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A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of Project Sylpheed from Edelman and Microsoft to review for the site. I was pretty happy to receive this assignment, because I had been looking at playing Project Sylpheed since its announcement. Trust me, I am a sucker for anything that looks remotely anime or Robotech related, so to get both of those in one package was amazing.

Project Sylpheed puts you in the seat of a space opera that is wrapped around combat in your Delta Saber fighter. While the story will keep you progressing to the end, the similar objectives and occasional stutter in frame rate will keep you from truly appreciating this title to its fullest.

You start the game out as a fighter pilot by the name of Katana. You are a hotshot rookie that has just started flying for the Terrans, one of the forces that have come from Earth. The Terrans can be compared to Star Trek’s “Federation”, which makes them the ruling body of the galaxy. There is a second faction from Earth called Aden, and they have some issue with the Terran government that pushes them to war. Complicating matters further is the fact that your former teammate, and mentor, Margras, has been pressured into fighting for the Aden forces. The story covers a lot of ground and is fairly interesting. Square-Enix, the designer, has always written great stories that keep the player interested and that stays the same here.

The focus of the game is flying your Delta Saber, which looks like a souped-up F-15 with rockets instead of turbines for propulsion, through mission objectives. Each mission will have a main objective as well as several optional objectives. You will be given your mission briefing that will explain your main objective, but for some reason, it does not point out your optional objectives. As a matter of fact, you never seem to know what your optional objectives are until you actually meet one of them. Flying the Saber is simple and uses the standard layout for a flight sim on the console. The only difference is the weapons. They are sluggish to respond and they never seem to do the damage you would think. Missions are never overly difficult, and normally come down to destroy “X” number of ships before the mission ends. But occasionally you will receive out of the ordinary missions, like destroying mines or going head to head with an ace. These missions come at good times, because they normally show up when you start to think the missions are getting boring.

The visuals in the game are a mixed bag. The cut scenes look great and are up to the standard you would expect from a Square-Enix game. They would fit in on any anime show on TV and they have great expression on their faces when something happens. All the menu screens that show your briefings, stats and other items are generic and did not have any stand out features. It doesn’t hurt the game, but it had nothing that stood out. In-game, the engine produced nice detail of your ship, which you are riding right behind, but all the other ships have little to no detail in them when you get close. Enemy fighters look a bit blocky at times, and the bigger cruisers and destroyers of the enemy are a drab green that just looks flat. The Terran battleships have more detail in them, but it still doesn’t quite stand out when compared to the cut scenes. Also, this game commits a grave sin in the graphics department, as it turns into a stuttering mess in the last few battles when the number of ships on the screen becomes numerous. In a game that does not have stand out graphics, I can’t understand why graphical slowdowns show up.

The story will keep you hooked when the action gets a bit rough. Yes it is standard anime fiction and follows a predictable pattern, but that is not always a bad thing. Drama and timing keep the story moving at a brisk pace. Details come at you in pieces about characters and you start to try to put in all together. Normally, you figure out the end of the story faster than it gets there, but the ride along the way is nice. One character that disappointed me, because we only see her in the story mode was Doris Eagan. She is the main bad “guy”, but we never learn too much about her or how she got to power. She just seems to have taken over for her father, without much in the way of an election to power.

It is rare when the backing music tracks outshine all the other sounds in the game, but in Project Sylpheed, it is the this music in each level that really stood out. The music really projects the feel of the level or the cut scene and adds a lot of weight to the game. Weapons and sounds while flying your missions are average at best. You never really hear your missiles and the sound of guns and cannons just sound light compared to the damage that they lay down. Also, there are so many sounds coming at you while you are flying, it can get to sound like a bunch of clutter, or too much audio input to process at one time. Character voiceovers have some passion, but nothing that would be Oscar-worthy. They do help convey the story well, but they never seem to match the emotional intensity of the look on the character’s face.

The game does not have a lot of flaws that stand out. The frame rate issue is a big one, because it is something that this game should not have. It is not pushing out Oblivion-like textures and graphics, so it is a bit disappointing to see the game have so much slowdown in the final battles. Also, the game is a bit short, and with no multiplayer, it has limited replay value. The only reason you will find yourself going back to play through again is for some of the more difficult aggregate achievements, requiring a certain amount of kills or tonnage of ships destroyed.

Overall, the game is good for the price. At $39.95, you get a good shooter with a solid, well written story. You may not get much out of it once you finish the game, but you will probably enjoy the ride along the way. I give it 3 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.