I was definitely not a fan of this battle. I thought the plot line was kind of dumb for something I would expect for the TIE Corps – I have to try out to be stationed on board the ISD Chimaera and fly for Grand Admiral Thrawn? I have to say, Grand Admiral Thrawn’s standards are pretty low. I completed the entire battle in under 10 minutes. Blow up some Rebel fighters, blow up some mines, capture some things, and then blast on an entire convoy. I did not find the mission briefings particularly funny and engaging, and the battle creator is going to lose points for making me fly an assault gunboat. NEVER do that.
Bonus points, however, for funny flight group names and the funny cargo on board the convoys. X-W Group Tortillas, Tapas, Fidel, Cuba, finding AOL CD’s and cigarillos aboard the convoys. Highly amused by that. Other than that, it was pretty dull.

I really liked this battle! It was super fun. The plot line of a worm hole opening near where a Star Destroyer is operating, especially considering the fact that the Rebels were using it to attack us. It was also nice to fly with some friendly neutrals for once instead of having them hate us. We aren’t all bad, you know? Other than some misspellings (does anyone proofread these?) and making me fly a Missile Boat in 2 missions I feel like this is one of the better battles in the compendium. It is really well done. The mission briefings were engaging and funny, the instructions were clear (it is sad how rare that is) and I really liked the attempt by the battle creator to make what was going on “believable.” Also, extra points for the funny flight group names – I especially appreciated the USMC reference in the final mission.

This battle was ridiculously easy and short but I thought it was still pretty fun. All of the missions really boiled down to keep a vague eye on your Assault Transports while blowing away ships left and right. I know I am in the minority but I love the battles that are basically shooting galleries…this battle was certainly a target rich environment! Bonus points to the mission creator, who named one of the T-wing flight groups Tumadre. Very nice. The story line was at least believable – a technological upgrade mission gone awry, with the New Republic always poking its nose in where it does not belong. Big surprise there. And some very sketchy pirates attempting to purchase sophisticated Imperial military equipment, not really a big surprise there. Overall, not a bad battle. You blow up Rebels and pirates and you defend the Empire, what more can you ask for? Nothing!

I did not think this battle was very fun at all. First off, let me address one thing. I will admit that I am not completely familiar with using Imperial military equipment and protocol to address family issues, but is the protagonist of this battle really just allowed to take an entire Imperial Star Destroyer based on the fact that his long lost sister MIGHT have contacted him through the Force? It seems a little ridiculous to put the lives of our young Imperial sons and daughters at risk just to reunite the family, but maybe that is just me. Darth Vader did it...but that is Darth Vader, so oh well. Some of the briefings were not very clear and there were a ton of misspellings – for instance, in the last mission, it is not very clear that you are supposed to slow down and be boarded, and the XvT chat logs are notoriously hard to read.

I thought this battle was pretty fun but I found a few bugs that were rather annoying that I went ahead and reported. For starters, in mission 2, do not call for reinforcements or it hits a mission breaking craft limit bug that prevents mission critical craft from appearing and doing their job. In mission 5, do not help the TIE Defenders disable FRT Bright. I am not sure why that really makes a difference but when I helped them disable it, FRT Gale never showed up to capture it. I tried again, thanks to the advice of our esteemed Tactical Officer, and just ignored it and then it worked fine.
Overall this was a pretty fun battle with a believable (and hilarious!) plot and very fun missions, enough that I did not mind having to repeat them a few times. ;) It was nice to see some names from the old EH like Darklord and Corran Force.

I really liked this battle. I am all about that pew pew life and, I assure you, there was plenty of pew pew in this battle. The third and fourth missions were particularly fun and I found the battles to be very dramatic, it is basically the Sovereign against an entire Republic battlegroup and it was quite fun. Yeah, the missions were basically identical and I see a lot of people in the reviews did not like that, but what is not to love about helping more Rebels become one with the Force? I do not have an issue with it. The fifth mission I found pretty annoying because it would take close to 20 minutes if I was not using cheats, and those platforms take forrrrrrrever to blow up. By the time this battle was over, I felt like I had definitely served the Empire and then some. Well done!

This battle was pretty fun! I took one point off for making me fly an Assault Gunboat. That is always a detractor from what was otherwise a good battle. I swear, those things are like flying pregnant yaks. I thought the story was a bit boring as the aftermath of the Battle of Hoth has been a bit done to death. Also, that inspection mission (I think mission 4? I forgot. I’m hungover) was pretty seriously frustrating with mag pulse torpedoes flying everywhere and me only being able to move like 10 feet at a time before being hit by another. Also, the stuff I was supposed to capture kept getting blown to bits and I could not figure out why for a while...once I did, I had to tell everyone to ignore them and I concentrated on them myself so we would not keep failing the mission. Overall good battle!

This battle was pretty fun although it was crazy easy even on easy mode. Mission 3 has a slight glitch where you start taking engine wash as soon as you deploy, which is pretty irritating. All the missions are pretty reasonable and the best part is that they are over quickly – really, all you need to do is just focus on the bomber craft that are coming after your capital ships. Pay close attention to the briefings or you are going to be super confused, much like I was, as to what is going on. On the mission where you have to inspect all the craft (I think mission 4), just dump your lasers and shields and go as fast as you can. You are dodging lasers from assault transports, frigates, Calamari cruisers, and corvettes, so their laser batteries are pretty static and easy to move around. Overall good battle and was fun!

This battle was honestly just okay. I thought the plot line was interesting – an alternate universe where the Empire flies alphabet fighters and the Rebellion flies gunboats? Sure, give the crappy ships to them I guess. I hate gunboats. Many of these missions were unbelievably long. The shorter ones were 10 minutes, a couple of them were close to 20. Make sure you are really, really paying attention during your briefing or you are not going to know what the hell is going on – I was guilty of this several times. Also, in mission 4, SHU Flavia did not show up for me during my first attempt. I think maybe it was a craft limit issue? When I replayed it again, I had no issues. Also, in the last mission, you do not really need to fly inside the CTRNS, you can just keep flying around and the mission will complete itself.

I did not like this battle at all. It was dull and uninteresting on easy mode (sorry, I suck at piloting...that is why I am an admiral!). Then, suddenly, on the last mission it gets insanely hard even on easy mode where you have to try to blow up a Calamari Cruiser and two Victory-class Star Destroyers in a single missile boat with pathetically useless computer AI assistance. I ended up just turning the cheats on to get through it because it was taking forever and I had stuff to do ;) One issue – the second mission was confusingly bugged and not clear. The objectives tell you to destroy your drones and prevent enemy drones from being destroyed. They are serious. You literally have to blow up the flight group that says “Theirs” instead of “Yours,” so using R to target the nearest enemy is not helpful. You have to cycle through and manually pick the correct flight group to blow up. Hope this helps in the future.

This battle was pretty okay. It could be a little too easy at times, even on easy mode. Even though the game tries to lock you into a TIE Fighter, TIE Bomber, or TIE Interceptor, you can easily change to ships with bigger warhead capacities like the Assault Gunboat. You end up dogfighting Z-95 Headhunters in a TIE Advanced, so it does get a little bit too easy. There were some funny parts to it, like when you inspect the containers and they either have Ewoks or Gungans in them. I made sure to take the time to blow them up ;) However, I am not sure what the point is to having you inspect all those containers in the first place. The beginning of every mission requires you to inspect a bunch of containers that then triggers the ships to arrive that you need to destroy. I am not sure why you could not just start off doing that instead of inspecting things. Otherwise, pretty fun!

So I will be honest, I really liked this mission! It was fun and engaging and actually believable for once. Some of the story lines I have played for missions are really way out there. For mission 2, if you play on easy, just power down and wait it out. Go make a sandwich. No enemies come in. It does get pretty dull. But I am kind of a crappy pilot, so I usually play on easy. The plot is that basically your CMDR gets lost during a battle and your squadron has to go on a mission to hunt him down, while at the same time mixing it up with pilots and Rebel scum. The briefings are absolutely hilarious, and really sounds like some comical crap that would happen aboard the Warrior. In flight chatter is hilarious too, and the missions seem very well balanced and definitely beatable without being difficult.

I actually thought this battle was very fun. It is kind of cool to sort of feel like you are reliving the career of a famous Emperor’s Hammer pilot. I remember Adrenaline from my initial stint in the Emperor’s Hammer, and remember her as Wing Commander of Wing XI and Commodore of the Immortal, so it is cool to play through a little bit of history. The plot was very interesting and the missions were fun, however my only knock on this battle would be the fact that I was made to fly an assault gunboat, preybird fighter, and a skipray blastboat. Are you trying to piss me off or something?
Other than that it was really fun, the missions were engaging, and it kind of makes me wish Adrenaline was still in the fleet. Also, for the last mission, just inspect the corvette. It will slam itself repeatedly into the shipyard and destroy itself.

I thought this battle was pretty good. I want to point out however, that I am a terrible pilot, and on easy mode I found it ridiculously easy. Usually easy mode is plenty challenging for me but I had no issues. The plot was interesting and made sense (I think it borrows a bit from that Habeen/Narwaak battle in the vanilla TIE Fighter?). Automatically taking off one star for making me fly an assault gunboat, I hate those stupid things. One bug I did notice, the first two missions say you are going to have a load of concussion missiles but you do not get any. And some tips for the final mission which required some trial and error for me – head towards the shuttle in front of you, tell your idiot wingman to ignore it or he will destroy it, then tell him to destroy the other one. He will still screw that up so after you disable your shuttle, turn around and drop two concussion missiles into it.

Okay, yeah, I really hated this battle. First off, who the hell is this Darksaber guy? Why are you named after a Mandalorian weapon? And secondly, why am I helping you reunite with your cousin? But anyway, the plot line was a bit confusing and did not make much sense. You are just sort of thrown into this haphazard plot with no sense of why or where. Many of the missions are also excruciating, involving multiple hyper jumps around and trying to protect a weak ass Lambda shuttle. While we are on this topic, I will automatically hate you if you ever make me fly an entire battle in an Assault Gunboat. I do not know who designed this battle, but I hate you. Meet me on the deck of the Warrior for a lightsaber duel. Also while we are on this topic, mission 2 can be completely in under a minute. Dump all your shields and lasers, fly up to the platform to inspect it, and you’re done.

I definitely did not care for this battle. Once the action gets started it is actually sort of fun, but the issue is that it takes so long for action to start in any of the missions. In missions 3, 4, and 5 you wait a solid five minutes before the action begins. That is completely unacceptable. I think in mission 4, the freighters floating around were supposed to destroy the platform. I ended up watching the freighters fly around aimlessly and instead just went up and blasted my own platform to oblivion so we could move the mission along. However, the storyline is pretty funny, especially if you find journalists annoying like I do. I appreciated the humor in the mission briefing and borderline curse words. When things get rolling it is pretty fun with lots of dogfighting. A little more thought and perhaps a bit more clearer objectives would have made things smoother.

The plot was a solid meh, although the actual flying itself was fun. I am still mad at Plif for making me fly a battle where I had to fly a missile boat, the one craft I probably hate more than a TIE Bomber. The last mission is awful. It takes nearly 15 minutes to complete, and I lost it a couple times. The key is to make sure that you’re protecting the freighters and NOT the heavy lifters like the tips tell you. I am not sure why it even says that. Interestingly, I went to the bathroom for a solid 5 minutes while waiting for the lifters do their thing, and some X Wings flew in. They didn’t even target me. You can get right up next to basically all the ships and they will completely ignore you. Be sure to destroy any bomber ships that come in.

I tried this mission out for the first time and was honestly just very whelmed by it. I am not really an X Wing versus TIE Fighter fan, mostly because I suck at it and there is no cheating option, so I play it sparingly at best. The missions were all super basic, with basically a just a lot of dog fighting. Do not get me wrong, I am all about blowing up as many Rebels as possible, but I am still not sure what murderer I was even capturing. Honestly, the plot made very little sense. I flew it on easy and it was pretty manageable – blowing up X Wings and A Wings and a platform were basically the toughest things you had to do. I would recommend this to someone looking for some easy BSF points as I finished the last mission in about 90 seconds with the help of my solid wingmates.

I thought this mission was pretty fun! Granted, the first mission was a bit confusing where the instructions were unclear and you are essentially told to ignore craft that are primary mission objectives, but after failing it a couple times I finally figured it out (reading the briefings definitely helps, but I do not have time for that!). Also, there is one mission that asks you to dog fight in a Missile Boat. Please do not ever do that again. Dog fighting in a Missile Boat feels like a long, slow slog. I found the last mission to be the most fun, as you are in a TIE Defender doing lots of dog fighting – which is my favorite thing to do in a TIE Defender. Once I destroyed all the fighters I realized all my wing mates were dead, so I got to blow up everything by myself which was pretty fun. Overall it had an enjoyable plot, as it is nice to see the TIE Corps conquering new territory!

Now that I have finished all these Rion missions I can reflect a bit on them. While they did contain a few interesting plot twists, overall, the plot line could be a bit confusing. The English really suffered throughout all of these battles (especially this one) and reading it was borderline uncomfortable. I thought the plot twist in the final mission – where you hyper into a sector only to be surprised by three separate parties in combat together and you just get to sit there and watch them blow each other to pieces – was a very fitting and confusing way to end this campaign. Overall it was pretty fun, with some horrid English that really detracted from it all. A little pro tip for the final mission – go after all the capital ships. Just do not pay the starfighters any mind. The very intelligent navigation team on the Warspite flies directly at the capital ships, and they WILL destroy it if you don’t take them down.

I thought this one was pretty fun too! A couple issues in here however: number one, trying to force a race of people into negotiations to become Imperial citizens is a direct rip off of the TIE Fighter storyline. Secondly, I believe on mission three, some freighters enter the battle area and hyper directly through a Star Destroyer. And easy fix, to be sure, and it didn’t really affect the mission or storyline in any way but it was something I noticed almost immediately as it was happening. There were lots of dogfights, to be sure, which is something I really love even if I kind of suck at them, but the fact remains – why are we trying to force people into an alliance with the Empire? Are we really that unlikeable? Did we even TRY diplomacy first before attempting to put brave Imperial men and women’s lives on the line? So much violence. :(

Okay, so this one was pretty fun but I do have a couple issues. First off, at the beginning of mission 3, you collide with someone as soon as you exit hyperspace. It is not a big issue but it is definitely annoying. Also in mission three – you’re really gonna put me up against 10+ capital ships in a TIE Defender? Come on man, at least put me in a Missile Boat or something so I have a chance instead of making probably 100+ passes on these ships with my lasers. That was insane. Also, why are trying to capture and force these people into an alliance with us? Did we make any attempt what so ever at negotiations and diplomacy first? Why are we putting the lives of our brave Imperial men and women on the line without at least attempting diplomacy first? Nonetheless, it was fun and good dogfighting!

Well, I am still not sure who these Rion are or why we’re pretending to be Rebels establishing an Imperial presence in their space but by god we are really kicking their ass lately. I have to say, I am really liking these battles just for the sheer fun of them even though they do not quite make sense. The English is not great (and I was also under the impression that swear words were not allowed? Maybe I’m wrong?). A lot of the missions don’t make sense and of course every one of these battles has had the inevitable jump from point to useless point missions in at least one mission. I do not quite understand the point. But this battle (and all the Rion battles) definitely make up for it by being able to blow away tons of shieldless TIEs in X-wings or A-wings and even fly the occasional B-wing.

This battle was enthusiastically just okay. It had both its bad and good moments tempered a little by a very boring and confusing plotline. Not sure where to begin with that one. I think the very poor English prevented a lot of things and ideas from coming across. The first few missions were quite boring – I’m not sure how we found this shipyard or this minefield but by god we are going to blow the crap out of them. To the creator’s credit, however, missions 4 and 5 absolutely made up for it. Lots of very big epic dogfighting with multiple Star Destroyers around. I will confess to the fact that it is all too fun to be in an X Wing with quad linked lasers blowing up a shieldless TIE Fighter with a single shot. Don’t worry, the pilot is an Imperial. It’s stolen technology anyway. Overall this battle was okay...it can be boring at times, but the last couple missions really saved it!

I thought this battle was pretty fun although it did feel a lot like a near carbon copy of the first Rion battle. Recon this, assault, more Rebels are coming so kill them, wait there are more Rebels here so we’re going to kill more, okay now go over here and kill them. The recon mission was a lot likely the recon mission in the first Rion battle – endlessly and uselessly hypering to and from various sectors to inspect craft that I know are not going to pop for the mission objectives. However, any mission that asks me to blow up lots of Rebels is always going to get at least a 3 in my book. Also one thing that broke the realism for me was there a comment about Christmas in the radio chatter. Considering this happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I don’t think Christianity has left the Earth yet.