Description
With the GTVA's final assault against the Neo-Terran Front in Polaris at full swing, you are transferred to the GTVA Colossus to help strike the final blow. Version 2 fixes the spelling and grammatical mistakes (hopefully all) found in the first version and decreases the overall difficulty level for a less frustrating game.

Storyline:
As with SiriusXÂ’s other missions thereÂ’s a pretty good storyline working here, though nothing incredibly original. The player is transferred to the Colossus to participate in the final attack on Polaris, but things donÂ’t go as planned and before long youÂ’re defending a Vasudan destroyer. Everything seems logical and the mission is kept alive by plenty of messages. The briefing and Command briefing are fine, even including animations, and all icons match up. A good job all around, then. If I were to nit-pick IÂ’d say that there are a couple of spelling errors in the debriefing, but nothing too major.

Balance:
A difficult mission – without a doubt the hardest one that this author has released yet. It took me half-a-dozen tries to finish the mission for a number of reasons, and you certainly have a lot to do: intercept bombers, engage in a little dogfighting and take down beam cannons (without Trebuchets!) to ensure the survival of the GVD Khopesh. Loadout is locked, which again conveys the urgency of the situation. Fortunately it’s been chosen well – you’re in an Artemis with Hornets and bombs, so you’re armed for every eventuality. Still, the Artemis isn’t the most well armoured thing in the world and with the amount of punishment you take, it’s sometimes quite difficult to survive.

Design:
Looking over the visible design everything appears to be fine, with nothing interfering in mission flow or seeming visibly broken. Looking into the events editor, not everything is laid out as cleanly as it could have been – beam-frees can be combined on one s-exp, remember. The RTB directive will also not show up unless you fulfil all of your goals (the loss of the cruisers won’t fail you the mission but it breaks the RTB, in other words). Other than that, there’s little wrong with the mission, the author using chains and all directives working properly.

Gameplay:
Gameplay is challenging to say the least; reaching frustrating levels of difficulty when youÂ’re tasked with the destruction of bombers, fighters and a corvette at the same time. ItÂ’s a nice, difficult challenge to save the cruisers and the Khopesh wonÂ’t survive with many hits left. The Colossus makes a nice cameo at the end, right when you think that thereÂ’s no way you can win, showing itÂ’s power and being generally cool. :)

Other Thoughts:
Not one for the novices, but those experienced pilots should have a blast with this one – and the arrival of the Colossus is excellent. And now I have spoiled it. Muwahaha...