Project Sylpheed

I wanted to love Project Sylpheed. After all, it’s everything Armored Core for the 360 should have been, and it’s in space! Despite all it has going for it though, the title has some glaring problems that can’t be ignored.

Overall this game is built well. The training missions are good, and for the most part, the controls are easy. Some buttons are utilized multiple times through double-tapping, but this is used sparingly. The reason I compared this title to Armored Core is that you can customize the loadout of your fighter before every mission. In addition, to obtain new equipment, you need to “research” it by spending points earned by completing each mission. The specs of new equipment, such as machine guns, railguns, and warship-killing torpedoes, are provided before research, so you know what you’re getting before devoting points toward it.

The gameplay is dependent on your loadout. Selections of special equipment, like extra ammo bays and radar systems to let you lock onto missiles, change your approach. With multi-lock missiles, sweeping your fighter’s nose (or camera, depending on the missile and if you’re actually using the right joystick) over targets generates a lock, and many missiles are released to track down their targets. With lasers and ballistics, timing and aiming are critical. In addition to weapon choice, you can use special abilities such as high-speed ramming moves and slowing down time. These come at the expense of shield energy but can be valuable tools in defeating enemies.

A major drawback in the design, however, is the camera controls, which are so bad that I didn’t use them for the majority of the game. Manual control is too sensitive to be useful, and the lock-on camera makes navigation of the battlefield an impossibility. The HUD notifies you the direction to turn to find an enemy, so it’s possible (and appealing) to play without touching the camera. The other potentially confusing control feature is the use of the left joystick to both yaw and pitch. However, after a short learning curve, getting around the battlefield becomes second nature.

Now, for the really bad news. The plot is the standard, “Earth colonizes space, colonies want independence; war ensues.” The characters are one dimensional and cliche (the just hero, the dependent girl, the double-crossing best friend, the psychopathic dictator). This game lasts only a few hours, especially with the arbitrary, imposed time limits. Worse, there’s little replay value for anyone but the most diehard achievement collectors. To top it all, there’s no multiplayer!

Despite these problems, however, the game is still worth playing… once. The missions are action-packed, frantic, and, when you get some of the more powerful weapons, full of explosive goodness. This is a rental game if I’ve ever seen one, since you’ll be done with it in a few sittings and there’s really no point in playing it through more than once. I only wish Square Enix would have fully realized the potential of the gameplay and built a better framework around it.