Reviews

Concise Review:

The best dogfighting game I’ve ever played. There is limited content and a steep learning curve but because of its very competitive nature, balanced game mechanics, and incredibly high skill cap, I’ve logged way more hours into this than I would have ever expected. Significantly surpassed my expectations. Incredibly satisfying game when you string together some nice dogfighting manoeuvres.

Journal Style Review:

The prologue campaign mission is a reasonable tutorial. The opening cutscenes were alright, a bit better than I expected.

First couple dogfight rounds were okay. I suspect I will like the other mode better when I unlock it. The game seems to have a reasonable amount of customization and unlocks. The gameplay itself was interesting and seems like it has some depth to it. I didn’t feel very good to start. I can’t tell if I should play inverted or not. And I don’t know which stick I want to be roll and yaw. I have to think about it and I won’t be good until I’m not thinking about the buttons.

A few more dogfights in, I’m still finding it difficult to get kills. It’s a hard game. It’s tough to track and hit enemies. There is actually a lot going on with the constant speed changes, or directing power or simply using all your equipment at the right time. This feels like the type of game where something is going to click and then I’ll be wrecking people. But I don’t know, it hasn’t happened yet. So far I’d say I can tell the core gameplay is well done and will have an audience that loves it, but I don’t know yet if I will be in that audience. I think this game is going to be very difficult to master and has a very high skill cap.

Played about 4 hours and so far this game isn’t really for me. It’s a case where I don’t think this game is bad. I actually think it’s pretty well made for what it is. But I’m not really enjoying it that much. I think I’ll save the last 5 hours for when Hayden plays the game. But this is sitting at a low B for me, and I just don’t feel compelled to come back. 

Played a round with Hayden and I was the best fighter in the game. Got a ton of kills. It was my best game I’ve played. It made me want to give this a go again. It’s just so hard. It isn’t intuitive for me. But that game I had it going and it was pretty sweet. Plus it’s fun playing with another pilot you know.

I’m enjoying this game waaay more. I learned how overcharging shields and lasers works. That makes a huge difference. I’m understanding the rules of the game mode when before I was just flying around aimlessly. I’m learning about more of the different ship abilities you can unlock and how to best use them in different situations. I am also just getting better at maneuvering the different ships. This game is clicking now and I’m getting a lot more kills. I still doubt it has a long life for me as I think it will get repetitive but I’ll for sure finish the 10 hours. And I might even wish it was longer. It’s a low B+ currently.

I think I’m going to purchase the game. I didn’t think I would but I’m enjoying it a decent amount and I want to keep playing. 

I bought it.

Trying out different ships and loadouts has been fun. I’m enjoying figuring out what strategies work for me.

I’m having a blast. This game has such a great feel to it. The power management is brilliant. It took effort to get to this point because it has a steep learning curve, but I’ve been consistently at the top of the scoreboard for a few sessions now and it’s a lot of fun. The feeling of lining up an enemy X WING and killing them with one nice clean sweep is amazing. It’s so satisfying. Squadrons is climbing the ranks.

This is a very well thought out and balanced game. I see a lot of potential if they could expand upon this game’s core mechanics and make it larger. 5v5 is very tactical and great. I love the mode, but I can’t help but think that they are missing their best game mode. It’s a gigantic dogfight of two huge teams around like a Death Star or something like that. Maybe attack or defend, maybe just a larger version of the first game with more capital ships. Like 40 vs 40 real pilots. Very little AI. That would be epic. This game is really fun also. But I don’t think it’s the only use of this games build. I’m liking it and imagining my ideal version of it.

Minor annoyance is that it often takes too long to find and load a game. It’s typically like 5ish mins for that whole process which doesn’t sound too long but it is. If you sit down and play for like 2 hours you spend maybe 20 to 25 mins waiting for games. 

Oh man this game is sick. Im putting up huuuge numbers. The bomber is the best all around ship. You can put up big damage to captital ships as well as destroy fighters. I think the seeker mines are great. I get a lot of kills using them as well as escape maneuvers. The charge laser works well with the rotary for damaging the capital ships. It’s a great class. 

I think the mines probably are a “noobs” weapon. I bet they don’t work well in higher ranked games. But at these lower levels it works wonders. It’s so easy to use.  It’s a great way to lose a tail. Take a quick corner and drop a mine hidden behind. Boom! Free kill.

I have binged this game and I’m loving it. Surpassed my expectations by a lot.

I find myself reading a lot about this game and enjoying doing it. Strategy guides and competitive subreddits. This game is so deep and it’s fun to see how good you can actually get. Keep adding in small new layers. I’m loving it. This games an A-. Easily.

I went on a hard bomber stretch where I have this high damage multi purpose bomber class that takes out pilots reasonably well and does decent damage to cap ships. It’s nice that it can be out in the field no matter what phase. I switched to an x wing class and realized that there definitely is no “best class”. The added mobility was great and although I miss the rotary lasers I was dogfighting it up.

Some of the clips online of people drifting and geting kills are unreal. I love seeing them.

I can tell the competition is getting better. Some of my noob tactics may need to be upgraded.

The X-wing with passive boost charge has been my current favourite. I don’t deal as much damage to cap ships but it’s an all around solid dog fighter and it’s providing a lot more drifting practise. Good teams I’m noticing are sometimes abusing me in the slower Y-Wing so I like having the 2 primary options now.

I’m at 23 hours and I surprisingly still feel this game has plenty of life left in it for me. There are new ships I want to get better with and new load outs to test. I’m enjoying trying to climb the ranks as well. This game has growing pains because of its depth but holy once you figure that out its unlike any other game I can think of. I wish they would make a new larger scale game mode. It sounds like they won’t. But if they did I’d be so thrilled.

The X-Wing is my current fave. I don’t know what to do with it against cap ships, but if I just focus primarily on dogfighting and I can go like 17 and 8 with reasonable assists then we usually win. And it’s super fun. This game rocks.

Just had I think my best game ever. 40 kills, 4 deaths. Fucking unreal. I was letting out pilot wahoos like I was Po. What a great time. Then I followed it up with a 25-5 game. Can’t believe how much fun it was. 

My skill level has stalled around hero IV. It’s getting harder to get wins. Especially with playing solo 95% of the time. Still having a blast though.

40 hours in. I’ve given up on trying to climb the ranks. It’s too hard without playing with others. I’m still having lots of fun though. I find myself consistently with the highest score. I’m playing a half dogfighting half AI farm Tie bomber build these days. It’s pretty solid. My biggest weakness in this game is I still don’t have a great gameplan or class that I like for taking out the flagships at the end. I usually try to prolong the phase by player/AI kills. It works well but it relies on solid teammates to take out the ship.

I’ve played ~45 hours. I am at a good point where I still have a very high opinion of this game but I am ready to put it down. I may pick it up again at a later date. Regardless though. Fantastic game. I’m so happy I gave it the effort it deserved.

Final Score: A-

Sixth game of this style attempted, third try of this game in particular (played Demon's Souls first when it first came out, then this when it was released, then this a couple years later, then Bloodborne, then Lords of the Fallen, then The Surge, then finally Dark Souls again, with Jedi Fallen Order and Blasphemous in the middle there as well if you want to include them as well). I've done all kinds of playstyles and man this formula just does nothing for me. It's a dungeon crawler ARPG with obtuse quest design, overly punishing checkpoints, heavy damage output, and NPCs that cackle at you at the end of dialogue to show you how cRaAzY they are. I get it and it's just not that interesting. These games, The Surge included (not LotF because that game is hot garbage), are saved by their boss designs and some enemy designs as well as their Wookiepedia style of lore, but there's only so much bullshit (namely the entirety of Lower Undead Burg as well as any area with tiny quadripedal animal enemies - I actually liked everything else about the Depths and Blighttown) and dungeon-crawling through generic mobs before I just want to move onto another game. Maybe if these games were 15ish hours it'd be a different discussion. Gazing at the design of Gaping Dragon just isn't worth the time investment.

And frankly, DS1 is kinda put together shittily. Inconsistent weapon collision, graphical glitches, poor signposting, lots of backtracking, obtuse leveling systems, "choice" that because of the weapon leveling system railroads you unless you really like grinding the Undead Parish, a stark drop-off in level design quality after Quelaag frankly, and environmental details physically put together so hastily that sometimes you can't walk up a half-inch high gap. Had these problems come from any other game, they would get torn apart and rightly so. From a technical standpoint, it's shocking this is the follow-up to Demon's Souls and not the other way around.

Made all the right improvements over MMZ1. Triple Rod doesn't feel pointless (though the swinging mechanic is a bit finicky), cyber elves don't require hours of grinding just to use, weapons don't have more levels than a Pokemon game, Forms and EX Skills give an actual reason for the bosses outside of the elemental chip rock-paper-scissors mechanic, missions are a bit more open-ended an have actual goals within them outside of "get to end and fight boss." That said, the home base feels a bit superfluous and some of the bosses hit way too hard even with upgrades for lives-based game. Checkpoints in the Legacy Collection make a big difference. And again, I would say they wanted to encourage backtracking but never really figured it out. You can go back to the stages after clearing them, but there's barely any reason to and some even don't have any enemies anymore.

I really like the inclusion of the guardians from MMZ1. You fight them once and they're familiar with some minor tweaks as regular level-end bosses. Same elemental weaknesses and everything. Which makes sense, they're still the same entity. Their allegiances have changed but they're still adversarial. It all makes sense. You fight them again later in another form in a boss rush, which while still having the same weakness is a good change-up while also a good narrative twist. I was a little wary they'd bring them back for no reason but I think they did it really well.