[Mars]

I love Freespace 2, I really do. I was hooked from the moment I played the FS2 Demo; nay, from when I played the FS1 demo. This game has been more a part of my life than I anticipated any game ever being, and I don't regret it.

That said, there are some things about the second game that I really, really hate ten years on.


• Nebula missions:
       In the main campaign, these make up just over a third of the total missions in the game, yet somehow every single time I play through the campaign,  they seem to account for most of them. I actually enjoy nebula missions to a certain extent; Finding Sanctuary is a fine mission, one of the finest in a fine campaign. Often in Freespace 2 however, it feels like an excuse for the poor models of the past to remain under wraps - would anyone have known what a Hecate class destroyer looked like if it hadn't been for third party missions¹? There are significant tactical differences between a 'space' and 'nebula' mission, which can be quite entertaining; but often, nebula missions in the campagin are exactly the same as standard missions, without the ability to see ****.
• The Vasudan missions:
       Vasudans are awesome. They're the semi-unknowable enemies from the first campaign, they have vastly different technology, and different fighters - from the swarms of Anubis craft they were able to field, to the Seth class fighters that could nearly take on the player one on one! Then there's Freespace 2. Although some of the best and most properly challenging missions take place in the Vasudan Acts (Bearbaiting, The Fog of War) the majority of them showcase the failure of the Vasudan species, especially for anyone who plays Hard or Insane. Vasudan craft are incapable of taking any AAA fire whatsoever, without either spontaneously exploding (Serapis) or sustaining critical subsystem damage (Seth) the only fighter the Vasudans use that doesn't suffer from this is the Tauret, which has the unique problem of being able to run out of primary energy without destroying a single bomber (at 80% accuracy, Prometheus S equipped). I could live with Vasudan fighters, I really could, if the missions were designed around those failures.
• If It Was Supposed to be Awesome, the Mission Wasn't Debugged:
       A Game of Tag is mostly a dialogue mission (which is fine,) it does have the mildly entertaining addition of TAG missiles as well, and you get to fly the venerable Ulysses class fighter, a favorite from my childhood (if only they'd let you fly a Valkyrie), the problem I've had since I had a i486 COMPAQ - the dialogue gets out of order as soon as the lone Kappa fighter arrives.
  
        It's much worse in Their Finest Hour; when I first played it at the ripe age of . . . (eleven?) I actually had no idea what the plot line was supposed to be until the second time I played through. First Command demands ~"Let the warships do their job" which (on Insane) results in their destruction (as they are not properly weapon freed), and then there is the whole Collossus debacle, which one must be paying attention to in order for it to make the slightest sense.
  


Take this not as an insult to FS2, but rather the complaints of someone who has been in a long marriage.
 

^{1: A Hecate is visible outside the nebula in Bearbaiting, it's just that no one ever looks at it in what is probably the most intense mission of the entire campaign}

[Aardwolf]

What? There was no Hecate in Their Finest Hour... there was a Hecate in Bearbaiting (the Phoenicia), and it appeared in several cbanims, though...

[Dragon]

Well, when I was little, I did pepper the Aquitaine with guns, because I thought I was going for the Moloch. I've realized what I was shooting at when I targeted the thing. It looked very weird to me back then (and I was used to FS1-style boxy shapes) and the nebula only made it worse.

[Mars]

What? There was no Hecate in Their Finest Hour... there was a Hecate in Bearbaiting (the Phoenicia), and it appeared in several cbanims, though...

Totally right, I meant Bearbaiting. Corrected in original post

EDIT:

Well, when I was little, I did pepper the Aquitaine with guns, because I thought I was going for the Moloch. I've realized what I was shooting at when I targeted the thing. It looked very weird to me back then (and I was used to FS1-style boxy shapes) and the nebula only made it worse.

Kind of what I meant. The central point was that, although the nebula was excellent at adding a layer of tactical soup on everything, it was overdone, to the point where many other tactical features of FS2 (including several ship classes) were easy to overlook.

[jr2]

Yeah, it seemed weird to have SOOO much nebula... I mean, I like it, it's pretty, BUT SO WERE THE original space missions... you kinda missed them after a while, they were rather scarce.    Homesick for space, who woulda thought. 

[Goober5000]

Y'all are looking at this through jade-colored glasses.  The Nebula was a celebrated feature of the original game; it was a cool game mechanic that also had an effective story reason for existing.  Hiding the low-poly models had nothing to do with it.  In fact, by the standards of the day, the models were particularly well-made.  Both FS1 and FS2 were commended for their good graphics when they were released.

[Droid803]

Honestly, I disagree with all points the OP makes except for the Vasudans sucking.
Zods suck.

The nebula works very well as an "alien" environment, with the sensors blindness and everything.

A Game of TAG is not. Ulysses is ****, can't hit taurvis with both gun banks if you're not "aligned" right rotation wise. Forced Prom-R's are ****. TAG-As are useless **** made especially useless being shot from missile points super far apart. The Lucidity is made of wet toilet paper. Friendly ULTRA-AAA fire sucks and kills me more often than the Shivans. All that **** happens after several minutes of dialogue. Definition of **** mission with artificial difficulty. I'm not fighting the Shivans, I'm fighting the goddamn game mechanics. **** sucks.

[Quanto]

I got to agree with the OP here, the Nebula sucked. I hate flying around in soup, and I totally felt homesick for Space.

[NGTM-1R]

Hiding the low-poly models had nothing to do with it.

He didn't say low-poly, he said poor. Bad art design and bad game design are both highly sustainable charges about the Hectate. Sticking them in the Nebula so you couldn't see enough of the hull to fly around it well merely aggravates the problem.

[Ghostavo]

The nebula made the shivans more imposing. Loved every second of it, especially missions like As Lightning Falls and Mystery of the Trinity.

[Klaustrophobia]

I'm not much of a fan of the nebula.  I like seeing things.  Story reasons for it were fine though.  I also hated the TAG mission.  You can do way more damage with an ordinary loadout than when you manage to tag something.  I used to love the Uly and fly it every chance I got, but I eventually grew out of it.  When I was younger and played FS1 it was my fighter of choice because of its maneuverability.  Now super-maneuverable fighters irritate the hell out of me because they're so damn twitchy.  I don't know if I was better at flying them before, or if I just didn't notice.  When I fly the Seraphis I have to put sensitivity almost all the way down to hit anything.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Only thing I agree with from the first post is the game of tag. That was a dumb mission which I didn't much care for. Shoot guys so someone else can kill them, right. How is this fun for me?

The nebula was great. I first got interested in FS2 by flying around the nebula blasting away at Manticores or some such in the demo. The one mission with the EM interference is kind of annoying, but . . . . . at the time it gave the proper atmosphere, that being stuck in the middle of no where with no support, no radar, no nothing.

And I love playing as the Vasudans. I don't care about ship stats. They look cool. And their capital ships are the best among the allies. Sobek's sweeet.

[Cyborg17]

Even if you don't like Vasudan fighters, You gotta love their bombers.  Next time you play Bearbaiting, think about how fast you're going in that Sekhmet carrying Helios bombs.

Max speeds:
Ursa - 45
Boanerges - 55
Sekhmet - 60

And please tell me we have some Seth fans somewhere.  That's a fun ship to fly, especially if you use primaries over secondaries.

But yeah, I really dislike Nebulas.  I don't like the way they look.  They feel very artificial to me.

But for dialogue stuff, I usually just press F4 if I miss something.

[Mars]

Even if you don't like Vasudan fighters, You gotta love their bombers.  Next time you play Bearbaiting, think about how fast you're going in that Sekhmet carrying Helios bombs.

Max speeds:
Ursa - 45
Boanerges - 55
Sekhmet - 60

And please tell me we have some Seth fans somewhere.  That's a fun ship to fly, especially if you use primaries over secondaries.

But yeah, I really dislike Nebulas.  I don't like the way they look.  They feel very artificial to me.

But for dialogue stuff, I usually just press F4 if I miss something.

My goal is to clarify rather than argue.

Didn't say a thing about Zod bombers, Bearbaiting is one of the best missions in the game.

What I don't like about the Seth is thus: it's great until it takes AAA, which always, always seems to destroy the sensor subsystem in the nose.

[Commander Zane]

Even if you don't like Vasudan fighters, You gotta love their bombers.  Next time you play Bearbaiting, think about how fast you're going in that Sekhmet carrying Helios bombs.

You mean Bakha.

[Qent]

Even if you don't like Vasudan fighters, You gotta love their bombers.  Next time you play Bearbaiting, think about how fast you're going in that Sekhmet carrying Helios bombs.

You mean Bakha.

... which is meh by comparison.

[Cyborg17]

You mean Bakha.

... which is meh by comparison.

Sad day.....

[Mars]

I'd have taken an Artemis, but they can't carry Helios torpedoes. So in actuality, the Bakha is the second best bomber for that mission.

I was amused at how effectively a Boaner does the job in AoA however.

[Cyborg17]

I think it was the King's Gambit, but I never really liked the Artemis.  Not that it's flimsy, but it just doesn't feel as solid as the heavier bombers.  It could be that I'm just bad at bombing runs.

EDIT: Just looked up the hitpoints, and its shields are fine at 700, but it's hull is at 275.

EDIT2:  I never noticed until now, but the Zeus has 200 hitpoints and 450 shield points...

[MatthTheGeek]

The Zeus is flying joke. It's larger, slower, less agile and less resistant than an Herc.

The Artemis is good at what it's supposed to be : a cheap, dispensable Cyclops delivery system. The survival of the pilot and the craft is secondary to the successful delivery of the warheads. Something the Zeus is far too vulnerable to accomplish.