Thanks for the kind words about the cut-scenes - an often under-appreciated part of games! I was the artist who did *all* of them! It was a ton of fun (and work!) and was some of the best work I ever did. Nice to see how well they mesh with the 2020 upgrade. Cheers!
Thanks for the superb work on the cutscenes! I loved Alliance to bits, and it's one of my personal favorite games of all time. I'm really happy to see what the XWAU team had done to modernize the graphics! Just a question though. I find that when I replay Alliance on modern systems, the cutscenes and sounds seem to be a bit choppy (didn't happen when I was first playing it on a Pentium III back in 2000). They're still viewable, but I would have liked to view them properly as intended. Would you have any pointers on how to improve the video performance? Thanks very much in advance!
@@tcchip Thanks for the nice comments! Unfortunately I am totally the wrong person when it comes to playback performance issues with a 20+ year old PC game! I have no idea how that video playback part is handled in the AU version, and it probably wouldn't help even if I did. Wish I had a better answer for you.
@@I_am_ARTBOT ah, my bad. Actually the video performance lagging is also there in the base game, but it's not such a big problem that it outright detracts from the overall game experience. Again, I can't say thank you enough for your work in Alliance. I loved the game then, and now some 20 years later, I love it even more, and no small part of it were due to the fantastic storyline and your work on the cutscenes.
This game was part of my childhood, and the cutscenes added so much to the game. Especially the opening scene. Really helped place the game in the universe. Well done.
Everyone else seems to have grown up on the first X-wing game or Tie Fighter. But, for me, X-wing Alliance was my childhood game. I loved every second of it and I always hate how under appreciated it is. It's a marvelous game that deserves to be played by all Star Wars gamers.
I love this game so much. I was a huge fan of X-Wing vs TIE-Fighter and one day I just grabbed this game off the shelf of an EB Games and went home and was totally immersed into the story and all the additional aspects they added to the amazing X-Wing vs TIE-Fighter gameplay. It is criminally underrated and overlooked.
Thing is back on the day games were made with love mostly by people passionate about the themes they were working on. Teams were small so it was easier to keep consistency, do great experiments that would find their way into the end product, etc. Today AAA companies produce games with processes similar to just any digital platform, like apps and whatnot. They are basically factories where each employee is just a very small cog piece that sometimes doesnt even know what is the vision for the end product.
the last of a great series of games, there is a great pair of mods for this updating the graphics to modern standards and letting you play Tie Fighter on the Alliance engine both a straight copy and a fan made update of the campaign well worth a look for a revisit or a first time player
So good to see what can be done with the graphical update and mods. I would love to see if we could get some improved explosion effects in there. For me, that would just give it that final level of polish
I loved this game when I first played it when it first came out over twenty years ago. Still think it's awesome now. That says something when a game from over two decades ago still holds up great.
I feel like one of the few people that preferred this game because of how immersive the story is. I really felt like I was in Star Wars playing as Ace.
Good review. Of all the X-Wing games, the only one to not get an expansion. And it needed at least a few more months of polishing to have been even better.
I think the only downside is the Campaign feels incomplete. That it lack a post-Endor mission and resolution with the family. I will not spoil it outside saying they left both on a bit of a cliffhanger.
To me it feels like the 6th campaign was rushed, like the Bothan-sullastan conflict should have been it’s own campaign and assembling the fleet should have been another, we need an XWA2 just to see Antan get what he deserves
As much as I love this game there's one gripe I've always had. Lando's conversation with Nien Nunb about the status of the Death Star shield as they approach to me frankly sounds just terrible on Lando's side in particular. I really wish someone would just patch that part of the game's audio files to include the original movie dialog from ROTJ to fix it. Maybe the other relevant lines as well.
God I loved this game. It was buggy, but it was so immersive. Low key story where you're not a big hero, just a guy. Lots of boring missions, but it always felt exciting and open. Games now are so railroaded it just doesn't feel like space... But this, and then Freelancer.. Space perfection.
Thanks for the tutorial, particularly the UI walkthrough! On the other hand, some of the story moments got spoiled a little, you could be gentler on that :( But all in all huge thumbs up from me.
Just finished Star wars squadrons campaign for the first time. It is nothing like the X-Wing alliance game I'm going to start the X-Wing alliance campaign again!
I loved the Azzameen family story. The tensions, how normal people might get in deep without meaning to, and the picking of sides. There were only three things that bothered me - why are ISDs 2km? The battle of Endor was kinda dull. The stealing the Tydirium mission is aggravating as hell. Those are all very minor nitpicks on my part, and I did love it. I also loved Balance of Power from XvT
the family missions, especially the early ones were my favorite sending a youg fella to scan some old cointainers and rebuild a lost database and then finding time to teach him shooting at garbage, thats some really neat worldbuilding
3:26 you know what's still missing in SW games? A frelling Trade/Guild like one. The Guild 3 showed that it still is something people want, now add SW to that (with better fitting gameplay and all) and we look at a serious bestseller out there. Start small, with only 1 ship (like in good ol patrician) and work yourself up to become a major trade player with dozens of ships etc. under you, carefully handling your alegiances to either rebels or empire etc. (or outright rebel against them and help the rebellion wherever you can)
This was my fave of the X-Wing games, tho' it was massively pushed by Tie Fighter. XWA sucked you into the universe we grew up with, the music, the ships, the story - I played this loads whilst already being in my 30's at the time. When I saw SW Squadrons being announced I was super excited ...... but oh gawd no ... we were so let down, or just the industry learnt how to fleece us and our standards had dropped. Btw - for those that want to play it - grab the XWA Upgrade, it's superb.
I noticed in your xwa upgrade footage you’re also experiencing consistent choppy frame rates. I had this too. Put me off enough to revert the upgrade patch. Has anyone figured out how to stop this issue?
They upgraded the graphics ship by ship. When all is put together, i don't think they took into account if the game's engine could actually work perfectly with all those new models and effects. Individually it all works fine though. I think in the future with better graphics cards, this will just be resolved on it's own. But yeah, there are some glitches and choppyness. But they're still updating so it didn't turn me off a bit. The experience wasn't bad at all for me.
@@kazuyahartless4541 I did the Lancer-class Frigate upgrade model and opt. I had no idea how to optimize performance. While I believe most of the modders knew what they were doing, probably more than just me didn't. This could be part of the problem. The Lancer, at least, should be redone.
1 year later lol: I don't think it's an actual problem from an individual standpoint. You can add 10.000 polygons to your model, if the game engine can take it, so can modern graphics cards. The problem i think arises when every single model upgrade does it and you have to render it in real time, all in the same field of view. I really don't think it's any individual model, but the sum of all.
A really good game. Would have deserved a second and third part or at least an Addon. The only problem I had, was the lacking of speed. It never really had a feeling of speed like you would expect from flying a Star Wars fighter.
XWA is a great game I've had a lot of fun with, but it still can't hold a candle to TIE Fighter. I wish the possible loyalty conflict between the Alliance and Azzameen family could've been used more, maybe even with conflicting orders for missions sometimes, like in TF where you took orders both from your flight officer and the cloaked figure. Many of the family missions are poorly paced, too, and they could've used the transports' ability to carry cargo in way more creative ways than just carrying containers. What about a mission where it was your responsibility to deploy gun platforms, for example? Also, where in the movies the Empire is something you have to run and hide from, in XWA they're for the most part pushovers. When Star Destroyers appear, they tend to drop out of lightspeed far from the battlefield, sending small waves of TIEs at you for you to shoot down. The hospital mission is so well done and is how the Empire should be portrayed for most of the game, especially when there's a Star Destroyer in play. They also ate fighters for breakfast in the movies, for that matter. Also, the wingmen ruin the immersion so much. In the Star Wars movies (especially in the battle of Yavin) they're tactical, calm, and collected, in XWA they're way more undisciplined, and downright whiny at times. The way they all start complaining one after another when you get within firing range of an enemy starship is so immersion-breaking. All in all, though, a great game, with a massive selection of ships (and most of the fighters and transports flyable!). The ability to make custom missions on the fly with the skirmish editor is ingenious, too.
He said you can't play this with a keyboard and mouse. I played every game in the series from X-Wing through this one, on every difficulty level, with a keyboard and a mouse. This game came on about 20 3/5" floppy drives.
This game is so increadible.. even today the music and mission design and story makes it well worth playing. Sad this game marked the death of the space sim and not the new beggining it should of been
There is a mod that allows vr integration (modern vr like occulus) for x wing Alliance as well as the au mod. Works pretty well, allowing head tracking and looking around the cockpit like the vr in squadrons.
@@KABZProductions I haven't used the VR feature myself, though a friend of mine did because he actually had the equipment, and even uses it in nodded multiplayer, he did ok from what he told me, though there were some visual bugs involving moving out of bounds I think he said (I may be conflating this glitch from another game though) (I think he was using a Sony vr headset, or maybe Samsung (think it started with an s, could be mistaken, know it wasn't occulus or Microsoft)). What were you using?
Xwing vs Tie Fighter was funny: My friend preferred to play the Gunboat, but he was very upset about the fact, the he could not dodge my double advanced Torpedoes... 🙂
Engine power is just anything you haven't diverted to weapons and shields. Speed is your speed in the top middle left. Engine power what's is in the top right, it's a maximum power. your speed is then your power by your throttle.
I just installed this game and Im having problems even controlling the fighter. How do I turn using the keyboard? It seems the number keys are only moving my head around the cockpit.
I'm playing this now, it is a improvement from X-Wing vs TIE, but the difficulty in these games is never balanced. Some missions are ok, but others are quite hard even on medium setting. It has other flaws, for example the cockpits feel inmersive but a bit sketchy over the pixelated ones of previous games. The cinematics are well done for its era, but the old ones have got old better. Overall, a great game, I'm enjoying it a lot.
I was ok with this game. Some missions in this game were too hard, especially (confusingly) the XWing training mission #1, which I just had to 'cheat' to get through. I wasn't happy with the egg shape of the TIE Fighter models, and the sound effects got old. I much preferred TIE Fighter. It felt much more polished.
I completed it. The game was gold. I even took out the star destroyer with blind spotblith ;D Btw so to play I used joystick emulator, because my joystick is not comparible with windows 7.
Great game buuuuut it does suffer from something of a difficulty pendulum which swings wildly from mission to mission. one mission could be easy as pie, next mission could have you retrying it many many times even on easy.
During combat sometimes you lose flight control and remain frozen in place as the enemy blast you to pieces. I could not understand why this was put into the game.
Trouble with talking up the story from what i recalll it never had an ending as your character gets unceremoniously dumped for the final mission so you can play as Lando doesn't even mention him or his family again, its as if the entire rest of the game didn't even happen.
I will never forgive this game for that Deathstar 2 run. It wasn't fun and I hated that, as far as I could tell, there is zero way to actually play it without invincibility on. It felt like such a wet blanket after the amazing game to that point. Maybe that's just me but it made the end feel so incomplete.
Thanks for the kind words about the cut-scenes - an often under-appreciated part of games! I was the artist who did *all* of them! It was a ton of fun (and work!) and was some of the best work I ever did. Nice to see how well they mesh with the 2020 upgrade. Cheers!
Thanks for the superb work on the cutscenes! I loved Alliance to bits, and it's one of my personal favorite games of all time. I'm really happy to see what the XWAU team had done to modernize the graphics! Just a question though. I find that when I replay Alliance on modern systems, the cutscenes and sounds seem to be a bit choppy (didn't happen when I was first playing it on a Pentium III back in 2000). They're still viewable, but I would have liked to view them properly as intended. Would you have any pointers on how to improve the video performance? Thanks very much in advance!
@@tcchip Thanks for the nice comments! Unfortunately I am totally the wrong person when it comes to playback performance issues with a 20+ year old PC game! I have no idea how that video playback part is handled in the AU version, and it probably wouldn't help even if I did. Wish I had a better answer for you.
Your awesome thankyou!!!!!!!
@@I_am_ARTBOT ah, my bad. Actually the video performance lagging is also there in the base game, but it's not such a big problem that it outright detracts from the overall game experience. Again, I can't say thank you enough for your work in Alliance. I loved the game then, and now some 20 years later, I love it even more, and no small part of it were due to the fantastic storyline and your work on the cutscenes.
This game was part of my childhood, and the cutscenes added so much to the game. Especially the opening scene. Really helped place the game in the universe. Well done.
Everyone else seems to have grown up on the first X-wing game or Tie Fighter. But, for me, X-wing Alliance was my childhood game. I loved every second of it and I always hate how under appreciated it is. It's a marvelous game that deserves to be played by all Star Wars gamers.
Same I was too young for the others
Same my dude....my dad was big into those games, but the first one I ever got to sit down and try was XWA....i gotta get my a joystick again
yup! becoming "an" Ace Azzameen was something else
It's rare when new games are better than the old. That's why we love to go back. Good review.
That is so true 😁 and happy new year
1999 was the year of the pinnacle of our civilization. Before the dark times... before the empire...
I wish they’d do a remastered version imagine how good this could be with a modern graphics engine.
I love this game so much. I was a huge fan of X-Wing vs TIE-Fighter and one day I just grabbed this game off the shelf of an EB Games and went home and was totally immersed into the story and all the additional aspects they added to the amazing X-Wing vs TIE-Fighter gameplay. It is criminally underrated and overlooked.
This game was absolutely FANTASTIC! I think I'll try new version.
Just dont buy it on Steam.
Its DRM locked.
Go to GOG instead.
Whats GOG mean?
@@ANNAKKi Good old Games
Just got it and the tie fighter conversion. Soo freaking happy.
Thing is back on the day games were made with love mostly by people passionate about the themes they were working on. Teams were small so it was easier to keep consistency, do great experiments that would find their way into the end product, etc. Today AAA companies produce games with processes similar to just any digital platform, like apps and whatnot. They are basically factories where each employee is just a very small cog piece that sometimes doesnt even know what is the vision for the end product.
the last of a great series of games, there is a great pair of mods for this updating the graphics to modern standards and letting you play Tie Fighter on the Alliance engine both a straight copy and a fan made update of the campaign well worth a look for a revisit or a first time player
So good to see what can be done with the graphical update and mods.
I would love to see if we could get some improved explosion effects in there. For me, that would just give it that final level of polish
X-Wing Alliance, one of the best games ever! So immersive! Loved it! Thanks for the review Coldwind!
Thanks for the gameplay explanation, it was very useful!
I loved playing it back in '99. XWA should be remade with state of the art graphics but exactly the same voices and narrative
I loved this game when I first played it when it first came out over twenty years ago. Still think it's awesome now. That says something when a game from over two decades ago still holds up great.
One of the best games ever made. My only puzzle is whether to rank it higher to TIE Fighter or not...
Shame to Star wars Squadron, and shame to disney & EA
I just remember how many ships you had to choose from was insane. Loved this game back in the day.
I feel like one of the few people that preferred this game because of how immersive the story is. I really felt like I was in Star Wars playing as Ace.
Good review. Of all the X-Wing games, the only one to not get an expansion. And it needed at least a few more months of polishing to have been even better.
This deserves more views.
Exceptional game, and even better with all the XWU mods👌🏻
I think the only downside is the Campaign feels incomplete. That it lack a post-Endor mission and resolution with the family. I will not spoil it outside saying they left both on a bit of a cliffhanger.
To me it feels like the 6th campaign was rushed, like the Bothan-sullastan conflict should have been it’s own campaign and assembling the fleet should have been another, we need an XWA2 just to see Antan get what he deserves
I bought this game and the hint book when it first came out and have played it plenty of times. It's my favorite combat simulator.
As much as I love this game there's one gripe I've always had. Lando's conversation with Nien Nunb about the status of the Death Star shield as they approach to me frankly sounds just terrible on Lando's side in particular. I really wish someone would just patch that part of the game's audio files to include the original movie dialog from ROTJ to fix it. Maybe the other relevant lines as well.
God I loved this game. It was buggy, but it was so immersive. Low key story where you're not a big hero, just a guy. Lots of boring missions, but it always felt exciting and open. Games now are so railroaded it just doesn't feel like space... But this, and then Freelancer.. Space perfection.
Thanks so much for this review this game blows me away it's such a 10/10!!!
Glad you enjoy it!
Thanks for the tutorial, particularly the UI walkthrough! On the other hand, some of the story moments got spoiled a little, you could be gentler on that :( But all in all huge thumbs up from me.
Just finished Star wars squadrons campaign for the first time. It is nothing like the X-Wing alliance game
I'm going to start the X-Wing alliance campaign again!
was such a great game, I always wished they had made an expansion pack finishing up the family story line.
They did finish up the family story before the events of the Battle of Endor.
I loved the Azzameen family story. The tensions, how normal people might get in deep without meaning to, and the picking of sides.
There were only three things that bothered me - why are ISDs 2km? The battle of Endor was kinda dull. The stealing the Tydirium mission is aggravating as hell. Those are all very minor nitpicks on my part, and I did love it.
I also loved Balance of Power from XvT
Just wish they wrap up the story, and we get back at Antan!
the family missions, especially the early ones were my favorite
sending a youg fella to scan some old cointainers and rebuild a lost database and then finding time to teach him shooting at garbage, thats some really neat worldbuilding
You can use mouse to joystick converter external software. Worked well for me, played through the entire campaign.
The corvelian transport with the auto cannons was OP but fun regardless
3:26 you know what's still missing in SW games? A frelling Trade/Guild like one. The Guild 3 showed that it still is something people want, now add SW to that (with better fitting gameplay and all) and we look at a serious bestseller out there. Start small, with only 1 ship (like in good ol patrician) and work yourself up to become a major trade player with dozens of ships etc. under you, carefully handling your alegiances to either rebels or empire etc. (or outright rebel against them and help the rebellion wherever you can)
I used to play the shit out of this game when I was a kid.
Maybe try it out again with all the upgrades it has had.
This was my fave of the X-Wing games, tho' it was massively pushed by Tie Fighter. XWA sucked you into the universe we grew up with, the music, the ships, the story - I played this loads whilst already being in my 30's at the time. When I saw SW Squadrons being announced I was super excited ...... but oh gawd no ... we were so let down, or just the industry learnt how to fleece us and our standards had dropped. Btw - for those that want to play it - grab the XWA Upgrade, it's superb.
I noticed in your xwa upgrade footage you’re also experiencing consistent choppy frame rates. I had this too. Put me off enough to revert the upgrade patch. Has anyone figured out how to stop this issue?
They upgraded the graphics ship by ship. When all is put together, i don't think they took into account if the game's engine could actually work perfectly with all those new models and effects. Individually it all works fine though. I think in the future with better graphics cards, this will just be resolved on it's own. But yeah, there are some glitches and choppyness. But they're still updating so it didn't turn me off a bit. The experience wasn't bad at all for me.
@@kazuyahartless4541 ok cool. Keen to see how the tie fighter upgrade will look.
@@kazuyahartless4541 I did the Lancer-class Frigate upgrade model and opt. I had no idea how to optimize performance. While I believe most of the modders knew what they were doing, probably more than just me didn't. This could be part of the problem. The Lancer, at least, should be redone.
1 year later lol:
I don't think it's an actual problem from an individual standpoint. You can add 10.000 polygons to your model, if the game engine can take it, so can modern graphics cards. The problem i think arises when every single model upgrade does it and you have to render it in real time, all in the same field of view. I really don't think it's any individual model, but the sum of all.
Were i can download the mod and the instructions? Thanks❤
Sooo many hours played, so much good memories
How do you get the graphics upgrade?
A really good game. Would have deserved a second and third part or at least an Addon. The only problem I had, was the lacking of speed. It never really had a feeling of speed like you would expect from flying a Star Wars fighter.
XWA is a great game I've had a lot of fun with, but it still can't hold a candle to TIE Fighter. I wish the possible loyalty conflict between the Alliance and Azzameen family could've been used more, maybe even with conflicting orders for missions sometimes, like in TF where you took orders both from your flight officer and the cloaked figure. Many of the family missions are poorly paced, too, and they could've used the transports' ability to carry cargo in way more creative ways than just carrying containers. What about a mission where it was your responsibility to deploy gun platforms, for example?
Also, where in the movies the Empire is something you have to run and hide from, in XWA they're for the most part pushovers. When Star Destroyers appear, they tend to drop out of lightspeed far from the battlefield, sending small waves of TIEs at you for you to shoot down. The hospital mission is so well done and is how the Empire should be portrayed for most of the game, especially when there's a Star Destroyer in play. They also ate fighters for breakfast in the movies, for that matter.
Also, the wingmen ruin the immersion so much. In the Star Wars movies (especially in the battle of Yavin) they're tactical, calm, and collected, in XWA they're way more undisciplined, and downright whiny at times. The way they all start complaining one after another when you get within firing range of an enemy starship is so immersion-breaking.
All in all, though, a great game, with a massive selection of ships (and most of the fighters and transports flyable!). The ability to make custom missions on the fly with the skirmish editor is ingenious, too.
He said you can't play this with a keyboard and mouse.
I played every game in the series from X-Wing through this one, on every difficulty level, with a keyboard and a mouse. This game came on about 20 3/5" floppy drives.
Is there a good video to explain how to instal the mods?
My brother and I spent MANY hours playing this game against each other.
Tie Defender > *
This game is so increadible.. even today the music and mission design and story makes it well worth playing. Sad this game marked the death of the space sim and not the new beggining it should of been
I really wish that we could remake and remaster this kickass game.
There is a mod that allows vr integration (modern vr like occulus) for x wing Alliance as well as the au mod. Works pretty well, allowing head tracking and looking around the cockpit like the vr in squadrons.
Idk how if you tried it but I couldn’t last more than a few seconds. Got nausea unlike any other VR experience I’ve ever had.
@@KABZProductions I haven't used the VR feature myself, though a friend of mine did because he actually had the equipment, and even uses it in nodded multiplayer, he did ok from what he told me, though there were some visual bugs involving moving out of bounds I think he said (I may be conflating this glitch from another game though) (I think he was using a Sony vr headset, or maybe Samsung (think it started with an s, could be mistaken, know it wasn't occulus or Microsoft)). What were you using?
@@jayburn00 oculus
Xwing vs Tie Fighter was funny: My friend preferred to play the Gunboat, but he was very upset about the fact, the he could not dodge my double advanced Torpedoes... 🙂
Engine power is just anything you haven't diverted to weapons and shields.
Speed is your speed in the top middle left. Engine power what's is in the top right, it's a maximum power. your speed is then your power by your throttle.
Does this game work with a PC gamepad, or a joystick is a must?
A Gamepad should work.
Do you know if I get it on Steam, will it come with the latest upgraded graphics? Great review btw!
You have to go to moddb to get the XWAU mod to bring it to the new graphics
I just installed this game and Im having problems even controlling the fighter. How do I turn using the keyboard? It seems the number keys are only moving my head around the cockpit.
You don't. You fly with a joystick. A cheap thrustmaster will do surprisingly well.
I'm playing this now, it is a improvement from X-Wing vs TIE, but the difficulty in these games is never balanced. Some missions are ok, but others are quite hard even on medium setting. It has other flaws, for example the cockpits feel inmersive but a bit sketchy over the pixelated ones of previous games. The cinematics are well done for its era, but the old ones have got old better. Overall, a great game, I'm enjoying it a lot.
I was ok with this game. Some missions in this game were too hard, especially (confusingly) the XWing training mission #1, which I just had to 'cheat' to get through. I wasn't happy with the egg shape of the TIE Fighter models, and the sound effects got old.
I much preferred TIE Fighter. It felt much more polished.
Yeah, no kidding. The X-Wing training mission was surprisingly hard. I didn't cheat, but I had to lower the difficulty down the Easy to get through.
To me the top 3 space flight games are 1st freespace 2 2nd xwing aliance and 3rd rogue squadron on gamecube
👍
This needs a remake NOW
I completed it. The game was gold. I even took out the star destroyer with blind spotblith ;D
Btw so to play I used joystick emulator, because my joystick is not comparible with windows 7.
Great game buuuuut it does suffer from something of a difficulty pendulum which swings wildly from mission to mission. one mission could be easy as pie, next mission could have you retrying it many many times even on easy.
During combat sometimes you lose flight control and remain frozen in place as the enemy blast you to pieces. I could not understand why this was put into the game.
That’s because of a couple things either you were hit by ion weapons or as you take hull damage systems may go down.
IT'S A TRAP! Best in game quote!
Trouble with talking up the story from what i recalll it never had an ending as your character gets unceremoniously dumped for the final mission so you can play as Lando doesn't even mention him or his family again, its as if the entire rest of the game didn't even happen.
I will never forgive this game for that Deathstar 2 run. It wasn't fun and I hated that, as far as I could tell, there is zero way to actually play it without invincibility on. It felt like such a wet blanket after the amazing game to that point. Maybe that's just me but it made the end feel so incomplete.
Don't you dare slag off 2015's Battlefront!
It took care of slagging itself off just fine.
Norval Flats
Kshlerin Lock
uwu