Reviews - SDM

Hard-light.net

Might've been a year since I first played this, but it was amazing. Not only is it fun, but it had immersion. I was a skeptic at first because I found the Age of Aquarius (BP1) to be an above-average-but-not-the-best campaign because the whole magical alternate universe and the deus-ex-machina aliens lacked the human element. War in Heaven, on the other hand, is truly a human conflict. Vishnans were retconned to be a species that can't be fully trusted, and everything that happened can be scientifically (in a way) explained. Everything feels real, even the politics.

While some of the ships look good, the best part regarding the graphics are the effects. At the time, War in Heaven were using things never before seen. In fact, WiH helped influence the Mediavps, the community's graphical enhancement.

The story shines here, and I would say that it is the best in any game I've played. It is very well-written, and the characters are easy to relate to. This is novel. There is no black-and-white. There's just gray. Where a scifi book may have a glossary in the back of the book for special terms, the game's equivalent Techroom database entries is extremely detailed. You can tell that the BP team did their research by the way the characters speak in-game, which is more than what Hollywood does. Oh, and anything can be an allusion to anything.

The gameplay of the first part of War in Heaven is pretty much FreeSpace 2 with a lot of subtle-but-awesome tweaks. The AI is much smarter and does not cheat, for example. Most of the weapons and spacecrafts are useful unlike retail FS2, where you only need to reuse the same three ships to win. And the missions aren't at all repetitive. There's even a mission where you can command a frigate! The only gripe that anyone might have is the long lines without voice acting and slowdowns, but those will be fixed soon.