Flight Command is basically Flight Commander 2 or Sid Meier's Ace Patrol series but set in Warhammer 40K universe. However, this turn-based aerial combat game has problems showing the results of each turn to give you proper tactical awareness. The 3D perspective does not help. It's also unclear how did your guys died when they did. All in all, you seem to be fighting the UI more than the enemy.

Flight Command (FC) is a turn-based aerial combat game set in the Warhammer 40000 universe where the Imperial Navy is fighting the Orks. (You can play both sides) Imps have better tech and maneuverability, while Orks have better armor and can tolerate more G's for the high-G maneuvers. You have basically fighters, bombers, and transports. Your pilots can be specialized in fighter or bomber.

You can play set scenarios, campaigns, or skirmishes. Scenarios are single missions with some complications, and you need to finish the first to unlock the second. Skirmish is just a random mission. You can play single player or go online and play against others.

Campaign are chained missions. Say the win is for 10 pts (you can also play for 20 or 30 pts) You start with 5 pts. You get usually 2 missions, probably 1 pt or 2 pts. You win those points if you win the mission, else you lose those points. If you make it to 10 pts, you get a 4 pt mission to take out the Enemy Leader (in a heavy fighter). Kill him and you win.

Missions vary from straight up fight 4 v. 4, 5 v 7, escort 2 bombers through hostile ambush, escort the VTOLs in to evac friendly recon team, bomb the enemy ground forces protected by both AA and air assets... you get the idea. All properly WH40K.

The problem is the UI, as you just don't have a good overview of the battlefield at all.

One more rule note: any aircraft that flew through any of the borders of the battlefield is considered to have escaped the area. This can be problematic with bombers with their very limited turning radius, or when other crafts are fighting next to the border.

As the battle begins, your first task is to deploy your units (4-5 crafts, but could be up to 9) by drag and drop them on the map within the blue territory on the map. BEWARE that you do NOT place them on a path about to fly into a mountain. Also, the altitude and speed are actually adjustable on the deployment screen if you zoom in.

Also keep in mind that pilots have G-load stress, and repeated high-G maneuvers (i.e. high-G move when the stress meter is on RED) will lead to black-outs, where the pilot can only fly straight and level for a full turn, and cannot fire. This is not conducive to the pilot's survival. Nor is intersection with terrain at any level. While the game will warn you not to fly into the ground if you gave it an order that will result in it fly into the ground, it will NOT stop you from flying so close to terrain that you CANNOT turn away from it in time.

Different crafts have different types of maneuvers. Bombers only have side-slip, and if high enough, power-dive. Fighters add to that "inverse moves" (basically half loop and split-S), as well as some high-G moves for sharper turns. Finally, there's the VTOL-only "spiral moves", which are super-tight turns. Also keep in mind VTOL can land during the mission if needed for transportation missions, evac missions, and so on.

To move the craft in 3D, you drag the plane in any direction you want, though it makes sense to move forward. You can also adjust the trajectory with the WASD keys, and adjust how much of a turn, how fast, and then, adjust the speed and height by selecting them from the ship HUD

The interface to present this is as icons just below the craft itself, with any extra maneuvers (like "land" for VTOLs) above the plane instead (Why?!)

Let's say you want to perform a half-loop to catch the enemy behind you. You would click on "inverse maneuvers", then drag your plane's outline up so it turns into outline of a craft doing a half loop (if you drag the plane below the original path, it becomes split-S)

Once you have committed all your moves, the combat is resolved, any crafts that got hit more than their armor dies, then the game will flip through random camera views that tracks the activity, but it's usually too close so you can understand the tactical situation. If your unit died, it's often unclear which enemy aircraft(s) kill it. The default view is a tracking variety, and the camera tracking has horrible framing. The result is total tactical confusion. You have to go to the upper right to find three buttons, the last of which can give you an overall third-person view of the battle with different crafts swirling around.

If you have pretty good tactical awareness, and use the 3D rotating view (which is NOT available during the execute/aftermath phase, only the movement planning phase) so you understood which craft went where, you still don't understand what did the enemy do other than after-the-fact observations. This guy was here, but is now, there, must have done a half-loop. Something like that.

Another problem is the portrayal of the sector borders. Remember I said before that if you fly out of the borders, you have disengaged? Well, you don't get to see where the border "wall" is when you are flying close it it... Only when your path actually passes THROUGH it. This makes the view USELESS when planning moves close to the wall, as I want to keep the unit inbound. Imagine you just made a hard turn, only to realize that next turn you can no longer turn and thus will automatically fly out of bounds, or a similar situation! You can try to setup enemies so you force them to disengage this way, but it will require a tactical awareness that the UI does NOT help you with at all.

There are commands like "priority fire" (prioritize target X) or even restricted fire (only shoot at target X) instead of the default (shoot at everything in range), but given that each fight ONLY lasts 12 turns (and you should disengage i.e. fly past the border wall during turn 12), ammo is usually not a concern. So I am not sure why have such commands.

There are promotion systems where each "rank up" gives the pilot an extra skill, which is usually a bonus to-hit at a certain range or altitude, but usually requires kills, which can be hard to arrange, esp. when death comes so randomly and swiftly.

As each campaign gives you a new squadron, promotions are within the campaign only.

Pilots that were shot down MAY or MAY NOT survive the ejection. You can request calling up reservists, but they will be at rookie skill level.

All in all, the game is very frustrating to play, and the struggle is not against the dumb AI (the single player AI is often making half-loops so it will point its tail directly at your units if you space them out far enough, as it tries to chase the units in front, thus exposing their rear to you) but against the darn UI, that just doesn't want you to have full tactical awareness of the aerial battlefield. You can't really fight a war like that.

It's amazing how only one year elapsed between Blazing Angels, and Blazing Angels 2, yet how different the game feels despite based on the same engine. More exotic planes including rocket planes and jets, a bit of sci-fi bent to the WW2 "alternate" history, and a more coherent storyline, plus animated story panels involving special operations, beautiful spy, and an evil Nazi General, makes for a much better game over all.

The game basically is pretty much the same as its predecessor... It's an arcade turn-and-burn WW2 flight combat game with a bit of squadron command (you can issue commands to your up to 3 wingmen, generic ones like "attack at will" or "defend me" along with 2 special orders: berserk, and taunt them away from me. However, this time, there's a bit of a story line... You are a special guy tasked with finding 3 other misfits for your ultra secret special squadron, flying even captured enemy planes if needed. As you fly around the world combating one threat after another, you get to do some really fancy stuff... Like fly slow enough so your "passenger" can jump onto a moving train... or fly through tunnels to bust tesla generators, to intercept V2 rockets launched all over the place, to taking out enemy air patrol... without raising suspicions by doing it outside view of local air defense nets. There's even shooting parachutes, directing Katyusha rocket fire, canyon buzzing (don't fly above level X or you're toast).

Most planes are your typical WW2 planes. All the classics are here: Hurricane, Spitfire, Beaufighter, Tempest, Mosquito, BF-109, Bf-110, Stuka, Zero, Val, Kate, but there are also more exotic ones like Swordfish, Barracuda, the push-pull Do 335, the twin-engine He-219, Japanese Shinden, and Russian planes beyond the Il-2, such as Yak-15, La-7, Pe-2 as well as jets and rocket planes from Germany, England, and Russia, including the Meteor, Me 262, Me-163 Komet, Go-229, and so on.

The game gives each plane up to three weapons: the primary weapon, probably a machine gun, unlimited ammo, but subject to heat restrictions, a heavy weapon (could be seeking missiles, rockets, bombs, or heavy cannon) with limited ammo, and finally, rear defense weapon with both ammo and a long cooldown period (about 15 seconds) after each use.

Here's when the game starts going into sci-fi territory, in that some planes have added a "rear defense" weapon... There's the "flasher", a set of rear-facing flashbulbs that will blind pilots behind you, at least for a short while. Others would have a "tesla coil", a flash of lightning disabling all planes within a certain radius (affected planes will not be controllable for X seconds), as well as defense fog (a stream of "smoke" disables engines of someone who ran into it for X seconds).

Both heavy weapon and defense weapon ammo can be "recharged" by shooting down or destroying special "ammo" enemies (designated with a "bullets" logo on radar and in the HUD).

The game also gives a bit of RPG feel (but again, ahistorical) by give you options to upgrade whatever plane you fly (even if you never flew it before, or that it belonged to some other air force, such as Russians) with ares such as "improved sights", "hypergolic fuel" (missiles and torpedoes move faster), "proximity fuse" (easier to kill targets), "armor piercing bullets" (for killing tanks), and so on. You earn "points" per mission by accomplishing objectives and killing enemy units. On simpler missions you get 3000 points, but on really tough and long missions you can score more than 10000 points per mission. On the other hand, cheapest upgrade is 2000, so you'll have to do very well to get enough points to buy every upgrade.

The missions are much better designed, with less boring parts. You get to play with all sorts fighters and bombers to jets to rocket planes. A few missions in fact, ask you to land, then once you did so switch to a different plane to continue fighting.

The overall plot is your special squadron was called upon to deliver a spy into occupied France... by dropping her ONTO a train (with some fancy flying by you). Then you get to fly to Africa and engage the Nazi colonel there in charge of "special projects" there. Which lead all the back to France... where the spy, Marguerite, is in pursuit, but she needs to steal some documents BEFORE she leaves. As you keep discovering various special projects by General Von Kluge, with help of Marguerite and the allied commandos, you find Nazi special projects all around the world... A hidden base hidden in China with help of the Japanese, a ground based tesla tower that is capable of destroying dozens of planes at a time, a secret base in the Alps, a plan to hit San Francisco with missiles and kamikazes... You and Von Kluge became arch-nemesis of each other. It's cheap, but it works.

Each mission, while filled with lots of enemies to kill, also has sections that are at least somewhat creative. Escorting a train out of Austria is interesting, as you need to clear its path of enemies, while under attack by both AA and enemy planes. There are two missions where you get to take down a zepplin by taking out its outside turrets then try to hit its soft underbelly, for example.

After you played through a mission you can replay it flying a different plane, or perhaps even different weapons, as you unlock more paintjobs and planes.

The voice talent this time is good, except for Von Kluge who sounds American, rather than German. The sound effects are quite good in general. Music is a big overwhelming at times, and repetitive at others.

There's nothing really really new in Blazing Angels 2, but Ubisoft learned a lot from their previous release. Now you can man the controls properly, though I would have preferred a more visual map then just a list of commands and corresponding controls, and the plot now at least makes some sense for the squadron to be jumping around the world, always one special mission after another. The planes also gets more scifi to make Multiplayer balancing easier. The missions are also more varied, and while some of the missions get a bit difficult, I can attest that so far all missions CAN be won. It's just a much better package overall.