by everywhere116 » 06 Feb 2016, 01:23
Well I had this huge epic writeup written out but as soon as I submitted it apparently I timed out and the system forced me to log back in, and I lost the whole thing. It really should leave you logged in for more than 45 minutes but whatever.
I greatly enjoyed the mission although it was very difficult and with a few technical problems.
Once of the things I was able to do was to test the save and reload function. After I completed the first phase I saved and went to bed. I played some conventional FAF games in the meantime and didn't go through the installation process again, and then played the rest of the mission last night. I wasn't able to start a new mission but I was able to load my save file fine and the rest of the mission seemed to work alright.
Pros-
-very difficult, forced you to use your commander and factory reclaim skills to win.
-Gyle's silky smooth voice is fantastic as ever.
-I love the reveal of the Seraphim, it raises the stakes and changes it from a training mission to a real invasion.
-At the end of the mission Gyle says that my actions allowed us to retreat safely but with some casualties. I assume this was because I failed the objective to safeguard the civilians. If he actually says something different if you do save the civilians when the mission ends then bravo, I love branching dialog like that.
Cons-
-The mission encourages you to build up your forces before completing an objective like the FA campaign does. Knowing what was coming next was crucial to success. I reloaded twice intentionally because of this.
-Enemy bombers at the beginning of the mission. My god, their almost impossible to deal with without spamming a bunch of T1 AA in your base at the start.
-I sent some air forces to Morax's position but in the end he seemed fine, despite the mission making it a high priority to protect him. He was able to beat back the attackers and assault their own base on his own.
Technical issues-
-After the beach outpost went down and for most of the Seraphim phase of the mission Gyle's voice did not work, and his portrait was replaced with the HQ portrait. Morax's voice did not work at all. The civilian's voice was fine.
-After I destroyed the two Sera bases Morax just disappeared from his base and reappeared above the center island in a transport. I thought this transition was weird. Unlike some other complaints in this thread though he gated out fine.
-I killed the Evil One almost immediately after he gated in, nothing from Gyle. Later on after Morax gated out I was given no direction and no objective until the Seraphim commander was within radar range of one of my cruisers, then Gyle told me to kill him. These two events may be related, and I could have sequence-broke the mission. I don't know when the Evil One was actually supposed to be killed.
-After I gated out I retained control of the camera (although still in cinematic mode) and was able to move it around. The game never progressed passed this point and it never finished, even in the glitchy way that coop normally does. I just closed out the window because I figured the mission was over that this point.