There have been a couple of Free-to-play space combat MMO's released recently,
Battlestar Galactica Online felt very influenced by EVE Online, in the harsh stylings and wide open systems. It also proved to be a lot more accessible, offering large PvMP space battles to anyone wanting to 'follow the zerg'.
BSG:O actually reminded me of Planetside, the pioneering eight year-old FPS MMO that also had a never-ending battle for supremacy but across three factions, not just two.
Black Prophecy though, has decided to return to the good 'ol days of Wing Commander offering what appears to mainly to be a single player adventure attuned more to a mainstream audience lavishing them with sometimes quite long cut-scenes that will make you think you are back in the Nineties when the PC ruled and those troublesome consoles were just for kids.
The graphics and indeed the UI seem a lot more polished than in BSG:O too, although I did note the lack of loading bars which result in juddery action that lasts a few seconds until you realise the next area is loading.
For a game that wants to grab a lot of space combat fans then, the story in the beginning is quite hi-brow riddled with politics and all sorts of strange names and races ready to confuse you. I was rather overwhelmed with the plot and all the unfamiliar names, and had no idea what was going on in terms of the story.
Once you get out of the tutorial mode you get to start the main chain of story quests.
There are lots of icons to navigate through, and not always intuitive. For example, to cash in the mission or in other words find the commander, you don't go to the obvious ports of call, the communicator or the mission log. Instead, you find him in the sector log as if he was a location, and then you still have to right click on him and choose 'communicate'.
Despite the amount of stuff you have to take in at the start, this is very impressive for a free game.
I was also pleased joypads are supported (BSGO's big error imo), so I was using my twin sticks to fly about, rolling on the left stick and strafing (rudders) with the rear shoulder buttons, front shoulder buttons for thrust. Targeting-killing might be easier with the mouse, but I find maneuvering a nicer experience with analogue sticks than keys.
After my first challenging mission (took me four or five attempts) I progressed to level 4 and started upgrading my ship and trading with the dealer guy. In fact if I'm honest the tough mission probably prompted me to get beefier weapons.
When you are using the joypad to fly around, It's not ideal having to hit space to enter 'mouse mode' when you want to click on icons, my main gripe with the game as it is quite jarring. You have to switch to 'mouse mode' to target large objects to scan them or whatever. But otherwise you can get by with 'nearest target' mapped to a joypad button. Obviously when docked, you will be using the mouse anyway to navigate all those icons.
I also recommend switching to the cockpit view, I did not realise the game even had one until I noticed while looking at the key control bindings.
Sadly, the MMO part of the game, PvP etc does not seem easy to access. When you are not questing on the main story chain, there are mission terminals at space stations offering solo and PVP missions. But I could not get the multiplayer stuff going. Perhaps no-one was around, they were all busy with the main story.
To conclude then, Black Prohecy is a great free game to try if you fancy a good old fashioned space combat romp. However, if mass multiplayer battles are your thing (these games are MMOs after all), I would choose the less glossy BSG:O instead.
