (It requires a certain amount of concentration and intelligent thinking)
You need to be in a reading mood for BP.
tl;dr: You are entitled to your opinion, but I think your opinion is just plain
wrong.
Act 3 easily exceeds Act 1 and 2. It's a bloody masterpiece.