'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

'Budget price' review: Star Wolves (PC)

I've been doing a lot of bargain bin scavenging lately, and have been purchasing games that look interesting, but have not heard of before. Purchasing games developed by independent small studios has taught me that sometimes you can find awesome games that rival even the latest of popular releases in depth or innovation. Star Wolves is one such title. I had not heard of it before, but picked it up from a bargain bin, and managed to have a good time with it for a good couple of weeks.

If I'm not mistaken, the developer is from Russia, which wouldn't be surprising, since some other good Russian sci-fi titles have been released in recent times as well. Space Rangers 2, to name one. Star Wolves is not a perfect game, but for its price it's excellent. Now to the actual review.

Star Wolves
The game itself can be classified as a real-time strategy game (or RTS), but it has much bigger emphasis on tactics than your average title. However, it's hard to put the game under just one genre, because it also has elements of roleplaying games and adventure in it.

If you haven't guessed from the name of the game, everything takes place in space. The player commands a large mercenary spaceship called Star Wolf, and up to six fighters that can be deployed or docked at the Star Wolf (usually referred to as 'Mothership').

"War in space. Are you ready to pay its real price?"
Star Wolves takes place somewhere couple of centuries in feature (I forgot the actual year, but I think it was 23rd century). Mankind has colonized many star systems, and everything is governed by an Emperor. In turn, everything in space belongs to three corporations, each with their own agenda. For example, one of the corporations (The Triad) is basically mafia. The whole concept of mankind separated in such simple factions is a bit silly, but it provides a good base for conspiracies and alliances. At the beginning of the game, there are two additional hostile factions that are mostly at war with the corporations. Pirates, and Berserks. Berserk's are basically the same as Cylons in Battlestar Galactica. Artificial Intelligence, created by humans, gone rogue. The latter parts of the story introduce additional enemies, but I don't want to spoil anything.

The player's story starts at the newly-established mercenary unit Star Wolves. There's no deep history preceding the beginning. All you really need to know is that the main character (referred to as 'Hero'), and his good friend Ace are the founders of the Star Wolves, and currently looking for jobs to take on. The game progresses mission by mission, so there's no free flying from system to system. It feels restrictive at first, but most missions provide alternate paths and bonus objectives, so you'll always feel like you're playing at a brand new sandbox. There's normally 1-3 missions to choose from. Sometimes you can only choose to accept one, and it has a slight impact on the progress of the story. For example, you may choose to assist the mafia or to defend another corporation from the mafia's attacks. Everyone wants to hire the Star Wolves at some point though.

Along the journey you'll meet several characters that you can choose to recruit in your team. Some join automatically. Up to six characters can join, so opting to not recruit a character can allow another character to join later on, that you otherwise wouldn't be able to recruit. This provides a little replayability, as you can form a slightly different team each time.

Birds
While on a mission, every character can pilot a fighter. Each fighter has a certain amount of armor and shield capacity. Naturally, when taking damage, shields are depleted first, then armor. Once armor hits zero, the fighter is destroyed. If a fighter from the player's team is downed by enemy fire, the character doesn't die. Instead they float in the space in an escape pod, and can be picked up by the Mothership and be deployed with another fighter (provided that you have spare ones). Losing a fighter is not a big deal in the early stages of the game, but later on ships become special, and it's extremely hard to get good ships sometimes, because of their price and availability on the market. The Mothership on the other hand is vital. Its destruction means 'Game Over', and can happen fairly easily too. Even with additional equipment, the shields and armor are limited, so it's a good idea to keep the Mothership away from large battles, and only bring it in to assist in decisive attacks.

Weapons are divided in four types. Small guns (basically rapid-firing), Large Guns (Lasers, Plasma, Heavy cannons, etc), Missiles (guided) and Rockets (dumbfire). Each fighter can house a number of weapons, but only either small guns or large guns. Each character has a weapon speciality, which often dictates the choice of ship and weaponry, but with good tactics it is possible to neglect the speciality in favor of having more of a certain weapon type.

Fighters and Mothership can also have additional modules on them, with various effects, such as shield boosters, anti-missile systems, emergency and active repair systems, etc. Some roles in battle require certain systems to be fitted on a fighter in order to be performed.

Wings
Battles in Star Wolves can be extremely hard at times. How well your characters perform in battle largely depends on their fighter configuration and the correct usage of special skills. Each character has a set of special skills that can be enabled for a set amount of time, for certain number of times during each mission. It is extremely important to not waste skills when not necessary, because they often win battles. Most skills either temporarily boost the fighter's capabilities (ie. higher accuracy, faster fire rate, more damage..) or mess with the systems of either friendly or enemy fighters (shield restoration or depletion, for example). Some skills almost completely nullify damage for a period of time, or completely disable an enemy fighter for a short moment.

In addition to skills, the characters can form teams, also referred to as wings. Being a leader of a wing, or a wingman can increase the wing's performance if the characters have learned proper skills. For instance, it is a good idea to have an anti-missile specialist in a wing. Some tasks, like anti-missile defense and repair on-the-fly prevent a fighter from firing weapons at the same time though, but are necessary to survive under special conditions.

All characters have a traditional skill tree, from which they can learn skills after they've gained enough experience in battles. Some characters have multiple roles available, so specializing can be most effective.

The loot
After a succesful mission, the team receives a reward, and can sell or keep the leftovers from enemy ships. Selling the loot is usually much more profitable than the mission reward itself. You can also purchase new fighters and equipment between missions. It is a good idea to keep the fighters up-to-date, but it's just as important to still rely on the old ones if needed. Sometimes a battle goes horribly wrong, and the only thing you have left is that old fighter you used early in the game, and that fighter can be your ticket to completing the mission.

The space
Graphics in Star Wolves are quite nice for its price range and age. You can zoom in on the action, pause the game at any point and gaze at the battles from different angles. You won't probably find yourself doing this much though, since every second can count in a battle, and activating a skill or changing the battle plan at just the right time can make a huge difference in the outcome. Background look really pretty though. The space feels deep enough, even though the maps are fairly small in size, and moving from a location to another takes often less than a minute in average game speed.

The quality of the music is debatable. It's a combination of rock and light trance/techno. Gets a little repetitive at times, but if you like this type of music, then you'll feel at home. I rather enjoyed some of the tracks.

Sounds are pretty subtle, and you don't hear them much when you're zoomed out on the map, viewing the battle from a manageable distance.

Voice acting is... quite horrible, to tell the truth. There isn't much of it though, so it's not a big issue. And the grammar can be silly sometimes. The translations were not paid much attention to, but it didn't ruin the experience. Just sounds a bit silly sometimes.

The good and the bad
Now that I have explained the game in fair detail, it's time to evaluate it as a whole. Star Wolves is first and foremost a fairly slowpaced game, and can be extremely difficult at times. For a casual gamer this can be a huge problem in the beginning of the game, but as soon as you learn the correct pacing and usage of skills and equipment, the game can become a real treat. Missions are often full of surprises, and it can be tons of fun to react to changes and observe the outcome. Game can be saved at any point, allowing safe step-by-step progression through missions, if you don't like being under constant pressure. It is not necessary to keep all fighters intact through missions though, so I recommend accepting the losses if you manage to complete a mission. It can make things harder for the next mission, but it also adds a level of challenge that can still be overcome, which I haven't seen in any other game in quite a while.

The game is also relatively stable. During the entire two weeks I played, the game crashed only twice, and I came across only one bug (broken saved game file).

Scoring
Visuals: 8/10
For the game's price, the graphics are very nice, especially backgrounds. Ships at close range can look a bit blocky and weird.

Audio: 7/10
Horrible voice acting for the most part, rather subtle sound effects at normal viewing distance, decent music.

Gameplay: 8/10
Challenging game. Maybe even too much at times, as correct usage of tactics, skills and equipment can make a huge difference. If you're up to it though, the game offers lots of interesting scenarios.

Lasting value: 8/10
It is possible to get frustrated with the game at times, and the mission-by-mission progression of the game can feel repetitive at times, but overall the game is worthy of being played to the very end at least once. Alternate story paths and team member selection also provide some replayability.

Overall: 8/10
A solid strategy-RPG title. Provides a unique take on tactical space battles.