It's true (not that the writer explains why) that WC3 probably has the weakest space combat of the series.
While I agree with the basic sentiment, I wouldn't go quite that far. Speaking solely in terms of mechanics (so, leaving aside issues like grahics and enemy variety), the absolute worst is Privateer 2. Then Armada, then WC4, and only then WC3.
It suffers greatly from a lack of enemy variety - there are, assuming I added the numbers up correctly from walkthroughs when I did this calculation, 640 enemies on the winning path, and 351 of them (55%) are either Darkets or Dralthi. Almost a third (33.1%) are Darkets.
Oh! Wow! I have to apologise to the Saga team, then. In my Saga rant thread, I keep on castigating them about the lack of variety in enemies. I did not realise they were simply being true to the original WC3. Of course, that's all the more reason why they should not have simply tried to be faithful to WC3 - it's a lousy game to remake faithfully.
(which is an almost tempting challenge for me as a modder...)
(That said, the line "In our post-Freespace 2 world, it's exceptionally hard to go back" is hilariously off-base - Freespace 2 has a horrible flight engine; it might be barely better than WC3 but there's not a huge amount in it. Prophecy, Starlancer, Tachyon: the Fringe, and many others, yes, those games are much more fun to fly than Heart of the Tiger. But Freespace 2? Pull the other one, it's got Shivans on.
Hmm. You know, yesterday when this thread appeared, I actually wanted to comment about that - ultimately decided against it, because I never really played Freespace 2 that much, and I felt it would have been unfair of me to judge Freespace 2 as inferior based
only on my experience with Saga (which certainly has inferior mechanics to the best that WC can offer).
However, while the author's idealisation of Freespace 2 is funny, it is correct in a way, because I can't imagine Freespace 2 being worse than WC3. Just reading the descriptions and looking at the screenshots of FS2, it's clear the game had a lot of variety - and the fact that there's dozens of reviews praising FS2 specifically for the gameplay indicates that there was something good about the game (just not the story or the characters). Still, you are correct that FS2 is hardly the benchmark other space sims should be compared to. In terms of pure gameplay mechanics, I have no doubt whatsoever that right until this day, the benchmark is actually WCP - or maybe Starlancer, though as a mouse player, I'm heavily biased against that game.
By the way, a sidenote about WC3 - if you think about it, the surprising thing about WC3 is that it is
so very playable today - not in the sense of still being huge fun (it's really not), but in the sense that visually and technically, it's the least off-putting of a bunch of Origin games from the same period. Especially the Strike games (Strike Commander, Pacific Strike and Wings of Glory) have suffered terribly over time. I really, really would like to finally finish Strike Commander, re-play Pacific Strike (which I did complete, and loved utterly at the time), and properly experience Wings of Glory at all (I've played through two missions, I think). But it's not gonna happen. These games are so off-putting in their clunky controls, so irritating with their horribly low-detail ground textures (WC3's gouraud-shaded ground actually looks better than any of these), that I doubt I'll ever give them a real chance. And I
have tried, several times. I just can't do it, I love the between-mission stuff, but the flight itself has aged beyond horribly. Even the sprite-based WC games have aged better, although they also suffer from a few issues (the worst being the capships). So in this regard, WC3 stands head-and-shoulders above other Origin flight games of the period. It has aged exceedingly well.