Description
Guard a newly discovered Knossos portal in the Nebula beyond Gamma Draconis. And find secrets from the past....

Storyline:
I was extremely disappointed in the briefing of Ancestors. The briefing was filled to and over the brim with bad logic and typos; "to" instead of "it", for example. The Unknown icon is used - not a bad idea until you realize that the Unknown icon appears as a nebula. I can't imagine that the author didn't notice that. The player is told that the new Knossos must be recently activated, since it wasn't detected before - but the radar range in this mission is <b>under 400 meters</b>! More on that later. <BR>The story introduced here is just plain wierd - and it's not resolved at all. It simply raises a great number of questions that aren't answered. This <i>might</i> make a good start to a campaign, but even if the author releases a sequel at some point, this is just extremely confusing.

Balance:
The action, for the most part, is fast a furious. The player's wingmen are carved to pieces very quickly, and anyone in the default Ares fighter is going to need some very fancy flying skills to take down the dozen or so Maras and other fighters that will be swarming about at any given time. There is a dangerous Rakshasa, but it's easily handled by the friendly cruiser that enters.

Design:
Much like the story, the design in this mission was extrmely diappointing. The detection range, as I said previously, is about 300 meters. This makes dogfighting hard, and wouldn't be too bad if the story didn't place so much importance on avoiding detection. The first objective - to await reinforcements - is completed long before any friendlies arrive, and there is never another objective, although the Directives box and in-game messages tell the player to guard the science vessel that warps in. Moreover, there isn't even a beep to alert the player to an incoming message, and the Command persona morphs to being male and of a different racial background when speaking out loud for two messages. The enemy is far too numerous for its own good, and the cruiser duel has little impact on anything else in the mission.

Gameplay:
The dogfighting in Ancestors is fun if sometimes aggrivating, and the super-short-range sensors might make things interesting if the mission amounted to more than a simple dogfight. However, it's no more than a dogfight, and the story problems really do make the mission less interesting.

Other Thoughts:
Yeah, it's my first review in months.