I'll admit I'm not usually a flight sim fan, the awkward juddery controls on a keyboard put me terminally off IL:2 Sturmovik (who wants to spend hours mapping keys for a perfect setup when you could just play a different game) Red Baron 2 therefore suffers from my inexperience. However in my defence this game just tosses you in at the deep end and expects you to cope. There are no training missions or tutorial, your first mission is randomly generated and could be easy or intensely difficult. My inexperience, the devilish control system (nobody has owned a dedicated gaming joystick since the mid-90's) and the game's absolute insistence on a "true" WW1 flying sim means long periods spent propping the plane up as you fly over a wasteland trying to figure out the unintuitive camera angles before brief periods of action where (in my case) you're shot down, maimed or injured. I guess that does make it a lot like WW1, where the average lifespan of a new pilot could be measured in days. That doesn't make it a good game though, or even very fun to play, especially as newbie. I know the game is old but I'm pretty sure even back in the late 90's games had tutorial levels and some form of support for new players. That's my chief gripe, that and the lack of options for someone who doesn't want to re-map their keyboard. Anyway I downloaded Freespace 2 with this and I'm glad I did now, 2 hours of the most galling and stupefyingly boring gameplay later I can't wait to be launched into a sim which might cut the beginner a little slack now and then.
I have to say this game draws you in first from a purely technical perspective. The strategic side of things immerses you and the tactical perspective provides nail-biting action as you watch your painstakingly trained mercs go up against the enemy. Now for the negatives. First of all you need to read the manual, all the way through, trust me. The game provides little to no tutorial help if you aren't used to turn based combat. I found myself playing this game for hours, but after a while I realised this was because it took me so damn long to work out what everything did and how to work it! I also thought the game is unnecessarily, even punishingly hard. There might already be grumbles from other reviews but this game never lets you catch a break in combat even on novice mode. Save every time you get onto a new map, you will need to. At first I thought this was good, it really tests you straight out of the gate. Then gradually I came to find the cliff-like learning curve frustrating, so often even the best laid plan will require more than a bit of luck to see you through safely - the alternative is going through mercs like they're going out of fashion. This sounds good, but in reality every single little skirmish could result in catastrophic casualties, leaving you totally unprepared for the next phase in the game. I'm sure that's not good design, when a player is terrified of the primary combat element in the game! The game draws you back again and again, but I'm not sure that is so much about the inherent structure or gameplay as much as player competitiveness. You want to succeed but about two thirds of the time you will fail. Otherwise a solid and sometimes amusing storyline and an empire-building dynamic in the game help push things along, with lots of stopping while you save before attempting to attack that tiny farm or hamlet!
