Privateer 2: The Darkening

I have a love/hate relationship with Privateer 2. It's very fun and unique, but it also frustrates me to the point of yelling at the screen. Let's start with the good. It does play like a Wing Commander, with space dogfights that are quite fun. The AI is variable: Weak ships tend to have bad AI with poor piloting. Good ships tend to drive you crazy with their constant dodging and sneaking up behind you. It's nice to have diversity. The game world is fantastically weird. The first bar you enter is like a rave, with all sorts of weird cyberpunk people flailing about and getting in bar brawls. The FMV cutscenes are deliberately silly, and pretty amusing. Wing Commander fans will probably find the setting to be very out of place. Don't expect any Kilrathi. The Wing Commander name feels tacked on. You'll have to let that go to enjoy it. Now for the bad. You can't save in space, and you die, constantly. This means restarting missions over and over. You move around the map via jump-points, and you cannot jump if there is an enemy present. That's fine, to a fault. But sometimes they'll throw way more ships than you can handle, since new ones can constantly jump in. Or they'll just kill you outright by surrounding a jump-in point with a small fleet, which spams you with fatal damage before you can blink. This doesn't happen all the time, but definitely too often. It's especially frustrating if you spent 20+ minutes on a mission, only to get blown up right before you land. The military, (aka police), is trigger happy. If you're smuggling illegal goods, or you so much as graze their ships, (say while trying to shoot down a nearby enemy), they ALL go into berserk kill mode for that jump-point. There's got to be a less fatal way to deal with that, like a fine and confiscation. Still, this game somehow draws me back constantly. It's really fun, when it's fun, and the FMVs are a hoot.

i play this game 1998.. I was a real "hit".. The game itself is a good one... Why only 1 Star? I try everything to make this download working on my windows 7 (64 bit) - but doesnt work at all. I am a experienced Windows and PC User, and i know how to use Google also.. :D Sorry fpr this nonworking title on winows 7 - 1 star!

If you are a fan of the first game and wanted more of the same fun action, this is NOT the game for you. This game is bad. This game is so very bad. This game will throw wave after wave after wave of enemy combatants at you, and if they are in the same area as you, you HAVE to fight them, you simply can't just run away like in previous game. And more and more will constantly warp in, blocking your exit and making you take out even more and more baddies. This gets especially annoying when you are doing any sort of side mission which involves ESCORTING, because the enemy ships will make a bee line for either you or them and just rail on either until destroyed. And Jumping from nav point to nav point is annoying during escorts because if you are so much as a few seconds off the jump times with the escorted ships, you lose the mission.. or more enemies will warp in, leaving the escorted ship at the next nav point and you stuck dealing with 3 to 8 enemy combatants. The inflight music is just horrendous, throbbing into my brain like pile driver would into a train wreck. The PDA system is a bit confusing at first, but functional, was much simpler in Privateer 1. The space combat is okay, but repetitive, as you will find yourself having to reload and refly the same stretch of space over and over and over again because you will warp in only to get immediately pounded in to space dust or to have your escort ship eviscerated because you were too far away dealing with other ships. This has nothing to do with the Wing Commander storyline and is more of a sequel in that it a space flight sim with cargo management. If you want a better 'sequel' to Privateer, go play Freelancer

I care not a lick what this "Spoony" thinks of my beloved game. GoG provides a chance to revisit some of our favorite memories even decades ago. My Privateer 2 experience came shortly after Privateer itself (which I picked up on a whim at Toys 'R Us), and I was blown away. Weirdness of FMV aside, Clive Owen and the rest turn in some amazing performances, and you feel like a total badass because HE is representing you in the game. Contrary to "popular" belief, I found the cutscenes engaging and enjoyable, something that I always looked forward to. But why do we REALLY play these space sims? Two things: dogfighting and upgrades. The space combat is on par with or better than Privateer, and the graphics have seen a nice overhaul. My favorite reason, why I wanted this to be on GoG for so many years, is the SELECTION OF SHIPS. In P2 it's not just Orion, Galaxy, and Centurion to get you where you want to go. There are tens of ships to choose from as you move through the story. It feels more sprawling and epic than Privateer. There are missions to take down capital ships, and I never found myself bored doing "just one more run." For the trading junkies, the map is HUGE and each planet has its own unique economy, so there's actually some research to be done, and it's *very* rewarding when you make the big score. I had a TON of stuff to do today, and my calendar was immediately cleared when I saw this game show up on GoG. Thanks for granting my one true wish!

I still have the CD for this game sitting in easy reach, as it's one of those games I keep coming back to. I love playing it, even for all it's weird quirks, but honestly I've never finished it. I don't know why. Every time I play it, however, I truly enjoy the experience. That alone rates 4 stars.