Just finished the Darkest Dawn campaign

I just finished the game.

I want to thank the WCSaga team for making this game available to us all: gamers & WC fans alike. This game is more challenging than the original Wing Commander 3 & 4. You guys put a lot of thoughts on this in the mission design & voice acting is excellent. Moreover, some of the missions finally bring back the epic battle feeling (eg. Decisive battle), which has been long lost in years. The massive number of capships and fighter engagements also surpassed that of WC3 & WC4.

I never thought a fan-made mod game could have this level of polish. Despite some hiccups in a few missions, I can say you have achieved success in making Space Sim worthy again.

Job well done!

Note: I finished the game in Normal Difficulty using mouse only. Probably would replay it again once the Mac OSX port is ready.

We're working on that MaxOS thing.

I agree that it is a great game. I DO wish that it had checkpoints because of the difficulty of this game, however.

I probably will not be playing it again because it was so difficult for me, but it was an awesome game.

Having to repeat 15-30 minutes of mission just to get to the hard part is very bad.
Checkpoints would have been a lot better, or at least shorter missions or just putting the hart part in the beginning, while the "you can just watch" part in the end.

Pity, it's a good game, could have been a lot better with just a little more care on that side.
Luckily, editing stuff is easy, so the mission difficulty can be tweaked "manually"

I just about had to use some cheats just to get through this game!

It was just insane in some places...and that was on VERY EASY!

I do not even want to think about what it would be like on the hardest level without any cheats.

Try playing the older WC games. In WC3 Vaktoths and Paktahn's are ridiculous until you get the Excalibur. They're somewhat manageable in an Arrow, but even then it only takes a couple shots from the rear turrets to take out a light fighter's shields and armor.

As for the polish on this free game, check out the other prominent WC fan game WC: Standoff. Great game but in terms of gameplay balance and mission difficulty WC: Saga is perfection by comparison (and as close to perfect as one could expect w/o comparison ). Standoff is a very good game, but it is infuriating to fail a mission because your wingmen missed with some of their torpedoes or used too many on a single target so your wing doesn't have enough to finish off all the cap ships. It's one thing if you fail because you didn't protect the bombers, but having to replay a mission multiple times until you get lucky enough that the AI doesn't mess up is something else.

But I think that Unknown Enemy is even harder, because the enemy keeps shooting down your wingmen and the ships you're supposed to protect.

I can finally add my name to this as well. Heartfelt thanks team, it was a wild and wonderful ride. My congrats on a job very, very well done.