This is a stunning launch title that still holds up visually. I was surprised and a little disappointed revisiting this overall, however. The game looks stunning but actually playing it is frustrating more than anything else. The controls are very squirrely, and the ships themselves feel more like floating cameras than vehicles. The real killer though is the mission design, which outside of a handful of classics everyone remembers (the trench run and the first Battle of Endor level) ranges from forgettable to outright malevolent.

Prisoners of the Maw asks you to ignore everything exciting happening to do drivebys in the Y-wing. The Battle of Hoth really wants to show off its Snowspeeder cable tech, and makes you reenact tripping the AT-ATs a mind-numbing amount of times. There's an Ace Combat-esque canyon stealth run to hijack a shuttle that feels like the beginning of a wild escape mission that never builds to an exciting twist. And then there's Strike at the Core, which clearly wants to feel like a sadomasochistic gauntlet for players to overcome with all the skills they've learned, but it's so full of seemingly random lasers and enemy behavior it feels more like a miracle than a challenge to finish.

I have fond memories of playing this thing over and over, but revisiting it without that launch title sheen reveals a lot of flawed design. I hate to do the direct comparison thing, but Ace Combat 04 came out at nearly the same time and is easily the better arcade flight game. This is still absolutely worth playing just to experience the attention to detail and enthusiasm for the source material, though!