I got my copy of Prophecy GBA and thought I would voice my impressions of it.
Graphics:
Pro: 3D imaging, with a smoothness that is surprising for the GBA. This totally blows any SNES games out of the water.
Con: None! Nothing that I could see fell below my expectations for a GBA port of WCP.
Sound:
Pro: They included speech clips and most of the music from WCP.
Con: In some of the music, the "background beat" was loud enough to drown out the foreground melody.
Combat:
Pro: Flying was quite smooth, and the controls simple and instinctive to use.
Con: Many of the secondary elements of flight that had been introduced in WC3/4/P have been removed, either in the interest of keeping the controls simple, or in the interest of reducing processing demands. Omitted features include:
1) Adjustable power allocation--you can not choose do divert more power to shields/engines/guns.
2) Adjustable shield allocation--you can not choose to shift power between fore and aft shields.
3) Autosliding
4) Separately destroyable capship turrets--you can no longer protect your wing by shooting off the enemy ship's turrets.
5) Separately simulated armor quadrants--instead of having separate armor for all four quadrants surrounding the ship's core, you now simply have more core hit points--the added hit points seems to be about equal to half the sum of what the four armor quadrants were in WCP.
6) No full guns--you can only fire one type of energy weapon at a time, not all guns at once. Fortunately, this is somewhat mitigated by the individual guns being made slightly stronger and more individualized--for example, the Tigershark's lasers are now powerful enough to kill a Moray on their own, while its Mass Drivers pack a noticeably heavier punch but at a much shorter range.
The first three of these are just minor issues, but I think that the latter three have a definite impact on combat style. Having no armor quadrants means you will no longer care about protecting a damaged side of your ship, and the inability to kill turrets will make protecting the bombers and torpedoes in your wing much more difficult.
Graphics:
Pro: 3D imaging, with a smoothness that is surprising for the GBA. This totally blows any SNES games out of the water.
Con: None! Nothing that I could see fell below my expectations for a GBA port of WCP.
Sound:
Pro: They included speech clips and most of the music from WCP.
Con: In some of the music, the "background beat" was loud enough to drown out the foreground melody.
Combat:
Pro: Flying was quite smooth, and the controls simple and instinctive to use.
Con: Many of the secondary elements of flight that had been introduced in WC3/4/P have been removed, either in the interest of keeping the controls simple, or in the interest of reducing processing demands. Omitted features include:
1) Adjustable power allocation--you can not choose do divert more power to shields/engines/guns.
2) Adjustable shield allocation--you can not choose to shift power between fore and aft shields.
3) Autosliding
4) Separately destroyable capship turrets--you can no longer protect your wing by shooting off the enemy ship's turrets.
5) Separately simulated armor quadrants--instead of having separate armor for all four quadrants surrounding the ship's core, you now simply have more core hit points--the added hit points seems to be about equal to half the sum of what the four armor quadrants were in WCP.
6) No full guns--you can only fire one type of energy weapon at a time, not all guns at once. Fortunately, this is somewhat mitigated by the individual guns being made slightly stronger and more individualized--for example, the Tigershark's lasers are now powerful enough to kill a Moray on their own, while its Mass Drivers pack a noticeably heavier punch but at a much shorter range.
The first three of these are just minor issues, but I think that the latter three have a definite impact on combat style. Having no armor quadrants means you will no longer care about protecting a damaged side of your ship, and the inability to kill turrets will make protecting the bombers and torpedoes in your wing much more difficult.