Wing Commander™: Armada

The strategy layer is pretty easy to deal with, especially if you read the playtesters notes provided. The fighter combat can be good or bad depending on the scenario. Very similar to Wing Commander 2 in playstyle but with fun new ships.

....of the Wing Commander series. Reviews by "wvpr" and "ColBashar" from 11 years ago say pretty much what I would. No need to repeat them. But I will say again that the two, yes JUST TWO fighters per side in the battle screens is RIDICULOUS. What were the devs thinking? Also unplayable without a joystick. Avoid this, unless you really must have ALL the WC series.

Loved this one back when it came out. The idea of planning which battles to fight and then being in them was (and still pretty much is) very unique. I seem to remember it being a bit easy to sway the battle when you piloted in it, but that just made you feel more epic. I don't recall any story either, you kind of make your own. I'm not sure I could play this game now, since graphics, controls and flight models have come so far, but it was a favorite when it came out.

While the plot to this game seems to be nonexistent its actually in the manual and the manual also explains the start of the Kilrathi War. This game was the test bed to try out new ideas they had some of which were abandon the rest became the basis for combat engine in wing commander 3 and 4. Its the first wing commander game where the arrow was introduced and the shelton slide. The true fun in this game was the two player mode Ill have to see if GOG has gotten that working. the multiplayer mode has two incarnations one sort of like risk where you don't pilot the ships and an other where you pilot every combat mission. one more cool think you can play as Kilrathi if you want which was never done in any other wing commander game. If you like space combat ans strategy this game has a good mix of both. the unfortunate thing about it was the timing of its original release it was a dos game that came out about the same time as windows 95 so it was never easy to get working at first and the network play didn't work well on most networks as a result.