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Star Wars Squadrons: Return of the X-Wing

Wish they had done more with the OST Era but New Republic is fine. Easily could add more story missions like the historical missions in Rogue Squadron.
Really like the power management with the x wings.
 
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You know what I would liked to have seen? Rebels fighting Rebels, like Wraith Squadron going up against extremists who make Saw Gerrera look soft or Neo-Seperatists who object to the New Republic and want to undermine either out of self-serving goals or genuinely thinking Mon Motha is repeating the mistake that led to the Empire.

It's only the Imperial players who get to fight their own side.
 
While its admittedly a small sample size the imperial seem to be somewhat stronger- all three matches I've played so far have been imp stomping the rebels.
My guess is I'm not fully exploiting the power mechanic, I do try to balance the three at times.
 
Played up through the first real mission last night. It is, in many ways, very much what I hoped it would be. I am, however, noticing that there's a lot of subtle differences in the handling and overall balance compared to what I'm used to--I keep trying to fly like I'm playing Freespace, and it's just different enough to throw things off. I do kind of miss some of FS's finer controls (not quite as many options for target selection, no way to decrease power allocation, only increase). Balance is interesting: it's definitely tuned to be on the harder side, and it demands very aggressive use of the power systems. Definitely going to need some more practice.

God damn is it good to have a new flight sim.
 
Gul Damar said:
You know what I would liked to have seen? Rebels fighting Rebels, like Wraith Squadron going up against extremists who make Saw Gerrera look soft or Neo-Seperatists who object to the New Republic and want to undermine either out of self-serving goals or genuinely thinking Mon Motha is repeating the mistake that led to the Empire.

It's only the Imperial players who get to fight their own side.
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Or you know, Imperial infiltrators running off with Rebel fighters and bombers planning to hit a civilian installation or settling scores with a smuggler and don't want to tip their hand off that Imperials are to them

The idea is a couple of Imperials "defect" to make a Moff that Palp didn't like look bad and they join the squadron with very apparent symptoms they still have Imperial indoctrination on them (A stubborn adherence to orders, choosing the mission over civilians when an Imperial ship attacks an escaping convoy of civilians, casual racism) and eventually a mission where they chose to focus on a smuggler instead of following orders and you fight a bunch of rebel fighters in Imperial colors
 
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gyrobot said:
Or you know, Imperial infiltrators running off with Rebel fighter and bombers planning to hit a civilian installation or settling scores with a smuggler and don't want to tip their hand off that Imperials are to them
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Maybe Neo-Separatists switching sides when some Moff convinces them the Empire will support their independence against the New Republic?
 
tankdrop24 said:
Maybe Neo-Separatists switching sides when some Moff convinces them the Empire will support their independence against the New Republic?
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Just good old fashioned Imperials who pretends to switch sides will do just fine for an explanation of a mirror match.
 
I feel like I have a vague recollection of there being at least one mission in the old X-Wing games where Imperials had stolen some X-Wings and you had to shoot them down.

And, or course, a lot of TIE Fighter was spent fighting rival Imperials who were trying to seize power.

There also a lot of missions in the later games where you flew against third parties such as pirates, organized crime, dirty corporations, etc. These groups could have fighters not used by either side (adding a lot of variety of opponents), but could also sometimes have familiar ones, like Y-Wings.

And I mentioned once before how you could have a mission where you played New Republic but flew TIEs the same way that Wraith Squadron did, by having them go undercover in stolen craft.

I'm about halfway through the campaign now, and I've been enjoying it. Getting more of a feel for it. Changed up what the various buttons on the stick did to be more like what I was used to. Turned up the sensitivity a bit, too.
 
Night said:
Or just captured gear. You're a rebellion, you don't get to be picky.
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True enough.

Also, forgot to mention: there's an option in the controls menu to make the power distribution more like in classic X-Wing, where you can set how much power to transfer, instead of just having the four options of All Engines, All Lasers, All Shield and Balanced.
 
So people worrying the campaign would just feel tacked on can rest easy, it wasn't. These are legitimate missions that were purposefully crafted, rather than a series of Fleet Battles with a story loosely hung around them (like 2005 BF2, a highly overrated campaign IMO). I've heard it's about 3-4 hours long, so definitely on the short side, but they put real effort into the design. And of course there's always SP mode.

Is the game MP focused? Yes, clearly. But for the price point, I think anyone just getting it for the SP parts isn't wasting their money, either.
 
so

Holy fuck

This game with VR Headset and Joystick is an amazing experience.

It's... like really fucking good.

The act of looking around to see another craft in a Furball is really fucking cool and an amazing feeling and just... everything. Highly recommend
 
The Last One said:
I'm very much okay with the idea of paying a reduced price for a game engine with solid SP campaigns coming as DLC afterwards.
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Definitely. I played the crap out of X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter back in the day, and you've basically just described that game seeing as how it didn't get a 'proper' campaign until the Expansion Pack came out.
 
Well, I just finished the campaign. It was 14 missions, not counting the prologue. Obviously a lot shorter than the classic X-Wing games with their multiple tours, but that's just the general trend in games these days. It had a fairly wide variety of mission types and a pretty good story and I had a lot of fun.

I liked the different characters of Vanguard Squadron. Frisk is probably the most interesting Trandoshan character we've ever seen: a jovial and good-natured conman.

Titan Squadron are all assholes and psychos, but they're all different kinds of asshole, which is kind of interesting. I'm a little disappointed that my prediction was largely correct, and at the end they get sent off into the Unknown Regions to presumably join what will become the First Order. I think it would have been appropriately karmic if they'd been destroyed with the rest of the Imperial fleet by the Starhawk's suicide dive: if Terisa wanted to destroy it so badly that she destroyed herself in the process. But then, Linden lives, too, and when he turned up alive after being shot down, I thought he was going to end up being the one to drive the Starhawk in and sacrifice himself. Do any named characters die?

Another difference from X-Wing is that the maps are often cluttered with debris, asteroiods, etc. so that crashing is often a real risk when you're whipping around trying to follow someone, whereas X-Wing missions were usually in open space. Although you can survive collisions a little better in this game.

Done the multiplayer a bit, probably about a dozen matches? Fleet Battles is fucking hard, even against AI. It's disappointing that there isn't a private match option: if you don't have a full group of five, you'll always end up with some internet randos on the team. The enemy team "player-level" AI is pretty damn good, I don't see why they couldn't also fill out the blank spaces on your team the same way. This weekend I'll hopefully get to have a full group of five friends playing at once for the first time, and we'll see if it goes any better.
 
The Narrator said:
Well, I just finished the campaign. It was 14 missions, not counting the prologue. Obviously a lot shorter than the classic X-Wing games with their multiple tours, but that's just the general trend in games these days. It had a fairly wide variety of mission types and a pretty good story and I had a lot of fun.
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Yeah, it's short but pretty fun. Well, except for the mission where you have a minefield. That was the absolute worst.
 
Man, this game is making me has to reconfront that I have absolutely zero working theory of dogfighting. Which I guess helps keep anyone from getting inside of OODA loop through sheer nonexistence
 
Cosar said:
Well, except for the mission where you have a minefield. That was the absolute worst.
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Mission 11. I got stuck on that one the longest. One corvette from the second wave would always survive, no matter how many cores I detonated near it. I finally called it a night on Friday after failing it repeatedly. When I went back I took a TIE Bomber instead of a TIE Reaper so I could attack the ships myself if I needed to. I don't know why they even made a support ship an option on that one.


RangerKarl said:
I assume no one was calling you the Emperor's stool pigeon on this go-around, at least.
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You're making a minefield rather than clearing it, this time. :V

Strangely, no Imp vs. Imp in this game. I thought for sure it was going to happen when you steal munitions from another Imperial group.
 
The Narrator said:
Mission 11. I got stuck on that one the longest. One corvette from the second wave would always survive, no matter how many cores I detonated near it. I finally called it a night on Friday after failing it repeatedly. When I went back I took a TIE Bomber instead of a TIE Reaper so I could attack the ships myself if I needed to. I don't know why they even made a support ship an option on that one.
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I managed it with the support ship, but barely. Had to do the second sequence something like 5 times to get the right timing. The big thing I found is that it's very hard to know when you can blow up a mine and it would actually do something.
 
Game is fun as hell but good goddamn is it a steep learning curve to un-learn decades of arcade-y games like Rogue Squadron and Ace Combat.

Though putting Yaw or Roll (depending on the configuration) on the same stick as the throttle feels like a fuck up - I keep finding myself futzing with the throttle while I try to maneuver. Also, has anyone else had trouble of setting the throttle to increments, but it only works on TIE's?
 
Arthur Frayn said:
Game is fun as hell but good goddamn is it a steep learning curve to un-learn decades of arcade-y games like Rogue Squadron and Ace Combat.

Though putting Yaw or Roll (depending on the configuration) on the same stick as the throttle feels like a fuck up - I keep finding myself futzing with the throttle while I try to maneuver. Also, has anyone else had trouble of setting the throttle to increments, but it only works on TIE's?
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I know it's in the options menu, is it not working on Rebel ships?

And yeah, the control scheme is just weird; I get that they're going more FPS style but I'm having trouble with it while Ace Combat controls just worked better.
 
Mutton said:
I know it's in the options menu, is it not working on Rebel ships?

And yeah, the control scheme is just weird; I get that they're going more FPS style but I'm having trouble with it while Ace Combat controls just worked better.
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Yeah for some reason it's not working on Rebel ships, or if it is it's going by some other percentage than the 10% I set it to.

And yeah def agree that the controls are weird. I really wish Yaw was mapped to the bumpers (or something) instead of one of the control sticks. I feel like the game is basically telling "Look man, just buy the stick and throttle, come on".
 
Arthur Frayn said:
Yeah for some reason it's not working on Rebel ships, or if it is it's going by some other percentage than the 10% I set it to.

And yeah def agree that the controls are weird. I really wish Yaw was mapped to the bumpers (or something) instead of one of the control sticks. I feel like the game is basically telling "Look man, just buy the stick and throttle, come on".
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I tried remapping it as thank the lord they have full remap allowed on PS4 but I can't find one I really like. Having a throttle instead of a gas just wrecks havoc with how I like it even if it is more like an actual plane.
 
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