Very shortly: -Great game, great sim, good story, lots of twists and add some political cabal, realistic characters (in the sense that you think people could actually do exactly *just* that), add some old old enemy and great action in space. Hands down one of the best space games ever, period. Freespace 2 is essentially what Freespace wanted to be. It essentially is what any other space combat game since has wanted to be. Actual story and background that makes sense, characters that are what one might expect in such circumstances to be, factions are believable and so on. In short: if you have EVER wanted to play a space sim but haven't, pick this one for your first. Freespace 2 is challenging - and even more so if you up the difficulty slider to the max. It has extreme rewards for extreme challenge (like trying to save Trinity, when you have no radar lock on the enemy with ill-equipped ship against overwhelming odds - I did it *once* back when the game actually launched. Never managed again!) and black ops, some political stuff embedded in the theater of war. You can choose your ship and loadout more or less - at times you are with worse equipped group so your choices are more limited. Other times you are simply trying to scramble for it under surprise attack with whatever you have. Then there's those black ops that I mentioned: fly duo behind enemy lines and try to figure out what's what and where and so on. Technical side: Flight physics are easy and nice, just the right amount of sim and arcade in the mix. Weapons are very different; some are more to drain enemy shields where others are better for hammering down their hull etc. There are specialty weapons like bombs and such on for the capital ships. All ships are distinctly different with their own strengths and weaknesses and pretty much everything in FS2 is thought out well.
