Project Sylpheed

Over the years, the space simulation genre has branched out into enough sub-genres to satiate all sorts of gamers; for instance - if you like old school RPGs, a game like Escape Velocity: Nova would appeal to you; if you like action-RPGs, something like Freelancer would be right up your alley; for the RTS fan, there’s Homeworld; for the MMORPG addict, there’s EVE Online; and finally, for those who like space-dogfights, there’ve been games like Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Wing Commander, and now there’s Project Sylpheed.

The game’s set in the 27th Century, 500 years from the time humanity started colonizing other worlds. The new worlds are governed by the Earth’s Terra Central Government (TCG) who’re deemed tyrannical by many other factions. The differences between the groups and the TCG leads to an uprising, after which the groups band together to form the ADAN Freedom Alliance (ADAN comes from Alberti, Delacroix, Angelico and Nold, the four systems that it comprises of) to start a rebellion. You play the role of a naturally gifted ace pilot in training (what a cliché!) under the TCG’s forces, who gets caught off guard in the middle of the war.

I know the story sounds a little lame, but it makes up for this with some pretty engaging action - you control a prototype ship in the game, which allows you to do everything from standard maneuvers, to special moves such as unloading all your weapons at the push of a button, charging through a barrage of enemies at lightening fast speed or slowing down in time to give you an extra edge! There’s a catch though – you can perform all these special maneuvers only at the expense of your ship’s shield energy, so you’re going to have to use them sparingly. I know that the action sounds very arcade-like (and it is), but that doesn’t mean that the gameplay lacks depth. In fact, it’s quite the opposite – everything from the game’s narrative flow to its intuitive lock-on system is well thought of and executed quite well.

The main draw of the game is the crazy amount of customization you gain access to - your ship has 3 weapon slots that can be retrofitted with a wide amount of weapons based on technology that you can research on as you progress. You have everything from cluster missiles to high intensity lasers at your disposal, and each weapon slot allows you to equip only a certain kind of weapon on it. The ship’s nose for instance, can be fitted with only low caliber rapidfire guns or lasers, that have to be targeted manually and are usually used as backup weapons. The other two slots allow you to mount missile delivery systems that’ll become your bread and butter before you know it. Since we’re talking about missiles, I might as well tell you that there’s no better feeling in the game than locking on a group of ships and unloading a huge payload of missiles to blow them to smithereens. However, if you’re not satisfied with your weapon and crave for something more powerful, you can do that too. The way this goes is that after completing a mission you get a bundle of cash depending on how well you fared in a mission; you use this cash to research new and powerful technology ranging from different types of ammunitions to some really powerful guns. This allows for a plethora of choices and the ability to customize your ship according to your play style; for instance, if you like targeting manually you research on the best nose mounted weapons out there; on the other hand, if you like a huge amount of missile and don’t mind losing out on some of the tracking, short ranged cluster missiles are for you. All these little things may add up to make the game sound a little complex, but don’t worry about that, the training gets you acquainted with all of it pretty well.

The one area the game doesn’t do too well however is its performance. The game’s got some really gorgeous visuals, vibrant colors and really nice particle effects, and everything from the nebulas you see in the backdrop to the ship’s design is top-notch. Unfortunately, you pay a rather high price for this through your framerate. Towards the beginning, the game runs pretty smooth and flawlessly, but as the game progresses and the dog fights get more intense with more bad-guys popping in and out of combat, the game starts to stutter a little. In a game with such fast paced combat, the stutters and slowdowns end up getting you killed or failing objectives quite often, which can become really frustrating.

If you can learn to live with the performance issues, Project Sylpheed is a really nice game, especially for those of you that love dog-fights. Personally, although it’s a pretty good game, I wouldn’t really bother buying it since I’m not too big on arcade-ish flight combat simulators. If you on the other hand are, then Project Sylpheed is a good buy since it’s one of the only next-gen combat flight games out there.