Project Sylpheed is a straight-up space action game in a similar vein to the Ace Combat series in that you fly a spaceship, command a number of wingmen, and basically fly around launching dozens of missiles at anything in range. Rinse and repeat.
We’ll begin with the all-important premise (which plays a pretty important role given how the first 3-4 minutes of the campaign consist of cutscenes). In the year 2632, humanity has expanded out into space to the point of occupying 11 star systems. Everyone’s pretty much happy under the lead of the major ruling military body – the TCAF (Terra Central Armed Forces), but then an accident involving a terraforming project ends up effectively annihilating the world of Acheron. This soon triggers a rebellion from a set of systems, who declare themselves the “ADAN Freedom Alliance” and band together to fight the TCAF. Caught in the middle is pilot-in-training Katana Faraway, whose close friend (a nice chap by the name of Margras) ends up fighting on the side of ADAN. This leads to a massive conflict which engulfs all the major sectors, and (as usual) threatens the safety of Earth.
Players are put in control of a new prototype fighter called the ‘Delta Saber’, which translates gameplay-wise into being a reason why your own ship is a million times better than any other fighter in the game. In fact, once you get the basic controls down pat, there’s barely anything else in the game that can hold a candle to your fighter. You need this advantage, though, as the bad guys send wave after wave of ships at you.
Throughout the storyline, ADAN forces are making constant sieges against the TCAF frontlines, and your job will often entail covering retreating vessels or performing convoy escorts while your friendly forces regroup. Granted, escort missions usually aren’t the brightest point of a game’s campaign, but Sylpheed handles them nicely thanks to a focus on ‘Battle of Endor’ syndrome – many of the missions involve commencing surgical strikes or covering friendly capital ships while they bring their heavy weapons to bear on an enemy fleet, which means there’s a lot of gratuitous firepower flying around to enjoy.
This is helped along further by the fast-paced gameplay, which rewards you for having quick reflexes. Guiding your ultra-maneuverable fighter around is also a snap; the “B” button is held down in conjunction with a push from the analogue stick to quickly juke from side to side, or execute a 180-degree loop in the opposite direction. By default the right trigger accelerates, while the left-trigger slows you down, and double-tapping these will either engage your afterburners for ludicrous speed, or engage a nifty ‘power cut’ feature to drift past larger targets.
The camera is easily rotated around your fighter in third-person or padlocked to a targeted enemy, making it easier to navigate through space. Something I have to applaud the developers for also is the ability to customize most of the controls in the game to anything desired, adding a great deal more flexibility to the game. While there is still a bit of a learning curve to get started, a set of training missions are helpfully provided to introduce new players.
If there is one major reason to purchase Project: Sylpheed, it’s for the opportunity to load an ever-ridiculous payload of weapons to your fighter. Initially you start with some basic anti-fighter missiles, machine guns, and cannons, but eventually move up to larger and more powerful toys, like an upgraded missile rack that can lock onto sixty targets at once before unleashing a swarm of death, or a mine-launcher which has one of the greatest descriptions in gamedom:“An anti-aircraft mine that uses its mobility energy and inertia control motor to approach its target, then implodes and fires nuclear lasers at its surroundings.”.
Between missions you can go into the Hangar screen and physically change which weapons you’ll carry into the next battle too, and by the end of the game it gets to the point where your tiny fighter is almost completely obscured by these outrageous, oversized weapons of mass destruction. Sure, those who strive for some semblance of ‘realism’ in their space titles will probably find this a turn-off, but that’s really missing the point. The game adds a cool weapon-development gimmick too, where you need to accumulate points to ‘manufacture’ new weapons as the game goes on. There’s also the expected “Game+” functionality, so once you beat the game, you can play through it a second time with all of the points and weapons you’ve picked up thus far.
