I was on a WW1 sim trip (i.e playing around with GoG’s Red Baron pack). The first Red Baron was fine (I love the weather effects), but the campaign formula felt arbitrary and dry. Essentially, it only felt like I was fighting in a sandbox where old planes were flying around. Red Baron 3D, which is much cherished around here, got a wonderful virtual cockpit and an amazing atmosphere, but it suffers from the same problem that has plagued the IL-2 campaign experience for me: too much of a simulation. After my 3rd death, and my consecutive 4th climbing for half an hour in a spiral over the airfield (which you can do on autopilot, but it’s no matter how atmospheric a game can be, it doesn’t prevent the feeling of wasting time), I gave up.
Then…
I have seen you advocating this game in various threads, and I remembered I had owned it on Steam and gave it a whirl.
Although it severely lacks some stuff (I wished it had RB’s weather and sun, and that you could feel the wings menacing to break), I loved the importance of orienting one’s self using terrain feature. I also really enjoys the esthetics of all the screens: it took me a bit by surprise how evocative that fake and naive “art nouveau” style turns out to be. But playing the campaign felt a bit dry, and by digging a bit, I discovered the Steam version was the unpatched original game, which lacked a bunch of the campaign’s aspects — another expose for the “publishers that don’t give a damn about the DOS games they release” that was discussed recently in the bargain thread.
Thankfully, the patch was available on the wonderful patches-scrolls.de
Now, I have been tremendously enjoying the game. This is so lively! The game itself seems to be at the near perfect spot between arcade and sim that I enjoy. So thank you very much for pointing it out. I sometimes lose the sound of my engine, which makes me sad, so I will probably try to play with the sound settings.
Down you go, Immelman!