Star Wolves

I'll have to admit, first time I was playing Star Wolves I gave up after two hours. I didn't understand how to loot stuff, what the purpose of the mothership is, there were poor grammar and voice acting everywhere, and missions seemed generic. However, I gave it a second chance, and can say with confidence that I don't regret doing so. Before playing, some hoops need to be jumped through. For widescreen resolutions one has to edit a config file. Furthermore, the exe has to be set to Win 98 compatibility mode, otherwise ships simply won't attack. Lastly, lowering mouse polling rate to 500 Hz or less is recommended. With these things in place, Star Wolves finally is able to shine. What sets this game apart from others is its excellent combat engine. Even against seemingly overwhelming odds, every encounter is beatable by assigning the correct targets in the correct order, utilizing abilities, and adjusting wing composition. The tactical choices are complemented by strategical choices made before each mission, about what type of weapons, fighters, and systems are equipped. Furthermore, each of the up to six pilots has a perk tree, which also has a great effect on how that pilot can and should be used. The game takes weapon range, accuracy perks, weapon type, and many other parameters into account when simulating encounters, and even minute changes to perks or weapons have an immediately observable impact. In short, the game has a highly addicting gameplay loop, which is good enough to where I forget about the unresponsive UI, at times crushing difficulty, poor translation, and the certain degree of randomness that is present in battles nonetheless. With its unique mix of RTS and RPG, there is still no other game quite like Star Wolves to this day. And though not exactly great, the music is surprisingly memorable and catchy, too. Star Wolves: well worth a try at least.

Star Wolves is a product of Russian game developers X-Bow Software. It is a fine example of a treasure one can find outside of the mainstream gamers market. I stumbled across several months ago, and was quite pleased. Its a title that appeals to those who are fond of the hybrid RPG+tactics type game. The open world feel of the game mixed with an excellent ambiance-like soundtrack really gives you the feeling that your flying about in space. That said, this is not an open exploration type of game. You are given fairly linear perimeters with each mission, and you cannot progress unless you complete the objectives given to you. The combat is fun, and the turn based pause like feature is welcome. My one real critique against this game is the English translation, which seems to be a bit off. Great game. Lots of fun. Definitely worth the buy!

(+1 star for the Russian and German versions) One part of Star Wolves plays like a CRPG. You build up a party of up to 6 characters over the course of the single player story. They level up from completing quests (maybe killing things, I am unsure) and can learn unique, starship piloting related skills. You earn money to buy better parts for your starships, both a capital ship and snub fighters. or just loot parts from destroyed enemies, or even rob them from merchant transports. This part will be instantly familiar to CRPG players. What sets Star Wolves apart is that the CRPG progression is coupled to a squad based, tactical space sim similar to the first few missions of Homeworld. The scale is always restricted to at most one capital ship and six fighters under your direct command. You will frequenly need to manage your individual ships much like in a real-time-with-pause CRPG. However, the skills you need to learn are unique to space sims. How do you launch a frontal attack on a group of enemy fighters or a couple of capital ships without one of yours getting blown up? Which way should your fighter turn after killing an enemy to get back into the fight quickly? These skills are the staple of space flight sims, but usually only for your ship when in single player. In a strategy game like Homeworld, these squad level tactics are usually too low level to be observed. Star Wolves actually fills a relatively unexplore space sim/tactics niche even without the CRPG component. I had two issues with the English version. One, there was no voice acting in story dialogue, and what little English voices existed elsewhere were mostly dreadful. However, the Russian and German versions are fully voiced, and it's easy to use those voices in the English version. Two, the game feels sluggish even though the FPS counters says 70+. It's playable but still annoying. These are not core defects though. If what I described interests you, you should definitely check out Star Wolves.

If you liked the tactics of Homeworld but wanted a bit more story and a bit less resource building, you'll like Star Wolves. It's the same kind of 3rd person space tactics with a nicely varied set of missions and equipment. Not too long; not too short; and at this price, I'd say it's juuust right.

I still haven't decided if this one or Space Rangers is my favorite game of all. Well, other reviews say it all. You need to play this one, then Star Wolves Civil War and never play Star Wolves 2. Civil War is good but the freedom of choices was not implemented that well so game should just use the same approach with missions system and not fly where you want. Also there are some good Russian mods that change this one so much that it becomes almost a new game but those mods were never intended to be used with English versions (the game is Russian after all). And max resolution is 1280 but that can be changed easily inside the game folder by editing default.cfg file I think. You can set whatever resolution you like there and game runs smoothly. The game engine is surprisingly stable, versatile.