Star Wolves

Star Wolves is, in my opinion, a successful mix of tactical and role playing elements in a science fiction wrapper. As most eastern European games go, the writing is questionable and the voice acting is atrocious, but the real star here is the gameplay. Being a linear mission-based game (unlike its two more open-ended sequels), Star Wolves has you following a merry band of...well...Star Wolves dealing with pirates and other criminals. The gameplay is fairly polished, allowing for fun, tense battles. It's in pausable real-time, allowing you to pause the game to give attack or move orders, for example, so things to get too hectic, and hectic they will get. The battles in the game are a joy to behold, as you watch your little fighters dart about, fencing with their targets at both short and long range. Pilots and ships can be customized to a degree, which is where the RPG element comes in. Pilots gain experience, which they can use to gain more specific abilities, like specialties with missiles or sniping or what have you. This allows you to custom tailor your crew as you see fit. The story of the game is pretty good too, what little I remember of it (I played this ages ago), but it was engaging enough to keep me going to the end. Overall, if you like the idea of small-scale tactical space combat with personalized pilots and tense gameplay, you should give Star Wolves a try.

Just wanted to put my two cents in here for those "space strategy" fans like myself. Actually just started playing Star Wolves, and am probably about a 1/4 of the way through the campaign. I can honestly already say, that if you enjoyed HM2 and Freelancer, chances are you will enjoy this game as well. To me, it really is a bit of a mix of the two, and then some (and less, lol). While over all, the campaign is a bit linear (you do have some choices, sort of, lol), and you can buy different ships, equip different weapons and systems, the choices are nowhere near as varied as Freelancer. On the other hand, they are much more varied than HW2. Like HW2 however, you have your "mothership" the Star Wolf, where you dock, repair, and re-equip your ships before, during, and after missions. The look and feel of the space battles was very much HW2, but your character's ship's weapons, and equipment were equipped a la Freelancer style. I also liked the RPG type of "leveling" up your individual character's stats in betwwen missions with experience points they earned during missions...and you can most definitely notice the difference in what attributes you put points into (or don't). The graphics are decent, and background music works nicely with the gameplay. All in all, though there is nothing to blow you away here, I am finding it a lot of fun, and very entertaining to play. If you're looking for something with a little different twist on our favorite classics we love(d) to play, Star Wolves just might be for you...and thanks to GOG, it's priced right, no DRM, and ready to play! :-)

The impression this game made upon me was that it was crafted with some haste from the free trial version of a commercial game engine. The graphics? Decent. The soundtrack? Excellent. Beyond comparison, truly. Controls... plot... voice acting... replayability... absolutely horrible. "Replayability" is supposed to mean "you'll enjoy playing the game again," not "you'll have to play each part over, and over, and over, saving multiple times on each level so the previously invisible threat that destroyed you can be avoided *next time*." Every pilot sounds like an Orc peon from Warcraft II; I'm continuously expecting to hear "zug, zug." I'm sorry, but when saving and restarting becomes a part of the standard strategy of a game, there's a problem. I shouldn't have to do that, and read a strategy guide, to have half a chance so early on in the game as the third or fourth mission.

A small-team space tactics game with RPG elements, Star Wolves looks good and is fun to play. The character advancement and ship equipment systems offer meaningful customization without forcing too much experience&loot grinding, and advanced character abilities give you a lot of options in combat. VISUALS and AUDIO: The game looks pretty good. There isn't a lot to render, so the render budget can be spent on detailed craft, good particle effects, very nice explosions, and just an overall nice visual experience. You'll spend most of your time zoomed out some distance, but you can pause at any time to examine the battle, frozen explosions, laser beams and all - and you'll occasionally need to, for example when a lucky hit forces you to split your squad for some evasive maneuvering. Sound is used sparsely but effectively. Weapons, explosions, etc. are all pretty standard fare, distinct enough to be flavorful and informative. Most communication is not voiced, but squad members verbally acknowledge orders, as well as speaking during a small number of cutscenes. The small, randomized selection of ambient and triggered combat background music is pretty decent. CONTROLS and GAMEPLAY: You control a mothership and a squad of 2 to 6 fighters, piloted by a motley crew with various specialties that can grow as you progress through the story. Pilots whose ships are destroyed will always eject, so you can keep going as long as the mothership remains intact (although ships are expensive to replace!). Destroyed ships and stations drop salvage that can be sold or used to equip your own velssels; this is a critical source of income at all stages of the game. Every character has a specialty and several unique abilities, but can train to some degree in all skills; combined with the wide variety of ships and equipment, this will allow you to define strong combat roles for every squad member but also switch up tactics when required. Available experience and money are well balanced, giving you enough to get by but not much more - for most of the game you will be forced to make compromises in your equipment purchases, prioritizing certain upgrades and relying on salvage for the balance. Controls are fairly standard RTS fare, although in a 3D environment. You can attach a camera to a unit, group, target, or free-roam, but you can only see units that are within your sensor range; the camera can be freely rotated around its anchor. There is a pan&zoom sector map that can be used to give long-distance orders as well. Everything can be controlled by mouse-clicks alone, but a few important commands have keyboard shortcuts. Since the game is single-player, it is possible to pause at any time, so targeting individual fighters is never problematic. Time can be accelerated up to 4x to shorten time spent crossing open space, and your mothership will alert you (and optionally auto-pause) when enemies are detected. STORY/ACTING: The story isn't terribly original, but it is engaging enough, and each mission has some character to it. You have the ability to play as you like to a degree, but your behavior outside of story branch choices has no lasting impact - you can wipe a sector clear and not only get no reputation for it, but even find everything restored if you take a future mission there. Still, being able to refuse evil missions is nice, and the split at the end is just long enough to be interesting and short enough not to be a pain to play through both. There are no big surprises, but it is still nice to hear each side of the story, particularly in the endgame - your choices there do have a significant impact on the universe, and said impact even affects gameplay in those last levels. Of course, even the smart villains never learn that betraying you is really stupid. (Admittedly, their odds in your final confrontation are pretty good.) DIFFICULTY: The difficulty varies considerably, and depends on your play style. Fortunately it doesn't depend *too* much on past performance, as a kill is a kill and much of the XP is gained via mission objectives . . . but in later levels, opponents provide a lot, so taking the hard route / level cleaning is somewhat important. At that point you should be able to wipe out patrols by just running into them, but if you can't, you're in a bit of trouble. That said, even if you haven't been maximizing XP, you'll probably only miss out on one or two high-level abilities, thanks to cost escalation. This could matter a fair bit, esp. with things like missile guru for 90% ECM resistance (without which missiles are nigh useless against top-tier opponents), but good use of abilities can carry you through most situations - I found I had lots left over for many missions, and some uses were superfluous (Viper, anyone?). You *are* stuck with any bad advancement choices you make, and characters don't "level up" except through the abilities you select and equipment you buy for them, so you should be a bit careful. That said, the same applies to your enemies. The final missions do involve an unavoidable uptick in difficulty of course. LEVELS, STRATEGY, and OTHER ELEMENTS: Invest in experience-boosting abilities early on! After that, defensive buffs are rare and therefore really important. You can't individually control squad members, so when precise or fast maneuvering is required, remove pilots from wings. Doing this also tends to make enemies re-target, further assisting when a lucky inferno hit forces you to take evasive action. Switching squad leaders can also redirect pressure. Note that squads will try to move in formation when not in combat, so you may find that only the leader fires at targets such as stations, particularly if he has longer-range weapons. When individually designating targets, the whole wing will attack until the ship has blown up, including after it has been reduced to 0 health. To save missiles and maximize combat effectiveness, re-target often, or use escort mode once enemies are in range - in that mode, wing members can attack different targets and will also take shots of opportunity. THE VERDICT: The game is fun and occasionally quite challenging. The system somewhat unavoidably encourages grinding for XP, but there's not too much of that - sector contents are finite (although randomized a bit at start). The time speedup function means that even sweeping a sector isn't all that tedious, although I'd have liked an 8x occasionally.