Project Sylpheed
 

An SE game that's not a lackluster RPG? And it came out this year? Surely, you must be joking!

Sorry, but it's true. Square Enix and Game Arts have put out a game that's not only great fun, it's also a space shooter. When was the last time we got one of those that was any good? Yeah, my mind came up with "too damn long" too.

I guess the first thing to note is that this isn't your typical Sylpheed game, as it's definitely not a shmup. Not that anyone really gives a shit, to be honest, since Sylpheed has never been as well regarded or loved as Gradius, R-Type, or most of it's other ilk. And for good reason, honestly. Thankfully this game brings a bit of quality back to the brand.

It might not be apparent at first glance, though. Since you're immediately treated to some decent quality cutscenes with some overwrought voice acting and melodrama to spare. These cutscenes come before and after every one of the 16 missions the game has, and they are not only completely skippable, you probably will want to do so simply because they are extremely aggrivating. This mostly stems from the fact that the story is cliched, boring, and poorly written. It's not interesting in the slightest. You've got your two factions warring it out, pilots caught in the middle, trying to sort out loyalties, and awkward romance scenes. Nothing you haven't seen a hundred times already.

Thankfully there's a good GAME underneath all that. The actual game mechanics work extremely well. Your fighter is extremely responsive, there's a plethora of different weapons with different firing styles, and controlling your fighter after getting used to the multitude of functions it has is easy. There is, however, a learning curve attached to it. Seeing as how there are many, many things your fighter can do, some of the mapped controls to the Xbox game pad are kinda silly. Special moves like slowing down time require a charge of the Y button, barrel rolls and other special maneuvers require the B button to be pressed with a joystick direction, and there are different camera modes, throttle controls, and so forth. Thankfully they don't take too long to learn.

The gameplay though, is great. The battles are epic, and the feeling of fighting in a giant space war is quite genuine. As you cruise around, you'll see capital ships taking pot shots at one another, friendly fighters chasing bogeys, and so on. Which makes it a shame the game is so short. At only 16 missions, you can actually complete the game in FIVE HOURS the first time through, and less than that if you "skip" missions, which is doable if you lose a mission 3 times. You can play through multiple times on different difficulties to eventually unlock some of the achievements, but it does get tedious after your 8th time through so you can get those last two.

It should be noted that the capital ships are fun to fight against, since you can target specific parts of them like gun emplacements, engines, the bridge, shield generators, and so on. And some of the larger ships and carriers practically require you to take them out in a specific way to drop them. It's quite exhilarating.

One thing that kinda stands out is that there is no Xbox Live play. At all. Not even leaderboards, unless you count the optional DLC mission pack that adds them (and even then, only adds them for the downloaded missions). There's no way to compare scores to a buddy's, or anything. It's kind of a downer, considering even arcade games like Symphony of the Night have a tacked on Leaderboard.

Project Sylpheed is a good game. Short, and the story sucks, and it's lacking any sort of viable multiplayer, but the gameplay that's there is a lot of fun. I enjoyed it immensely, and I'm sure any fan of space shooters would. Hopefully, if there is a sequel, we'll get a game with length and multiplay. Those two editions would turn a fun but flawed game into something rivaling the genre classics.

I've been replaying the hell out of this the last two days, and it seems more fun the second time around, probably because you can outfit yourself with far better weaponry for earlier missions and try to S rank everything. Taking out capital ships is my favorite part by far, mostly because you can get wasted in seconds if you aren't careful, particularly in the later missions. I'm trying to get all the achievements, which will take a few more playthroughs.

Takes way more than a few, unfortunately. Took me 8 or 9 to get 10,000 fighters, and 12 to get a gigatonne.

It gets quite tedious at that point, but it's still entertaining.