When comparing STAR WARS: Rogue Squadron 3D vs Freelancer, the Slant community recommends Freelancer for most people. In the question“What are the best Space Sims on Steam?” Freelancer is ranked 2nd while STAR WARS: Rogue Squadron 3D is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Freelancer is:
This game has a really good story with lots of twists. Very well balanced side missions, your pay is based on the type of task being completed while multiplied by distance to target place and few other factors.
Specs
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Pros
Pro GIve a great sense of taking part in the StarWars universe
From the fantastic voice acting, the cinematic sequences to the licensed music and sound effects, this game gives off a great feeling of taking part in the universe of Star Wars. While there has been many games that have held the license, this has been regarded as one of the better titles for some time, which shows with the care they took in presentation.
Pro Easy to learn and play
Rogue Squadron has very accessible controls that allows for the game to have a bunch of differing missions due to how easy it is to fly the ships. More akin to Starfox over Star Wars flight sim titles such as X-Wing, allows for arcadey controls that is no where near as punishing as other sims. This means the game can be more accessible for any type of player.
Pro Expansive content
Even though this is an older game originally released for the Nintendo 64 back in 98, the amount of content is quite good as there is a plethora of missions available. Escort/rescue missions, dogfights and bombing runs make up some of this content, all of which take place on many different worlds or space set pieces, all of which take place in the cannon universe of Star Wars.
Pro Medal system allows for plenty of replayability
Each missions has a bronze, silver or gold medal that can be earned by completing the stage and certain tasks contained withing under a certain time limit. With gold being the toughest to earn, there is plenty of reason to revisit stages in order to earn the gold medal. This means hours of extra time spent with the game.
Pro Great story
This game has a really good story with lots of twists. Very well balanced side missions, your pay is based on the type of task being completed while multiplied by distance to target place and few other factors.
Pro Low system requirements
This game has very low hardware requirements. It can be played even on an old netbook with windows XP, 1 Ghz Intel Atom CPU, and 1GB RAM. Game runs with 40-60 fps without single crash.
Pro Easy to pickup and learn
The controls have been simplified to the point where it isn't intimidating for new players. You can't control which systems receive more/less power in tight situations, and other systems have been dummed down as well: repairing your ship can be done with the click of a button instead of needing to wait, there is no radar to track, and there's less information available making it easier to focus on a single task.
Pro Fun to replay in different ways
Pro Has fanbase made MODs and modified versions of the game
Has fanbase made MODs and modified versions of the game itself to get past the outdated graphics. There's story expansions, full remakes, and a lot more to experience!
Cons
Con Controller settings need to be tweaked
In order to get a controller working properly with the game, one will need to go into the settings of the game in order to change some options. Basically out of the box controller support is pretty poor, though once tweaked the controller will work fine.
Con In game resolution settings may crash the game
While there is a setting in the game to adjust the resolution the game is played in, changing this setting may make the game crash when a mission is launched. While this setting can be changed in an ini file which will not make the game crash, having a broken option in the game shows a lack of polish.
Con No graphical options
The game is basically a straight port of the N64 title, meaning there is zero graphical settings to be found other than resolution (which is broken). So for those looking for a more polished title that would allow them to take advantage of PC centric graphical settings, this may not be the game for you.
Con Mouse and keyboard controls are very poor
This game was originally designed for a controller, which shows when trying to play with a keyboard and mouse. While this port does offer keyboard controls, they work so poorly that it makes the game almost unplayable when using this control scheme.
Con Dated graphics
Freelancer was released in 2003, and as expected from a game that's nearly 15 years old the graphics look it.
Con Can be rather unbalanced
Some parts of the game are very hard even with the best available in-game hardware and you get killed almost instantly. In these parts it is better to launch Cruise engine.