Long-time lurker, first time poster here. I recently ran through WC 1, 2, and 3 again after I played thru the Saga Freespace 2 mod and it still blows me away how well they hold up.
WC1: Maybe sounding a little fanboy-ish, but it was too short hahaha. I'll grant that asteroid fields and minefields are a little random to fight in given the 2D engine but the game still gains so much from having them there. IMO space shooters can definitely suffer from having boring, "samey" environments every mission but having to dodge around rocks and mines definitely gives missions a new dimension.
Otherwise its as good as gaming gets and I think the writing and story in the original and Secret Missions 1 and 2 are the most underrated of the series. Maybe your wingmen aren't super-deep characters but they have strong personalities that are reflected in their scripting, their portraits are well-done, and they each have a unique narrative voice. Likewise for the campaigns themselves - particularly the Secret Missions. You and the Tiger's claw make moves, the Kilrathi counter ... suspense is created as the relative advantage keeps shifting around. Finally you earn a victory that is if not "perfect" clearly feels like a real triumph that you the player were an integral part of.
WC2: The missions themselves. The art still holds up wonderfully and I love how much personality each of the ships you fly has (they were great in WC1 but if anything I think it's even better here). Torpedo runs while perhaps not working as intended since you can get a lock at extreme range but still add a great element to anti-capship fights as you still have to run in and dodge the antimatter guns. Likewise, the improved AI is welcome - I felt that in this one the Kilrathi were much better at using their ships' advantages against you.
Unfortunately the missions seem to keep getting more and more simplistic as the game goes on. For example WC1 had some very difficult and elaborate for the time escort missions which 2 barely has any of. It makes the game feel a lot more like a simple shooter and me the player feel less like a "real" combat pilot.
Also, I can take or leave the story. I understand Origin was trying for something more ambitious but I just don't think the 'who's the traitor' subplot really works since you never really get to know any of the many characters you meet. My response when the traitor was uncovered was basically a shrug - especially since its still kind of unclear to me how he was uncovered in the first place?
WC3: The story, the story, the story. The 3D engine was rock-solid and again the Kilrathi AI really seemed to take a leap up. Trying to nail a Darket before he afterburns away while his buddies hit you from behind was incredible. Cap ships have gotten quite a bit more dangerous and the balance between them and your fighters feels a lot better. Once again all the ships have so much personality even with the kinda primitive 3D graphics.
And then there's the story, it drives me up the wall because of what a missed opportunity it was...
Honestly, I blame "Fleet Action" for this - the writers of the game seem to have taken the book into account (it being mentioned in "Victory Streak" and everything) and I think that as a result they were written into a corner. Sure, the first batch of Kilrathi supercarriers were turned back, but there's still a half-dozen more in the final stages of construction in a shipyard far enough away from Confed to effectively be un-attackable. Meanwhile the Confed fleet was smashed at anchor, the government was revealed to be run by malicious incompetents and traitors, some of the most important Confed industry is smashed, and the Kilrathi seem to have shifted into "exterminate all humans and salt their planets" mode without a peep of internal dissent. How is the war not completely hopeless at this point?
So that's where they have to fall back on action/adventure cliches and an inexplicable recycling of the "traitor on board plot". The limited amount of movie time they had to tell the story felt completely inadequate for it so my impression of the plot was of a bunch of half-baked ideas kind of shifting around. Finally, you have the lone pilot taking out the load-bearing boss and the Kilrathi just say "oh wow we need to have peace - again (pinky swear this time!)" and everybody seems happy.
What really gets me about this is how well this could have worked with the whole "WW2 in space" that the games have used. The last year of the Pacific War was incredibly harsh and dramatic even though the outcome was no longer in doubt and the scars and repercussions of it are still with us. Even if the Japanese were a spent force by then, you had the largest naval operation in the war, the largest amphibious operation, operations that were both famous and controversial with the war nearly at an end, and incredible casualties both physical and mental.
From a gameplay perspective it could have been fun to imagine the desperate last-gasp wonder weapons of the Kilrathi that you would have had to fight as the fleet got closer to Kilrah and story-wise maybe there could have been real grappling with the issue of whether to use the Behemoth or Temblor Bomb (Why was this even a debate or question in the game? The Kilrathi were razing some of the biggest population and cultural centers of the human race and were explicit about carrying out genocide! Why are human soldiers not carrying and filling out "Revenge Diaries" of what they'll do to the Kilrathi like the Soviets in 1945??? The humans in this game are some of the strangest alien beings I've ever seen)