kaba Posted April 11, 2020 Posted April 11, 2020 I’ve just completed the campaign and thought I’d leave some feedback. Mild spoilers. Overall I think this campaign was very strong. There are plenty of reviews and comments out there that go into great detail on all the ways that this campaign stands out in terms of general quality; for a good example of this, see here. For the sake of brevity, I won’t repeat this (deserved) praise. I’ll instead focus on the points that I felt strongly about, both positive and constructive. Firstly, the gameplay. This campaign is long - clocking up to around 20-30 hours of gameplay, and packed with a decent mix of combat missions. Variety is the key word - you’ve got planned strikes where you should be aiming to hit your time-on-target to the second, you’ve got search and destroy patrols that feel like you are hunting bad guys in the wilderness, and you’ve got the bread and butter of the A-10C: frantic CAS flights. There were times where I would have preferred more ‘technical’ flying and navigation, for example more IFR, A2A refuelling, etc. I think this would keep the player on their toes rather than consistently being cushioned by the very forgiving systems of the A-10C. But, I do appreciate that this might not be to everyone’s taste, and ramping up the technical difficulty may add some barriers to entry. Missions are carried out across a fairly mixed set of conditions. Mostly you’ll find yourself flying during calm and well-lit daytime, which makes for more straightforward flying. There are some night missions, which in the 2.5.6 OpenBeta updated lighting look excellent. A number of missions in bad weather with a punishing cloud deck present a good challenge. The campaign was generally very clear and coherent. It was usually well communicated how your missions contributed to the objectives of the campaign, and the flow of missions felt like a drawn-out war against an enemy force, rather than a series of disconnected clashes. The last few missions in particular gave a good amount of closure - you have cut down your enemy from a pervasive aggressor force to a band of stragglers, and now you are finally mopping up across their desperate last stands. The action in each mission is well balanced and rarely leaves the player with a dull moment between the combat, the chatter while flying to and from the AO, and the twists over the course of the missions. Although it’s true that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, there was perhaps a ‘pattern’ to the missions where halfway through each objective something goes awry. It became almost predictable that a new objective or event would occur midway through a mission, rather than it being a surprise. Due to the mix of targets and objectives you’ll face, you’ll need to be proficient with LGBs, JDAMs, unguided bombs, rockets and the mighty GAU-8 cannon. This keeps the player on their toes throughout the missions and the ‘realistic’ loadouts mean that precision or standoff weapons are limited. You are never overloaded with six mavericks and four CBUs - so if your shots are not well-thought out & precisely delivered, you might be left without enough munitions to complete an objective. There is perhaps an overreliance on rockets which suffer from poor frag damage modelling, terrain clutter, and can leave you at the mercy of bad luck, which can lead to some frustrations. The campaign still lets you finish a mission you did not complete perfectly, but this can sometimes stall your progress through the narrative of the mission. Due to a couple of misses (one due to my own error, one due to unlucky wind effects), I found myself at one point left without any munitions left to destroy a bunker, and my wingman (although well-equipped with LGBs and JDAMs) refused to engage this primary target. This stopped any further comms through the mission as I had to RTB in shame. This is an example more of DCS bugs than any issue with the campaign itself, but the complexity of missions means that any janks in the core game can be really apparent. This is particularly the case where you need to place some reliance on wingmen to complete their goals, especially in target-rich environments. This puts you at a real risk from their incompetence - more than once I had to restart a mission due to wingmen enthusiastically ploughing themselves into terrain when ordered to strike a target. Complex trigger setups throughout these missions also means that the player is often at the mercy of DCS bugs, so OpenBeta players beware. Baltic Dragon was very quick to update for any new bugs, so the few game-breakers I encountered were fixed pretty rapidly. Throughout these missions you have a series of high quality briefing documents, maps and intel that adds to both mission clarity and overall immersion. I particularly appreciated having the key mission details in customised kneeboards, as this let me consult briefing images without pausing the game and breaking immersion. I did note a few inconsistencies between briefing documents such as incorrect callsigns, objectives from the wrong missions, etc. At one point coordinates called out by a friendly spotter were also wrong, which was a bit of a pain. These are minor snags and did not cause any significant problems. Finally I’ll touch on the characterisation and personality in this campaign, and here is where the work put into the missions really stands out. The comms in the mission are engaging and well voiced. I particularly like the radio fiddling required - switching channels depending on who you need to contact, sometimes frantically in the middle of combat, makes for ‘fun admin’ and I wish this was incorporated into more campaigns. The communications with your wingmen, other flights, and mission controllers also brings a lot of life to the missions. Whereas some other DCS campaigns can fall foul of feeling quite lifeless, this campaign is probably the best example of adding personality and life to the world around you, be it with chatter from your wingmen or comms from other flights unconnected to your own mission. The strong balance of action, flight and personality throughout this lengthy campaign left me very entertained - and like other commentators I would flag this as the best-made DLC campaign that you can get at this time. Give it a try if you haven’t already and I think you’ll see what I mean.
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