Finished Crossfire campaign! Review

Story wise, it's as gripping as the vanilla campaign. I honestly didn't see us meeting the Coalition, and the fact that they're made from the Russian and Chinese nation. It's almost cliche to include the Russians being distrustful and heavily weaponized, but it works really well considering the Alliance and the Coalition's past and them being harassed by the Nomads and Dom'Kavash all the time.

I see the humans meeting the Dom'Kavash when it's mentioned that Crossfire is going to be a sequel, but I didn't expect to JOIN FORCES with them to save the galaxy. It's a very nice twist, since we've been fighting the Nomads all the time, and the Kavash with the Coalition, we'd expect that they're the danger to the human colonies, but that's not the case. There's an even bigger force we have to fight.

The reformation of house Hispania between the Outcasts and Corsairs was also unexpected after the Outcasts attacks you on the way to the Dyson Sphere, and I still DIDN'T expect a fleet of their fighters appear for the final battle. That was a pretty powerful moment, for two of the most hated factions, that hates each other as well to come to us and help.

To be honest, from the rather... distracting new voice lines, I'm a bit skeptical on the rest of the mod, but it matters LITTLE near the climax of the story, starting from the house meeting in Kyushu. The appearance of the Kavash Dreadnoughts is pretty unexpected, especially when they started talking in english, that part was glorious. The arrival of the Coalition to save the day in the final battle is also pretty amazing, I completely forgot about them in the heat of battle.

And lastly, the name of the last mission kinda spoils me, and I already had a feeling that someone is going to die (I thought it's going to be Trent somehow lol), but Orilion and the Osiris' fate... is some powerful stuff. I actually saluted as the Osiris did her final journey into the black hole. Orilion saved our hide so many times, it's actually devastating to see him gone forever.

I would give the story a solid 9.5/10. The original story is something I'm a fan of, and Crossfire's story definitely is up there with the original~

First of all, I kinda like the new... prices. I thought it was ridiculous before I found out I can sell escape pods to prisons. I feel that unless you're going to buy a cruiser or a battleship, money is not an issue, and since I only play with VHF so far, I kinda like it.

The new enemy AI that flies better and using nanobots and batteries are kind of frustrating in the very early game, but it's pretty fun and challenging once you get a strong weapon. It also 'forces' me to be a better pilot, I love that~

But I notice a theme for this mod... LOTS of space exploring. Honestly, I'm not a fan of going through one end of a system to the other just to reach a jump gate over and over again. The one thing I like, however, is the tension. You don't know what to expect, like in the Altair system. Speaking of which, the occasional Kavash Gunboats made it more exciting at least, but the journey itself is kind tedious. Special mentions goes to where RNG plays a factor of when and how many enemies spawn to attack, like Lost Paradise and Inner Core in particular. That part was HELL

The in-planet sections like Lost Paradise and the Kavash moon is pretty sick despite the autopilot often derping, especially with the Go-to cruise engine.

One thing I REALLY love is the big battles, the battle of X-3043 has to be one of my favorites, especially with the 'danger theme'. I had way too much fun shooting at the Nomad battleships and knocking their turrets lol.

The final battle is also amazing, but I wish there's a way to take it easy on my laptop, I had to reduce the quality to minimum to make it playable .

Gameplay wise, I would give it a 7/10, sorry, but some missions felt way too tedious for me

I was gonna say how when I completed it, the Osiris simply just disappeared into the black hole and nothing happens. Turns out there's supposed to be a big explosion, but because I set everything to minimum to make the battle playable, it doesn't appear on my screen