This is a rather interesting and unique game, almost like an attempt to blend Homeworld and Jagged Alliance into a space-based tactical RPG. Some of the options are pretty limited, but when a good battle gets raging, it can be awesomely intense. On the other hand, the game sags a bit when you're not in combat, and it can be irritating having to sit and watch your ship fly from Point A to Point B. Still, if you're looking for space action, you'll find it here.

Let me start out by saying this game is hard!

Star Wolves is a small scale Space based tactical game. It has all kinds of upgrades for your ships and pilots. Like others have said it its more RPG then RTS. It has very nice graphics for its age. To me it’s a like a merging of Home World (but not really) and Nexus: The Jupiter incident. You get a mother ship with a couple of pilots to start with and get more pilots as you progress. I love the concept!

Pros:

Highly customizable skills and ships.

The Mother ship with fighter aspect of the game is cool.

The Mission structure is really good and keeps it from becoming a cold boring game

Very addictive and gives you that feeling of playing just a little bit more.

Cons:

Did I mention it’s HARD! You can be doing great one second then the next your best fighter takes two missiles and ejects.

Path finding is atrocious, I lost fighters because they got stuck on an obstacle like the side of a space station and blew up.

Hard to get money, most jobs don’t pay what they promised and always try to stiff you with less pay.

Your mother ship is better at killing fighters then your fighters.

Because you can lose your best fighters in a second make the missions very trial and error’ish. You really need to save your game all the time.

Frustrating sometimes.

Overall I really like this game but you have to be a bit of a masochist to actually keep playing thru.

If you want a challenging space based tactical game this could be for you.

Star Wolves is a combination of RPG and RTS set in space. Published first in 2004 in Russia and later in 2005 as english version in Europe, the game does look outdated. However, it runs well on an older computer and doesn't have any graphical glitches to whine about. It also works well on widescreen monitors, you just have to edit a file for that. All in all, the graphics are simple and somewhat detailed, but nothing looks really ugly. Except the cutscenes, which fortunately are not very common.

The game sets you in the shoes of the leader of a group of space mercenaries - the Star Wolves. The idea of the game is to complete missions in space, outfit new spaceships and improve your pilots. The gameplay itself consists of giving orders to your fighter pilots and mothership and completing various objectives inside limited areas in space (sectors). Objectives vary from destroying enemy ships to escorting friendly ships and an occasional transporting of items with your mothership. Every kill and completed mission earns some experience for the pilots and the experience can be used to improve various skills, such as piloting and shooting. Pilots also have their individual active skills, that momentarily increase their or the whole fleet's performance in some way.

The later installments in the series give the player the opportunity to roam around freely and do some trading and sidemissions, but the first game is strictly limited to campaign missions and the mothership -menu, where all trading, outfitting and skill allocation happens.

The story of the game is set in far future and involves some of the usual science-fiction cliches such as corrupted empire, powerful major corporations, rogue artificial intelligence and aliens. But the different factions do have their uniqueness and the player can eventually choose with whom he wants to side.

Star Wolves is an addictive and fun game. It has some downsides, such as the constant 'trial and error' in the gameplay. The balance between skills and different spaceship devices seems a bit flopsided - some devices and skills are not very useful and some require too much effort to be used effectively. For example, I didn't find grouping up pilots very useful, even though they are supposed to be able to provide coverfire for each other. To me it seemed they just shoot less and die more. But mostly the game is an immersive blast of solid space mercenary action. It gives a run for their money for plenty of new games!

WARNING: If you are expecting Homeworldesque Giant Space battles then don't. This is more personal small scale space combat RTS with RPG elements

Still that being said this game is one of my favorites, mainly because it allows you to level up individual pilots and outfit thier ships to suit them and to create a good combination with their wingmates.

So to start the cut scenes look a little dated but it's the game that count's not the opening scene right? Anyway the in game graphics are good enough for me and the gameplay is fairly straight forward especially if you give the (slightly tediouse) tutorial patience.

The main problem people will find is that enemies almost always outnumber you so it is always best to make sure you stock up on missiles that lock on (always read lable before use hehe) and they can sometimes take a while to kill depending on thier ships and how many missiles you have.

Earning money in the game is pretty tough to begin with because you have to be a real nasty piece of work to milk as much from those poor space stations or just really careful on what you buy and use, as losing a ship could mean not having the ability to use rockets if you cannot buy the right ship.

I just recommend saving before each mission and to begin with at least reload if you lose a ship. And one more for those who like thier characters to look good, don't worry you get some cool ones later...I think I mean you do really heh.

Perservere and you will enjoy this gem. Look out for its Sequels as well.

This is a rather interesting and unique game, almost like an attempt to blend Homeworld and Jagged Alliance into a space-based tactical RPG. Some of the options are pretty limited, but when a good battle gets raging, it can be awesomely intense. On the other hand, the game sags a bit when you're not in combat, and it can be irritating having to sit and watch your ship fly from Point A to Point B. Still, if you're looking for space action, you'll find it here.

a smaller scale version of homeworld, where you control a merc unit. its also very easy to mod if you choose to. it is challenging not to mention very fun

To work under Windows 7, you have to set Windows compatibility to Windows 98, otherwise gun doesn't work any damage (game will be unplayable)

This is an interesting Game, it will remind you a bit to Homeworld, at least the command interface, though you have less control over the ships, no formations for the wings, which is a real shame.

Now, let's go into the game, shall we?

You Command a mercenary band, up to six small crafts, call em starfighters, and one mothership/Homebase.

Each ship, including the mothership (not to confuse with HW's, its just a modified freighter... hey, its a mercenary company, what did you expect? state of the art dreadnought?) is customizable, fighters have different mount configurations (that is to say some hulls can only use small guns, some big guns and the mothership only accepts turrets)

The missions are interesting and will task you finding ways of drawing off that wing, or that ship to avoind being swarmed.

Like I said before, you cannot order formations, but you can assign each wingmen tasks, like Anti missile duty (by far this is a must have, not all the time, but trust me, it will sabe you a fortune in fighters), Defence (that is to say, be on the lookout for fighters gunning on your craft while you are gunning for other ships, ah, be a wingman) work the remote repair systems and so on...

the game is composed by missions, or mission areas, and an in between location, where you choose available missions, sell loot, buy equipment, and even check on some news and, most importantly assign those hard earned XP points to the pilots abilities, that range from combat, gunnery, missile use and systems (though they all have one in which they are proeficient and some chars have a few extra talents to obtain, like Ace and his black market contact, can be say te background makes the person)

Also, keep in mind, your mothership might be slow and a big fat target, it also is a fighting ship.

Now, for the bad, the translation seems a bit rough on the edges, for instance Space superiority fighters are called Space Superior, for some reason, and also there seems to be a few typos and the voice acting is downright bad.

Overall it is an interesting game, fun and challenging, it could use some polish, and a free roaming mode (been told the sequel has one) that is to say you move though the cosmos picking up missions and such.

Still, I'd recommend it, in spite of its issues. 75/100 in my oppinion.