[h1]It‘s the best looking and best sounding game of the X-Wing and Tie-Fighter franchise, but it‘s also obvious why it was the last.[/h1]
To get it out of the way right at the start: Just like all it’s predecessors, the Steam version of XWA is perfectly running out of the box on modern systems, with effortless native modern controller support and no technical problems at all apart from the music stuttering at times. So there is nearly zero concern there.
The game itself still holds the standards of the previous titles, but as mentioned in the headline, it’s no wonder why it was the last proper X-Wing simulation game:
Unlike in it‘s immediate predecessor X-Wing versus Tie-Fighter, in XWA you are exclusively flying for the Rebel Alliance here, which means a considerably reduced selection of awesome spacecraft you can fly. During the campaign your spacecraft is preselected for you in literally every mission and missions where you fly a Y- or B-Wing or a Z-95 are actually not much more than a handful. So if you particularly like those three types (even though i couldn‘t imagine why), don‘t expect seeing much of them here.
In between the campaign missions where you fly against the empire for the rebellion, you progress the second part of the story where you fly missions for your family of space traders to avenge your father‘s and brother‘s death. Those are always handled with one of your two personal Corellian Transporters, one of them being the very same model like Han Solo‘s famous Millenium Falcon, but unfortunately the missions with the „classic“ model are very few and far between, too and most of the time you sit in a heavily modified newer model that barely resembles the original. Anyways, flying a Corellian transporter like the Falcon (not THE Falcon to clarify again) is not as fun and exciting as it may sound. In fact it’s quite the contrary, because those missions are rather boring at best and downright frustrating and tedious at worst. The big exception is the actual Death Star battle from Return of the Jedi: At the very end of the campaign, you get to step into Lando Calrissian’s boots and finally fly the actual Millenium Falcon in a pretty impressive rendition of that final battle. But other than that, I‘d prefer an X- or A-Wing over the Millenium Falcon any day.
Speaking of frustrating and tedious missions: Unlike it‘s predecessors XWA has quite a few of them. Not that the game wouldn’t still be fun overall, but the difficulty and design of some of the missions is noticably incoherent: Some of the earliest missions are so frustrating that they nearly made me stop playing the game (Mission 8!!!), while most of the missions later in the game are complete pushovers that are won within the blink of an eye.
Despite those few horribly imbalanced and at times frustratingly hard missions, XWA is still a great game, at least if you haven‘t played the previous games and are new to Star Wars flight sims. X-Wing- and Tie-Fighter vererans on the other hand may get bored rather quickly, because after all it’s pretty much the same game like the very first X-Wing game from half a decade earlier, only with a slight grafical makeover and a comparatively fleshed out story. The vast majority of the gameplay and mechanics is literally completely unchanged, so it definitely feels a bit stale at this point and it’s easy to see why XWA was the last of it‘s kind. Nevertheless, you still get one of the best Star Wars games ever made with this, so go for it, if you want to put your controller (or old joystick) to good use.
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STAR WARS X-WING ALLIANCE
Genre: Simulation
Release: Q1 1999
( ) 0/8 Simply one of the worst games ever made. Don't waste any money on this.
( ) 1/8 Bad. Seriously flawed with barely any redeeming qualities. Worth a couple of Cents at best, if at all.
( ) 2/8 Sub-par. Only for hardcore-fans of respective genre / series. Don't pay more than 5 bucks.
( ) 3/8 Meh-diocre. It‘s okay. Don't pay more than 10 bucks.
( ) 4/8 Decent, but not for everybody. Don't pay more than 15 bucks.
( ) 5/8 Good game, Must-play for genre- / series-fans. Worth 20 to 25 bucks max, if you are not a fan.
(X) 6/8 Great game, universal recommendation. 30 bucks would be a steal for this.
( ) 7/8 Outstanding game, a milestone of it‘s respective genre. Definitely worth its full prize.
( ) 8/8 Simply one of the best games ever made. Get this, the prize doesn't matter.
