'Budget Price' Review: Project Sylpheed (X360)

"Project Sylpheed is a space shooter/sim, and it surprised me"

I wasn't honestly expecting much from this game, and at first the controls felt awful and way too arcade-y for my tastes, but after couple of evenings, I really started to enjoy the game. Yes, it does get repetitive, as the only thing you really do is shoot down spacecraft of basically four variety: fighters, attackers (think of bombers), small spaceships and large spaceships, with a few special ones mixed in. However, it's no more repetitive than any average shooter, like quake or unreal tournament against AI opponents. If you're fine with battling against AI, then that's not a problem with this game.

The story is fairly short and simple, cliché but entertaining. You're playing as Katana, a cadet flying a new type of special fighter on a training mission, when some rebel forces attack, and the whole affair turns into a galaxy-wide war. I hated the last mission, but everything else until then is great fun.

The flying physics are semi-realistic. You can float around on inertia alone, but there are some special moves that break this rule, like a 180 degree sharp turn, which is pretty much the only way to avoid collission if you're heading towards a giant ship while on afterburners. You also slow down quickly after using afterburner, rather than retain the gained speed. There's also quick side-rolling to dodge fire or collissions. Fighters can't seem to collide in each other though, but rather go through each other. Such occasions are quite rare though.

The thing about the weaponry in this game is that it favors targeting multiple fighters at once, as well as very heavy weaponry that can take out huge battleships in couple of attack runs. It's more arcade than dogfight. I learned to adapt though, even though I'm more fan of space sims like Conflict: Freespace (on PC). Special maneuvers allow firing with multiple weapons at once, slow motion aiming and quick ramming attack. There's a good variety of weapons, but many of the new ones you gain are just improved versions of the old ones.

Missions consist of basically attacking, defending or escorting, but the difference is simply just where and when you apply your attacks. For most of the game you also have a wingman, and 2nd flight consisting of two fighters, which you can give a few different kinds of commands. Nothing genuinely effective though, as even such a simple command as 'defend that target' doesn't exist. The commands don't make much difference except if you send your buddies in the center of an enemy fleet. Then they can get shot down. Normally they all survive. The only thing that really sucks about missions is that they have a time limit. Even if you've just eradicated 99 out of 100 enemies, and the time runs out, it's game over. Very frustrating artificial difficulty factor until you've learned the controls well enough to not run into the limit so easily.

It took me about 4 or 5 evenings to finish the game, but I enjoyed playing it over for a second time, to collect the remaining weaponry. Achievements in this game are medals granted after missions if certain objectives were met. They're pretty easy to gain on the second playthrough at latest.

Music is decent, sometimes even great. Voice acting varies. Announcers in battles are good, but some plot characters sound shallow.

All in all, doesn't last for very long, but is a surprisingly fun space shooter/sim.

Scoring:

Visuals: 8/10
Audio: 8/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Lasting value: 7/10

Overall: 8/10