Project Sylpheed

Project Sylpheed has a lot going for it on paper. With one part epic story line and one part space combat sim, you'd expect those two elements to create a riveting experience, especially in a game bearing the Square Enix logo.

Unfortunately neither aspect of the game delivers all too well rendering the entire experience rather hollow.

Flying Straight

Start out playing the tutorial; you'll want to wrestle with Project Sylpheed's controls in a situation where crashing into a destroyer doesn't spell 20 minutes of wasted effort. Once you figure out the unintuitive controls and get under way, you'll find yourself playing as a young pilot named Katana flying combat missions for the Terran Government against the rebel forces of ADAN. In between missions you are treated to pre-rendered cutscenes that detail both relevant mission information and backstory about your fellow pilots and yourself. The story is clearly meant to be a focal point of the game, but it starts off slow and never picks up speed. The plot twists are predictable, is about as generic as Japanese video game drama gets.

The actual missions are a little better than the story, but also fall into predictability. The vast majority of missions start out with a few skirmishes--typically with fighters and the occasional capital ships--before you reach the midpoint of the mission. Then the "unexpected" ambush of your fleet occurs and you are once again tasked with defending against waves of enemy ships.

The ships--enemy and allied alike--are nothing special to look at. You rarely get a glimpse of enemy fighters, so the majority of the visuals involved in your dogfights consist of the flashing red squares and circles of your ship's targeting system. In addition, there is some frame rate slowdown during the bigger fleet battles, which isn't something most people want to tolerate in an already visually unimpressive game.

The combat itself can be engaging, but is mostly shallow. You will spend a majority of your time locking on to enemy fighters with homing missiles, rinsing, and repeating. There are several types of evasive maneuvers to pull off and three "special moves" that allow for impressive weapon volleys when you need some extra firepower, primarily aimed against enemy destroyers and carriers.

You'll have control over your AI squadmates in most missions, but you'll want to stick to orders that keep them out of your hair as they frequently do their best Slippy the Toad from Starfox impression. After each mission you earn credits based on your combat efficiency that you can use to research and purchase new weapons. I ultimately found this upgrading process to be the most enjoyable part of the game, but that well ran dry quickly as I picked up a majority of the arsenal early on.

Project Sylpheed is one of those games you desperately want to like, but falls short in almost every category. This game is a rental at best, even with the discount 39.99 price point it's being sold at.

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