Viner Attend: Welcome to the Descent Freespace Review Thread, since you're here, your interest must speak highly of you already. Post your responses well, this is a fine thread.
Descent Freespace: The Great War= Story
This game while a space sim, it does have a pretty good story to go with it. You are a pilot in the Galactic Terran Alliance, fighting against an enemy known as the Vasudan during a 14 year long galactic war. Eventually though through the missions, you encounter a hostile alien civilization known as the Shivans which are far greater than both factions.
This then prompts a ceasefire between Terran and Vasudan, forming an alliance against the Shivans. Even still however with the alliance, there are other splintered groups most notably the Vasudan Hammer of Light, that worship the Shivan along with some rogue Terran at a few points.
Fairly straightforward story wise, fighting a galactic threat that intends on destroying everything. While not the most original idea, the Shivan force isn't one to be messed with as its a pretty big deal which is soon found out later, being able to wipe out life on entire planets, destroy whole fleets both GTA and Vasudan, you can feel the threat as the Shivans just make their way across space and stopping them is critical.
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Descent Freespace: The Great War= Mission details
The details for each mission briefing is actually pretty thorough, you get your objectives and sometimes secondary objectives, there's even some bonus stuff to do. Even if you do fail a primary objective, it doesn't mean mission fail at some points, the future missions will take a slight different turn depending on what objectives you complete/fail.
This is particularly interesting, because you won't know what to really expect for the next mission if you fail an objective or don't do a bonus mission. After a mission, there are also sometimes recommendations that give hints on what you can do, which you can then replay the mission should you want to fully complete everything.
There are also medals/ranks that you can get, however these depend on how many kills you get, or what objectives you complete and there are quite a few medals to get.
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Descent Freespace: The Great War= AI
The AI in this game is rather....great really, you have wingmen/women that can take a number of orders and do them well, they also do great on their own with engaging the enemy. Although if you wanna manage it, there is also a command window you can open up to issue orders to individual pilots, wings or all fighters.
The enemy AI is rather the same, they'll be on your tail trying to shoot you down, be pulling maneuvers to try and escape your fire, although sometimes they do fly straight which allows for an easy kill.
So all in all, the AI is pretty good, there ain't no dummies here. Although a few times, your wingmates will crash into one another but....even so, still good AI when fighting and the like.
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Descent Freespace: The Great War= Ships/Tech
This is probably my favorite part, there are a ton of ships both PC and NPC ranging from fighter craft to capital ships to installations, all unique in design, aswell as a variety of tech to play around with. Naturally of course, being a fighter sim, there is a great deal of different customization you can do to ships.
You can only outfit your ships weaponry, but there are many different types of weapons/missiles and bombs to choose from. You can also outfit your wingmen/women with different weaponry/ships and the like.
You want a fighter, bomber, interceptor combo? Go for it, you want an all bomber wing? Go for it, want an all fighter or interceptor wing? Go for it.
Each ship has their own little quirks, advantages and disadvantages, some have great versatility in what they can carry, making it all the more fun to tinker with them.
Some missions however do require you to be stuck in a specific fighter for a specific mission, but those aren't as numerous as the others.
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Descent Freespace: The Great War= Silent Threat Expansion
Yep there is an expansion for this game called Silent Threat, which takes place right after the main storyline. Here you are piloting with the Galactic Terran Intelligence(GTI) doing covert ops, to make sure that the GTA and Vasudan stays together...however soon enough there then becomes a conspiracy within the GTI and then it all goes downhill from there.
In the expansion, you have a few more ships and newer tech that isn't found in the main campaign. You also are able to do the same thing like in the main campaign, able to outfit your fighters with different ships and weaponry.
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This really is a diamond from the 90s that sadly seems to have been overlooked by a lot of people, even moreso there's only been a sequel to this great space sim. Sad really, because it could have become a great franchise or at least trilogy. But due to poor sales for the sequel(shocking really) guess the story will be forgiven a mystery as to what happens after.
The graphics are obviously dated, but not as much as you would think. It's still visual appealing in my opinion, ship designs are still great, the effects are still nice, it really has aged well.
Anyway enjoy the read folks, if interested the game and its sequel are both on Steam and Gog.com if anyone becomes interested in playing it!
For Steam though, you gonna need to download Nglide seeing as the game is rather old, but its free and quick install.
You can play either with mouse/keyboard or joystick.
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