I never played Academy, but loved the splitscreen two-player option that Armada provided. Even back in the day, I never really got into the campaign mode, as it lacks the story line from the regular Wing Commander games. (Let's face it, WC was graphically advanced in its day, but the gameplay itself wasn't all that impressive. The story line did make it an immersive experience.) The graphics are pretty good, rather like WC3, if only in low resolution. Get a friend to play it against and try that two-player mode. Split screen works great. Or, if you're adventurous, try getting the net or null modem options to work with DOSBox.

I always love action-strategy hybrids like the first Star Control, so I'm probably biased. Nonetheless, I always love Wing Commander Armada. The strategy part is simple and easy to get into, yet not as shallow as it initially looks. Sometimes, for example, you have to ship resources back and forth to speed up development in certain areas (particularly front lines), but if you don't escort your transport, your plan may go astray. And just like Star Control, you can build fortress at certain "choke points" to stop enemy advances.

The biggest problem in this game is its AI (or the lack thereof). On easy and medium setting, the enemy is always easy to beat. On the most difficult setting, the enemy resorts to the most blatant AI cheat possible; humongous numerical advantage. Such onslaught degrades the game into merely another variant of gauntlet, where you have to rely solely on your arcade skills to overcome wave and wave of enemy fighters, and renders any strategy irrelevant.

I liked Armada for the strategy element and had fun with it, but I haven't played the game in well over 10 years so I can't tell you how it holds up today.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

The biggest problem in this game is its AI (or the lack thereof). On easy and medium setting, the enemy is always easy to beat. On the most difficult setting, the enemy resorts to the most blatant AI cheat possible; humongous numerical advantage. Such onslaught degrades the game into merely another variant of gauntlet, where you have to rely solely on your arcade skills to overcome wave and wave of enemy fighters, and renders any strategy irrelevant.

That's basically what one or two of the reviews on Mobygames says too. Strategy games rather frequently fall apart because of AI.

Yup, but the AI in WCA is exceptionally abysmal. I have yet to try PiArmada though... it probably has better AI.

I got WC Academy thinking that with the level editor there would be a lot of user created levels to play through. Of course this was back in the BBS days so there really wasn't a good distribution method like we have now with the Internet, so I never did stumble across any that were available. The editor was fun to play with for a little while, but without any real storyline, I got bored pretty fast just doing dogfights. These days this would have been included in one of the other WC games as a level editor, but back then they were even selling speech packs if you wanted digital speech in the WC games, so they could get away with selling extras that we take for granted now.

I guess you have to beat the AI at hard level by flying in circles with the arrow until the enemy runs out of afterburner fuel... no fun.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

I guess you have to beat the AI at hard level by flying in circles with the arrow until the enemy runs out of afterburner fuel... no fun.

Hmmm...interesting tactics. But do the AI enemy ships actually have limited fuel supply?

Usually the enemies have unlimited ammos/fuels in most games. (The way THEY cheat us. 😉)

Yes, it's limited. And as the AI doesn't seem to take it into account it's like a sitting duck. But it takes a while...