Neue Rezensionen von Jaric Beans

(First Review Yay!)
I'm gonna be honest with this DLC, it feels like it was made by people that truly didn't want to work with the content from Blood & Chrome. I don't say this lightly as I am not a person to bash people, but here I can really feel the dislike of the source material.

I will be frank, as many BSG fans will know Blood & Chrome as QUITE a few problems in its own right which as garnered it QUITE the backlash from BSG lore keepers, rightly so in some cases.

How does this all work into Ghost Fleet Offensive? Well let me explain, first and most glaring of issues it that fact that many ships from the Ghost fleet in B&C are not here. Such ships as the Loki Heavy Support ship, the Demeter/Catamaran type, the Alert/Watersled type, the Hornet type, and the Viper Mk III. On the Cylon side were are missing the unnamed Basestar seen at Djerba (Think people call it the Dreadnought type Basestar?) While the Battlestar Valkyrie is seen in Blood & Chrome I do agree with the retcon decision to remove the ship and label it as a pure 2nd Cylon War ship.

Second the main body of the DLC, the story. I'm going the breeze over most of the early part here. Problems start almost immediately as the first couple of mission serve little to no purpose to the story feeling more. These starter missions don't even start to allude to the Ghost Fleet instead having the whole thing dropped on you after a couple of the filler missions. The game tries to stress to you the impotence of sending ships to the Ghost Fleet building it up as a "You get what you bring" kind of deal (Its not). While you do get all the ships you sent previously to the Ghost Fleet when you enter it gives a new whole free fleet plus a good lot of extra free ships you didn't send. To make matters worse you can still even order new ships from the production screen like nothing has changed. But the biggest disappoint was the main draw of the DLC it self, The Ghost Fleet Offensive.

The Ghost Fleet Offensive is nothing more then the few rest of the story missions you are forced to do one after the other, no resource management, no jump costs, no side missions, no score attack kind of deal, no stakes since you have a butt load of ships, and you only get the new ships then. When I first bought this I was excited as I believed the Ghost Fleet Offensive was going to be like a reverse Anabasis score attack mode forcing you to keep the offensive up your ships were worn down having no chance for rest. When I learned it was just the rest of the story and nothing else my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined (Almost literally).

All and all the whole story feels like its rushing through itself hitting all the hot spots from Blood & Chrome, but not building off then in any meaningful way.

Now we get one to the real salt in the wound, the Orion (Osiris from B&C).
This ships has received such a dirty treatment It can almost solely show that the devs wanted nothing to do with this ship, and did whatever they could to shaft it(If your buying this DLC just for the ship, don't). First the ship is priced at 950 Fleet Points meaning it is in direct cruisers at the same cost that fill important roles. Its missing 6 extra guns that are clearly shown 3 per side just behind the head of the ship. The removal of these guns is bizarre as they are shown in B&C it be the same size as the guns on the Orion's back which the devs turned into the ship's current only 6 light guns. The Orion in total should have 12 main guns which would much better justify its ridiculous fleet point cost. The ship is missing its point defense missile system leaving the ship very vulnerable to missile attacks. I honestly at first thought they would strike a 50/50 between the people that like B&C and the people that hate it by giving the Orion Chaff Launchers in place of Flak, I was wrong. Now the cloak at first sounds useful giving that it at match start makes you completely invisible until you drop cloak, or get spotted in DRADIS range. Think you can go fully invisible again like at the start by dropping out of DRADIS range and hitting cloak? Wrong, now every time you hit cloak instead of being invisible no matter where you are on the map you now are just set as an unidentified DRADIS mark that while can't be targeted by capital ship can be targeted by fighters, and murdered. Cloak also is supposed to drop the lock of any missile fired at the Orion, except it doesn't. The missile lock is ONLY dropped while cloak is up at soon as it goes down ALL missiles no matter where they are (even FAR past the maps edges) re-lock onto the Orion, hope you didn't forget a Nuke was fired at it, or the coat of a 152 missiles the Orion now has following it with no way to stop them by itself... HAVE FUN! To hammer home the point the Orion's description in game says it all, as in the devs' own words the ship is "derided as" a Pocket Battlestar (when by all rights that's exactly what it is given its pocket size, Armament, Viper detail, and Anti Missile System. The name is a class nickname as the term is used irl, and NOT the Orion's literal ship class name as some take it which is what has led to a great deal of ships' hate.) because it was a failure at doing anything but scouting. Scouting that the Orion isn't even very good at doing in game do to its strangely lo DRADIS range for a 'Recon Frigate' as the game calls it. But in short you almost never want the Orion in your fleet comps in game, as the ship fills no role any other ship could do better.
(Sorry for the wall of test there, but I can't get over what they did to the Orion.)

I truly feel sad making this review, I really do. This it a great game with great devs that with all their other DLC have kept great quality in their work, but this one to me is their black sheep. Ghost Fleet Offensive feels like it spends too much time thinking of how to tell Blood & Chrome as fast as possible to be done with it, rather then expanding upon it. I can not recommend this DLC in good faith.