Help me decide!

Privateer 2 or Wing Commander IV

  • Privateer 2

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Wing Commander IV

    Votes: 16 100.0%

  • Total voters
    16

Highball

Spaceman
Since I just finished Wing Commander III, I am trying to decide where to go next.

I have played, in this order:
(expansions are marked with [.])

Wing Commander
[.]The Secret Missions
[.]The Secret Missions 2

Wing Commander II
[.]Special Operations
[.]Special Operations 2

Privateer
[.]Righteous Fire

(I tried Wing Commander Academy and Armada after Privateer and RF, but did not really care for them, so I did not finish them.)

Wing Commander III

I am trying to decide between:

Privateer 2 & Wing Commander IV
 
You are pretty much doing things chronologically. That would put Priv 2 after WC Prophecy and Secret ops.

Side note... Privateer takes place about the same time as WC3 with Righteous Fire IIRC being just after.
 
I was thinking more along the lines of playing the games in the order they came out. I figure if I played WC4 next, I'd play Privateer 2 after that, since I don't want to wait until after Prophecy and Secret Ops to do it. I liked playing Privateer and taking a break from flying for Confed. I liked flying for my own profit, and seeing where the space lanes took me, be it bounty hunter, trader, pirate, etc. After WC4, I'd like that freedom to work specifically for me again.
 
I will warn you, Priv2 is rather long and lengthy. Not a game that can be won in a few (many hour) sittings. Very freeform and very large IIRC.
 
Thanks for the heads up. I figured it might be a little long, like the first Privateer. It took several days of just flying random missions around the Troy sector for enough cash to get decent ship upgrades, which I had to have before I could even have a fantasy about cruising around the space lanes to New Detroit. Honestly, my friend and I didn't get Privateer 2 back in the day, because we were saving up for Wing Commander 4. When his mom got it for him for Christmas, we totally forgot about everything else and blew all our money on junk. Of course, we ended up drifting away from WC after #4, since we didn't really get into 4 very much, so it will be a kick coming back to it, and even more fun exploring the world of Privateer 2 as Lev Arris.
 
Standoff.

Failing that, IV.

The Darkening is far outside of what you've been playing that it should be taken care of after IV/Prophecy/Secret Ops, and enjoy the tweakiness that you can apply to it.
 
Wing Commander 4 is a more enjoyable experience to carry on from WC3. If you didn't care for Privateer and its expansion you may not care for Privateer 2, either. Sure, you can get into the fan mods also. I think you should continue on with WC4 though before that.
 
I would suggest to sticking with the official games first, but Standoff is definitely one of the best fan creations to date. And it's finished (bug fixes notwithstanding)! So there's no waiting involved, you can get into it straightaway. It really does a great job of bringing WC2-style gameplay and ships to the Vision engine - I think you would be missing out badly if you chose not to give it a go.
 
IV! You'll be able to fly the Dragon! :)
Gosh, I love this fighter.. it reminds me the mighty Tie Defender but it looks better..
 
(I tried Wing Commander Academy and Armada after Privateer and RF, but did not really care for them, so I did not finish them.)
I'd like to chime in on this one sentence :).

Neither Academy nor Armada are especially exciting single player games, that's true.

The single best thing about Academy was its manual (which wasn't even that great...), so once you've had a look at the two new fighters, you might as well leave it at that.

Armada, though - I think that one deserves a lot more attention than it usually gets. Unless you're really hardcore, there's definitely no point playing through the gauntlets (I never finished them... alas, I never even got past level 5!). But I do hope that even if you didn't finish it, you a) read the manual very carefully (Claw Marks gets top grade for being the first - but in terms of depth of content, the Armada manual beats every other WC game), and b) played at least two or three battles with either side, trying every ship a couple of times. After that, the gameplay gets kinda dull and repetitive - but the game does have a really great atmosphere, especially on the Kilrathi side, so you shouldn't put it down too quickly.
 
I'd like to chime in on this one sentence :).

Neither Academy nor Armada are especially exciting single player games, that's true.

The single best thing about Academy was its manual (which wasn't even that great...), so once you've had a look at the two new fighters, you might as well leave it at that.

Armada, though - I think that one deserves a lot more attention than it usually gets. Unless you're really hardcore, there's definitely no point playing through the gauntlets (I never finished them... alas, I never even got past level 5!). But I do hope that even if you didn't finish it, you a) read the manual very carefully (Claw Marks gets top grade for being the first - but in terms of depth of content, the Armada manual beats every other WC game), and b) played at least two or three battles with either side, trying every ship a couple of times. After that, the gameplay gets kinda dull and repetitive - but the game does have a really great atmosphere, especially on the Kilrathi side, so you shouldn't put it down too quickly.

"Academy" was the one that let you make your own missions and in "Armada" you could fly Kilrathi fighters, is that right?
 
Right.

With a few missing (and missed) ships, Academy was pretty much the WC2 engine with a mission designer.

Armada was kind of a mix of WC and turn-based strategy game, and the first to allow you to fully play either side. As a single-player game it's not spectacular, but that's a result, as I recall hearing, of Origin realizing that 1994 wasn't quite ready for full multiplayer support, so they worked up single player campaign options as well. With DOSBox, now, it's easier to set up online dogfighting if you have a friend who's available to fly against you. The details escape me at the moment, but it's discussed over in the Tech Support forum, if you want info.
 
It's free for download.

Be warned, though, it seems like most people (myself included) find Standoff to be significantly harder than almost any of the official Wing Commander games (except, perhaps, Privateer if you spend too long in a Tarsus, or WCIV if you play on Nightmare), at least at first. Makes sense, since you're taking the role of a pilot fighting to save Earth against impossible, outnumbering odds. And changing the game difficulty doesn't really help, since making the game easier makes all your wingmen dumber and hence makes the missions easier to survive, but harder to win (conversley, turning the difficulty up makes your wingmen better along with the Kilrathi, making the game harder to survive but easier to win). So if you play it, be prepared for a fairly steep learning curve.

Once you've got the hang of it, though, Standoff is (to borrow an expression of another poster) fraught with awesome.
 
An even more underrated aspect of Armada is the multiplayer level. I've played a few games with Chris and others and it's always been a great time.

Armada does a nice job with space combat so you don't feel like you are in annoying tight turning battles as happens in WCP MP.
 
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