The next mission turned out to be a lot easier than the ones before it. I had to babysit a load of trainee pilots. On the downside this means flying with 4 wingmen none of whom mind shooting me if I’m anywhere near the target but are totally unable to hit what they are aiming at.

The amount of friendly fire is pretty silly so I back off when it gets to the last fighter.

Next mission is to retrieve a Kilrathi data pod with their battle plans so we can change them are get their fleet to strike where we want them. This is another easy mission and I make it through first time.

Next up we go for the fleet itself. The fleet is smaller than expected and go down pretty easy.

It turns out they didn’t entirely fall for the data pod and the fleet is moving in elsewhere.

Paladin says his goodbyes and heads off to track the fleet movement..

but as soon as I take off hes in trouble again so I have to go rescue him.

Some of the Kilrathi seem to be shooting each other for some unknown reason.

As soon as I autopilot in there is an ejected Kilrathi who I tractor in.

I dock with the Bonnie Heather after taking out all the enemies.

And find out I’ve just tractored in Prince Thrakath.

Khasra was attempting to assisinate him and get a step nearer to being emporer.

Khasra comes back and tries to talk us into giving him up. Instead I get sent out in a bomber to fend them off.

As soon as I launch the prince escapes and steals a crossbow.

Somehow he’s already too far away to catch, and heads off to take on the squadron himself. He allegedly doesn’t have a chance on his own even though thats the mission I’ve just been sent out to do myself (on my own).

I set off in pursuit but he jumps out just after I arrive leaving me with about 7 ships to take on at the same time.

This is a pretty tough mission but not too bad as the crossbow makes pretty short work of the medium fighters. The trick is to leave Khasra till last as he takes way more hits to kill.

This just leaves the final mission and I must have spent about 90 minutes trying to complete this one. I have to go out and kill the strike fleet in a Sabre with Hobbes on the wing. I’m met on the way by Bear + wingman also in Sabres. This is a bad sign from the start. The more wingmen, the harder the mission as the wingmen are always useless in this game.

Sure enough they fly into each other, shoot me everytime I get on the tail of a Kilrathi, run into their own missiles or the two Fralthis and are generally not much help. To make matters worse the two Fralthi have some sort of supergun that they are deadly aim with. Whenever I take out the fighters, this keeps getting me killed when I try the torpedo run. If I veer off to avoid it I lose torpedo lock and have to start again.

 Eventually one of my wingmen scores a torpedo hit before getting blown up. I also find out that I can using afterburners avoid the big gun and not quite veer off enough to lose lock most of the time. If I lose lock I play conservitavely and retreat to start again. Also the gun occasionally shoots off in completely the wrong direction so you could if you are patient just wait until it misses before following through with the run.

This was undoubtedly the hardest mission in any Wing Commander to date although having completed it now I reckon I could go back and do it with less trouble now I have the technique to avoid the gun and keep lock so in that sense its pretty well designed. Once completed this mission kicks straight into the end cutscene which I’ve got every screen from below.

So Ghorar Khar was worthless after all. Thats a fairly downbeat ending to set up the next mission pack. I’ve still enjoyed this though – its been the best Wing Commander experience so far. The plot moved around a lot and there was quite a bit of variety to the missions.

Next: Ultima Underworld