The Second Great War Part II

The Second Great War Part II is a 30-mission campaign for FreeSpace 2 by C "Sunil" Reddy.

Overview

Author: C "Sunil" Reddy

Originally posted: 06/22/00

Mods: stars.tbl

Missions: 30

Description

12 years after the Second Great War, we discover some more Shivans in an uninhabited system on the other side of Terran space. This campaign is sequel to the Second Great War, in which we set up a blockade, and then go on the offensive. This campaign has many unique things, such as civil wars, a juggernaut on our side, a Colossus on the enemy side, multiple Sathanas and Colossus juggernauts, bombing runs, unique recon missions, and a collapse node, but you are on the wrong side of it. How will you survive?

Comments

The campaign is widely derided in the FreeSpace community as one of the worst third-party campaigns ever to be released. However, for some people, the campaign is so bad that it has come full circle and crossed the "so bad it's good" line. Whether to regard it as a terrible campaign or a MST3K-style funny/stupid campaign is a matter of individual preference. -- Goober5000

"Actually, in terms of mindless 'let's blow a whole ton of **** up,' it's rather enjoyable. For instance, I fondly remember one mission where you single-handedly have to take out about 18 or so assorted Shivan cruisers and corvettes. (Turns out a double Helios more than smashes a Cain to smithereens.) However, if you're looking for a coherent story and sensible ship use, it's probably not your cup of tea." -- Mongoose, HLP

The readme file warns you that you should use time compression often. That's right. You usually have to reach jump nodes 20k meters away from you or wait for hostiles who must cover the same amount of distance. In terms of mission design, it's as simple as you can imagine. There are a few inspect-this-and-that missions, but most of the times you're only fighting seemingly endless waves of fighters and bombers who are hopelessly trying to do some harm to something you have to defend. Worse, there are missions where everyone in your squad flies bomber and you have to take down a lot of corvettes, destroyers, and even juggernauts(!) in one mission. Often they don't bother to launch fighters. You will collect a lot of kills and medals in this campaign, and you'll be promoted a few ranks also (one of the missions has awarded me 100,000 points for no apparent reason). There is some sort of story deep within the Command and mission briefings, but they're badly written, and it quickly turns out you don't need to understand the intended storyline to keep playing. -- TopAce

As someone who made the mistake to do a Let's Play of the campaign, I can safely say that, even though I had no expectations whatsoever, was disappointed. I was expecting something stupid, not something THIS bad. I have started playing with a considerable enthusiasm, hoping for dozens of stupidly funny things in the campaign. That did not happen. Instead, I've got a really boring, really bad, confusing experience that I grew to dislike, then to hate. All in all, after finishing it, all I can say is that it has not worth it overall. As a gaming experience, it was horrible. I can't recommend it to anyone. It is horrible and not worth playing. It frustrates you to no end. While that is obviously subjective, I'd like to hereby ask you all to forget even about the sheer EXISTENCE of this campaign. A note on the - supposed - technical stability: I can safely say that I have experienced the opposite. It could be said that some of the issues were my fault, but there were so much of them that I cannot say that it is bugless. To say even one word about the instant-warpout mission completions would be useless. I have experienced flying a bomber without primary or secondary weapons, freezing game, the mission not reacting for me pressing the given button, badly added messages, really haphazardly arranged FREDding, et cetera. All in all, please: forget about it's existence. Go and play Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius again instead. -- Lucika

The one other thing worth noting about The Second Great War Part II (apart from its ridiculous mission design, obviously) that it can definitely claim is stability. This is arguably one of the most bug-free campaigns ever released for FreeSpace 2, surpassing fabled mods like Warzone, Derelict, The Procyon Insurgency and even Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius in this regard. The only known issue with this campaign, and a minor issue at that since it does not affect gameplay, is the Exit Loop button that remains at the top-right corner of every mission briefing after a certain point in the campaign due to an SOC branch not being closed off properly (clicking it causes the game to crash, from what I've heard). This aside, however, SGWP2 runs flawlessly on nearly every FS2_Open build ever released to the community, including the prototype Nightly Builds and Release Candidate builds. -- Androgeos Exeunt 05:42, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Random Screenshots

Availability

The campaign is still available from the Volitionwatch Archives. However, the Volitionwatch Archives are not being maintained anymore, so it is just a matter of time before the below link stops functioning.

• Direct link to the Volitionwatch Archives
• Freespacemods.net Mirror - Original, unpacked version
• Freespacemods.net Mirror - Repacked, with all files (except the readme) contained in a single VP file
• Nukelol Mirror