Forgotten last gen gems: Project Sylpheed

Retr0gamer

I've been going through my 360 collection recently because I've only a few games left before I can retire the console to the big graveyard in the attic. I'm getting to the dregs now... Phantasy star universe, blue dragon etc. Ugh.

Anyway I had no real expectations for project Sylpheed but ended up pleasantly surprised. I bought it at release and hardly played it before it got forgotten about. The game received some good to middling reviews on release and hardcore gaming 101 gave it a write up damning the game for being far too difficult and near broken.

Project Sylpheed belongs to a genre that we sadly don't see anymore, the space combat sim. Sylpheed takes a more arcade approach to the genre, it's closer to something like Ace combat or Colony Wars if you remember that series ( bring Colony Wars back Sony, not that crash bandicoot ****! ) than the more sim like tie fighter. The dogfighting is excellent, allie and enemy craft paint the sky with pink and blue vapour trails and the battles are always very busy and hectic which lends itself to the exhilarating feeling of trying to get a lock on a particularly annoying enemy. The battles feature dozens of enemies and capital ships.

I feel hg101 was way off its assessment of the games difficulty. On easy I died a few times but got through the game with little difficulty. The times I did lose where early escort missions where I ignored the target I was defending but once I figured that out it was plain sailing. Missions have a time limit but I only found this a problem in early stages because I never completed the tutorials. Definitely do the tutorials, they help a lot since there's a lot of nuance to the control scheme! The music is excellent as well, composed by many of the composers that would go on to score the ff13 trilogy ( say what you want about those games, the soundtracks were top notch ).

Now on to the bad stuff. The story is anime bull****. It never gets in the way of enjoying the game, just don't be surprised if you see every twist and betrayal a mile off. Also the game is rather short. I clocked out at 4 hours. While I found this refreshing considering all the 60+ hour open world games out at the moment some people might feel short changed. There are extra DLC missions that are available for free. Anyone going for achievements might be annoyed with the games optional sub missions. These are so obtuse that the community hasn't even figured them all out yet.

So has anyone else played this game and want to give their thoughts? I'd recommend this to anyone pining after a good arcade space combat experience and it's rather unique in this day and age. I'll leave with a fan made trailer showing the gameplay, every other official trailer focuses on the awful cgi story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wLSQ7cwVWk

Myrddin

I picked this up last year in CeX for peanuts, on the back of Metal Jesus Rocks 360 gems video. Haven't played it yet but looks enjoyable

Sieghardt

Oh GameArts, how I miss you making real games

Wow picked this up in a sale in xtra vision for 3 euro years ago (I know because the receipt is in the box). For my shame I never played it but I'm not one to leave a game on the shelf at that price.

Must add to my to play pile for 360 now

I'm slow to start games on 360 now in case they become backward compatible, much rather play with the One pad and on my pc monitor than on the main tv.... way too lazy to move the 360

Retr0gamer

Sieghardt wrote: »

Oh GameArts, how I miss you making real games

They're been near swallowed up by Square at this point and only do outsourcing on other titles.

I'd kill for another Grandia, Lunar or Gungriffon as long as it's not like ****ty Grandia 3.

CiDeRmAn

It's a lovely looking game, making the darkness of space light up with colour, but I must confess only playing the opening levels.
Something about "turn to get the enemy in the middle of the screen and press fire" kind of games that are indelibly 90's for me and I've never made it back to check if the genre is worth spending more time with.
A certain sense of speed is lost with no landscape beneath you.
That said Tie Fighter managed it.... back in the 90's, but then it had the lore to go with it, this is making it up as it goes along and, as Retr0 says, the story is a bit pants.

Captain Chaos

It's stuff like this that makes me want a game like Colony Wars and G Police back. Loved them games on the PS1. I remember playing Freespace 1 and 2 on the PC, the size of a capital ships were amazing in a game at the time, they were a few kilometers long.

There are just no more space shooters anymore sadly.

Mal-Adjusted

I picked this up last year, possibly on the back of the same MJR video. I played through the first 3 or four missions and loved it but got distracted by other games and then moving house. When i went back to it, i died loads and realized i'd forgotten most of the controls

I'll defiantly go back and finish it though, stupid Squeenix story aside.

I agree though that there aren't many space ship shooters today (maybe Strike Suit Zero?)

Retr0gamer

Strike Suit Zero was apparently rubbish.

I had a 3 week break from the game and had to go through the tutorial again as well. The controls aren't exactly intuitive. Learning to prioritise escort and attacking capital ships helps as well. The first mission in the atmosphere of a planet had me stumped for ages because I wasn't focusing on defense.

CiDeRmAn

The genre now seems to swing from incredibly complex, Elite Dangerous, to massively handholding, No Man's Sky judging by videos.
Elite Dangerous is a massive game, with tons to do, but it's all hidden behind a wall of complexity that would make a typical JRPG seem like Space Invaders by comparison.
You've to spend time, lots of time, just watching tutorial youtube videos, linked within the ingame training, to follow and develop techniques.

Pac1Man

This is a great idea for a general thread not focused on one game.

Game title

Systems where it was released

Short description


Unless there is a similar thread already which I may have missed?

Retr0gamer

There's was one on the PlayStation forum. It annoyed me because I couldn't discuss how insulting Heavy Rain is :P

Pac1Man

Those plot holes keep me awake at night.

Mal-Adjusted

But i liked Heavy Rain

Retr0gamer

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

bit i liked Heavy Rain

Your grammar says everything :P

Solitaire

This thread is making me want to a) play this again and b) see if there is even a spark of life left in the FreeSpace 2 modding community. Its been a few years since I replayed the latter (again)

For anyone thinking of playing this, the balance is quite a bit different from the old knife-fight space-em-ups of yore (Colony Wars/Tachyon/Freespace/Freelancer). Things feel a lot more arcadey and Ace Combat-esque, you rarely get hit and can't take much of a hit either, your relative speed is obscene and locking on to lots of stuff and firing improbable waves of missiles to thin out the huge waves of strikecraft more suited to a bullet hell than a first/third-person shooter is more important than trying to knife-fight and hoze down things with pulse rifle. You even have special moves. Yes, even in this genre. Although the alpha strike is pretty darn handy for brutalizing capital ships

The game actually has a points system thinly disguised as resources for buying shiny new guns. Easy difficulty halves the points you get from completing missions as well as the health and IQ of most enemies; Hard doubles them. Completing sub-objectives nets you bonus points, as does completing stuff faster and/or with fewer friendly casualties than expected. Most of your points will inevitably come from nuking the living daylights out of enemy capital ships. Many of them. Certain missions focusing on said are massive paydays for new-weapon-buying, but it can be very hard to know ahead of time which missions require you turning yourself into a flying bomb and which are better played with the torpedo racks ditched in favour of a slightly more subtle and versatile loadout.

Protips:
- Bumping into capships - yours or theirs - is a great way to get ded very quick.
- You turn up far faster than other directions. When you need to turn quickly roll so the desired direction is "above" you then yank dat nose up.
- Be careful of what weapons you complement with each other. Beam weapons are hitscan, but you need to lead the target with pulse/MG/etc. Also bear in mind that while MGs/cannons/explosives are weaker than pulse/beam guns they can go straight for the hull, whereas the latter have to nail shields first. Using a mix of these makes for less than effective alpha-strikes. Really big anti-ship weapons tend to be reactive/thermoplasma/singularity-based, which do colossal damage to both simultaneously.
- Small-scale missiles are fantastic at murdering fighter furballs but take a bit of work to kill bombers and suck versus capships, if they can even lock on to them - this also means you're a hardpoint down whenever you alpha a capship. Trying to kill most strikecraft without such a weapon is torture though - and they appear in their dozens if not hundreds in every mission...
- Medium missiles are better against bombers and can threaten gunboats/destroyers but are more easily dodged and are too sluggish for use in a knife-fight. "Anti-ship" missiles like the HOUND are utter trash, and you only really have rockets and cannons available against enemy capships until after you kill your first battleship, after which you get a load of shiny free weapons including baby's first torpedo launcher, and more shiny anti-ship goodness unlocked in the research "shop" to buy. Just in time for a huge fleet scrap...
- Afterburners and specials eat shields. Take a hit or two from a capship and you'll be running off for repairs only to find your afterburners have left the building. On that note, get used to weaving erratically any time you're within 10km of a cruiser or larger to avoid getting bodied, and approach larger formations from their "below" to cut out all the hurt the endless hordes of destroyers would otherwise try to lob at you. Coincidentally their only shieldgen is hanging down beneath them too...

Finally, you should focus on getting the game completed rather than going for anything more than mere survival on Normal. At least until New Game +. Then feel free to turn up to the second mission with a singularity cannon and multi-missiles and get revenge for what it put you through the first time through (seriously, HOUND/TERRIER can go die in a hole, the starting pulse rifle is more useful!).

Pac1Man

Pac1Man wrote: »

This is a great idea for a general thread not focused on one game.

Game title

Systems where it was released

Short description


Unless there is a similar thread already which I may have missed?

I had one kicked off ages ago relating to underrated gems / classics.

But got diluted towards the end with new games for some reason.

Was reminded of a forgotten gem from last gen earlier "Enslaved:Odyssey to the West" really enjoyed that one. Didn't sell well enough for the planned sequel to go ahead

Retr0gamer

Deleted User wrote: »

Was reminded of a forgotten gem from last gen earlier "Enslaved:Odyssey to the West" really enjoyed that one. Didn't sell well enough for the planned sequel to go ahead

Lots of people say it's an under rated game and it got 6-7 / 10 across most publications.

I myself would say 6-7 / 10 is spot on. The platforming is basically a QTE, the combat is not Batman bad but it's close and the writing is not great. It's decent but hardly some hidden classic some people make it out to be.

gizmo

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Lots of people say it's an under rated game and it got 6-7 / 10 across most publications.

I myself would say 6-7 / 10 is spot on. The platforming is basically a QTE, the combat is not Batman bad but it's close and the writing is not great. It's decent but hardly some hidden classic some people make it out to be.

Could be one of two things, folk may be using the "modern" scale of review scores and consider 6/7 to be terrible rather than the above average it should reflect. Or it could be just the fact that it wasn't particularly well known; it sold like ass, saw large price drops shortly after release and even then, failed to break 750K sales a year later.

Personally, I really enjoyed it. It had its issues but for some reason I felt it just came together as a package in the end. Score wise I'd definitely agree with you, it's a solid 7 in my book but, if anything, it's one of the few modern games that reminded me of UK Resistance's Blue Skies in Games campaign from a few years previous. :pac:

Doodleking

The extraterrestrial concept of the plot- is great!!! It's available now for purchasing less than $10 ;-))))