I didn't play yet WC5, but WC is the best one I've played. Let's start talking about the good. The history is epic, I felt thrilled in the mid-end part of the game, it got me addicted. I really loved or hated the characters. Other good point: finally there is joystick Z-axis & trottle support, the movies are very good, and the missions varied. The game has a very good difficulty level, the enemy isn't easy to target. Still, I only recommend this game to those people that love space SHOOTERS (not sims), have a joystick and a good english level, with some frustration-shields, and cannot find more shooters in the marketplace :) Because (the bad): the joystick cannot be configured or profiled (no xpadder / pinnacle), and the most keys arent mapped. So if you want to change missiles, or release a decoy (you have around a second to do it before a missile impacts you) you have to move your hand from the trottle to the keyboard. What I did here was playing without the trottle, a real pity. Also, you may accidentally decrease your speed or fire a missile if you're afterburning with the JOY BUTTON 2 and you want to pitch or fire your guns. It persists bad ideas from WC3: the enemy attacks you 90% of time instead your wings, and when they talk (and this is frecuent) you cannot use your rear cam or your shield hud. The battles aren't 1 vs 28 like WC3, this time is just 1 vs 12-16, which is much better. No wide screen for flights, no movies subtittles (I had to play with my iPhone close with the transcriptions, because you cannot alt+tab). The energy management is awful, and everytime there is a cutscene (when you're moving to a planet surface), it gets resetted, so you have to adjust it again... quickly, and that's very hard. There is no enough sound volume balance options. In my PC, win 8.1, the movies were almost silent compared with the flights, annoying.
WC3 may create a good impression while playing firsts missions. But once you play it serious you start to notice some MAJOR flaws: 1- The joystick is buggy. It can be solved using an external DLL file, but then the sound becames glitchy. You have to re-setup the DOSBOX configuration. I spend almost a day configuring it. 2- I played in ace difficulty. While the first missions were ok, soon they became abussive. I had to do the game easier when I started facing more than 25 enemies. 3- The communications: I play with my rear camera, or shields view in the left hud. The developers had the stupid idea of showing the enemy or allies faces in that HUD when they talk you, and in big battles you're really screwed while they talk the same canned sentence once and again. Like you were blind. I tried to shut down the communication but ofter my wings denied. 4- AI... the AI is created against YOU, not against your wing. I remember a mission with Maniac as my wing, where I had not a clue what was happening. So tired about it I enabled god mode and stop to look at the problem. While Maniac was flying freely, I had EIGHT enemy ship shooting me at my six. I asked for help and ... denied. This may be another bug. 5- And talking about bugs: there is a lot: infinite enemy respawn, crashes... etc. Save often, in each mission. 6- The video scenes are cool when you start playing them. Later they're boring and repetitive, like the elevator. 7- Stupid Admiral: The first time I had to eject, my score was around 130 enemies and few capital ships. I lost ONE ship. Then the admiral was waiting for me to let me know how bad I was. Come on! This game may be nice for the 90's, but is very bad if you play today for the first time and you want to finish it (that's why you purchase games, right?). Avoid this like the plague. There are better games here in GOG.
I've played and completed both games with their two expansions. For me it was more a work that an enjoyment. I'll explain why: First, the good, you will have tons of hours of gaming with a nice history and you can lose misions without losing the game. That's pretty cool and that's the reason why I purchased it. Now, you need a joystick (I've tried with a gamepad too, but is more difficult that playing with a joystick). Now the bad: Buggy behavior playing with gamepad/joystick + xPadder (I'm very good using xPadder, it's not my problem): like you cannot use two simultaneous keys (ie, rotate/pitch), from time to time some key get stuck and the cinematics runs too fast. To save a game, you have to right click the computer (do not try to left click, because for some strange motive in my pc the game consider it a double click and goes right away to the load screen, which is pretty similar). The graphics are BMP based, the pixels becames huge when you're close to a ship and you cannot know what's happening. When you have to destroy a capital ship with a torpedo you must attack it from behind, however, since dated graphics, it's very difficult knowing its heading when you're far or close. Also, it's very easy losing the track of your heading, since you only have minimal visual references (maybe a planet). WC1 + SO1 have a CPU clock dependancy, so when you have 4 or more ships in the screen it goes to 5 FPS or similar. it's very difficult aim weapons with that. And maybe this isn't something related to the game, but my bad, but when you have your enemy targeted and locked with an IR or HS missile, sometimes the missile just don't want to fire (and you have no damaged missiles / you're at a good distance and speed).
I think this is the first positive review I do in GOG. This game has character, it's pretty inmersive and the story is fun. The different characters are lovely. The difficulty is normal, and the music, god, the music is epic. I can see how much love placed the developers on this game. I really recomend this game, I do not give it 5 stars because it may be a bit short, and you can feel lose at some point (I did a random thing, then and only then the story continued), and some history elements are predictable. Anyway - I'm pretty hard scoring games, if I do a 3 stars review they are like oher people 5 stars ones. I highly recomend playing this game in you enjoy advendtures.
I've played several hours to this game and I want to scream so hard. When you play an old game, usually you need some time to get used to it's GUI and lack of tutorials. However after spend a lot of time playing and testing this game it's still annoying for me. I read a lot about how to save a game, and I can do it properly, but it's really tedious. The controls aren't good, specially when you have to react fast because you're under attack (almost imposible to escape if you're in a close range + you don't have the animation time to launch the magic ball). And, I had a lot of situations where I was thinking "And now, what?". While this can be fun in some games because it lead you to investigate, it isn't in LBA, due to that you cannot move easily since in every corner there is an enemy, and if you neutralize it, soon it will respawn again. These conditions I think they were normal in the past, where you only could afford few games and you had a lot of free time to master it. Conclusion: If you have enough spare time and you don't have other games, maybe you can find a good challenge here (hardcore, not due to enemy AI, but game design). However, for the most of us, it's better you skip this game and look for another one where you can play more comfortable.
