Star Fox Command
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 Behold, the worst Star Fox game that the fans did kicked off their collection because they fear about the security of being a real Star Fox fan.
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Star Fox Command is a 3D shooter video game created by Nintendo and was released on the Nintendo DS on 2006 in North America and Japan, and on 2007 in Europe. It serves as the sequel to the 2005 game Star Fox Assault and is the fifth installment in the Star Fox series. It focuses on the turn-based movement system and the gameplay follows upon its Star Fox and Star Fox 64 style. The story is noticeably a choose your own adventure concept where it has nine endings to unlock along the way.
Plot
The Plot of Star Fox Command surrounds the attack of the Anglars. The Star Fox team has been disbanded, with Slippy leaving to spend time with his fiancée Amanda, Falco leaving to run his own errands, and Krystal being forced to leave the team due to safety concerns. Fox and ROB 64 are the only ones remaining in the team and once the Anglars begin a war, Fox must reunite his former teammates to take down the threat while encountering other allies and the rival team, Star Wolf. Regardless of the route taken, the Anglars are all killed off in the end, but with the game's multiple endings system, different outcomes play out.
Why It Should Be Disbanded
- One of the problems with the gameplay is that its formula is tenaciously repetitive; instead of doing something new and interesting with them, with every mission always being in All-Range mode rather than an on-rail shooter or something else entirely.
- People who prefer the traditional controls will find the mandatory stylist control gimmicks to be intrusive and make it more difficult to play and enjoy the game.
- And also, unlike most DS Zelda games and the first Dragon Ball Origins (although they came out later) which also use touch controls, at least they were adventure games designed with that in mind and they were decent, howewer for a shoot 'em up game, it doesn't fit well and it is just a complete chore to play and for some it might even be unplayable to play.
- The absolute worst part about this is that this game wasn't even designed with those controls in mind, and it would be way better if the game could be played with the d-pad, at least it would not create even more unbalanced difficulty than what is present in this game.
- Also, if you're touch screen is not working correctly, then good luck to even play this game because it will be even worse and is completely unplayable, and there's not any option to play with the d-pad.
- This game introduced the terrible system of a time limit, which was never present in the previous games (aside from some levels of 64 and Assault but even then, it wasn't for all the levels and it was only done to raise the stakes naturally), and because of that, it had a lot of unbalanced difficulty spike that is present in this game and it is somehow worse than Star Fox 64 difficulty at times.
- Even worse, the game use the gameplay system of Star Fox 2, which could had given this game being a hidden gem if this game was well made, but that game didn't had a time limit to begin with, so this system is even more pointless and it just ruin most of the game.
- In fact, the next games, Star Fox Zero and Star Fox Guard would never ever use a time limit in their gameplay since fortunately those who made those games did know about this game mistake, even if they are not the best games of the franchise.
- The Star Fox team splits up shortly before the game begins, but it does not mean anything because there is no sign that the team has ever had a major fallout and when Fox does reunite with any of his crewmates, they are just welcome with open arms and act like nothing ever changed, which makes many wonder why the team ever disbanded in the first place.
- There are some routes where you do not even reunite the team at all (which is supposed to be the main point of the plot, even one with multiple routes) and you would end up joining with Star Wolf, or get into Falco's solo adventure that has little to do with anything with one of the endings involving him has nothing to do with the overall story.
- There is also the melodrama that occurs between Fox and Krystal that frequently gets in the way of the main story to the point where it becomes annoying and distracting. It also feels more like a corny soap opera than an actual conflict to test their loyalty.
- There are some routes where you do not even reunite the team at all (which is supposed to be the main point of the plot, even one with multiple routes) and you would end up joining with Star Wolf, or get into Falco's solo adventure that has little to do with anything with one of the endings involving him has nothing to do with the overall story.
- Even for a DS game, the graphics are rather poorly made because it look extremely blurry and the airship models doesn't look great, also the color palette is abysmal and the art style overall had a somewhat decent potential to be good looking but it wasn't executed well. To give you an idea, Star X, a clone of Star Fox on GBA, looked way better than this and it was released in 2002, 4 years before this game.
- Star Fox 64 on N64, which was released in 1997 for the N64 also look way better and that was released nearly a decade before this game.
- Not to mention that even the very first Star Fox game and Star Fox 2 look way better than this and were released in 1993-1996 (technically Star Fox 2 was released in 2017 for an official release date but it was mean to be released in 1996), and those games also had much more detailed sprites work and textures and they were 3D shooters games on the SNES! How is this even possible?!
- In fact, it even feel like those graphics came from another shooter game rather than Star Fox because of how blurry and poorly colored it look, hell even the cutscenes doesn't look that good.
- While they are faithful to the previous games, the Lylat voice acting (which is by the way the only voice acting present in this game) sound terrible compared to Star Fox 64 because it feel unnatural, sound a bit irritating, and their audio quality is terrible, even for a DS game.
- In fact, even the very first game released on the SNES in 1993 had way better gibberish voices than this as they sounded way better and much more fitting, even worse, those kind of voices could had probably fit this game but no.
- The absolute worst part about this is that many of the characters, if not all of them sound quite similar, just had higher or lower pitched voices, which is also incredibly lazy and thus might show that this game might had been rushed.
- The existing cast of characters have a drastic personality change in different forms:
- Fox McCloud went from a lovable serious and slightly cocky badass who cares about the greater good and trusts his friends and is patient with their shortcomings, to an overprotective idiot who makes stupid decisions like kicking Krystal off the team merely for her safety when he never had an issue with her joining in the first place (with Krystal perfectly capable of holding her own in battle), making it unreasonable, and he has become a huge jerk to even his own teammates.
- While Falco Lombardi remains one of the more tolerable characters (who already underwent character development in previous games), he suffers from a slight character derailment as he left the team again and reverted to the way he was in Star Fox 64.
- Slippy Toad may be one of the more likable characters, he still feels generic when his mechanical genius is rarely shown and spends a lot of time worrying about his fiancée Amanda.
- The worst offender is Krystal herself, who went from a wise, loving, empathetic young lady, to a woman scorned stereotype who wants revenge against Fox and was willing to ruin his life over it, and treats her teammates poorly for no reason, even though they didn't do anything to her, and joins Star Wolf, a wanted criminal mercenary group. It's not helped that she is just as bad in her reactions to her being dismissed from the team. Her whiny overdramatic nature overshadows any sympathy towards her situation.
- Wolf O'Donnell is one of the least touched, but even then he sometimes has out of character moments that tend to be off-putting, even for someone like him.
- Leon Powalski is a strange case, as he goes from a ruthless cold-blooded assassin to also having a soft spot for piece and gets obsessive over flowers, rainbows, and parades. While hidden depths aren't a bad thing by themselves, applying them to a person who is a dangerous assassin just feels weird.
- Panther Caroso's change of speaking patterns is strange and out of left field as he now speaks in the third-person, when he never had any problems speaking in the first-person in the previous game. It could have been given over to any of the new characters instead.
- Katt Monroe underwent a completely unnecessary redesign; she originally had pink fur which was shown in 64/3D, the Farewell, Beloved Falco manga and Star Fox Zero, she now has dark colored fur instead, possibly to make a contrast to the rest of the female cast being or wearing pink, when the dark fur color could have gone over to Lucy since her father is also gray furred while allowing Katt to keep her pink fur.
- While still pretty good, some of the soundtrack sound generic and doesn't really fit the Star Fox universe, to point this out, this game probably had the weakest soundtrack in the whole series.
- The art style of this game is way too realistic looking in term of backgrounds and the art style itself is very poorly done, even the cutscenes look rather off because the characters look more like plastic than actual characters, and also the characters designs are a huge downgrade from the previous games, because they just don't look as charming as they were before, and look like as if they wanted to make younger versions of the characters but fail.
- In fact, the artworks of this game are possibly the worst in the entire game since they look very uncanny because of the plastic looking like characters, and also even the game over artwork is poor because you cannot even take it seriously and the picture look somewhat laughable.
- Howewer the ending cutscenes had even more laughable looking artwork as if they didn't wanted us to take this game seriously and it is more uncanny than funny honestly, for example compare this game artwork to some of the other games artworks (such as Assault and Adventure) and you will see that this game artworks are downgrade.
- The multiplayer mode (which is now unplayable due to the Nintendo WFC being shut down) was terrible and almost unplayable because for some reason: If one player, even in a 3- or 4-player match, dropped out, the entire match ended for everybody and the match was not filed into the non-quitting players' records, this is extremely annoying and it make you wonder how this was allowed to even pass before being released.
- The way to do local wireless multiplayer is a bit inconvenient; one person has to host, and the other players have to use DS Download Play to download the multiplayer client, even if they have their own copies of the game.
- There is also the fact that despite the fact that each and every character has their own unique ship with their own abilities and stats that obviously exists in the main story, but in the multiplayer, you are restricted to only using Fox’s Arwing model which is clearly wasted potential for variety and players who have different preferences in playstyle.
- In every story route, ROB 64 seems to be constantly appearing in every cutscene he's in, even in paths where he has no reason to be there, such as joining up with the Star Wolf team, or joining a random character, which can cause inconsistencies with subplots where he should not be present. Also, it's impossible for ROB to be in two places at once.
- The game try way too hard to be darker than the other games in the series, especially with the endings being the worst offender, along with some of the extremely mean-spirited lines that are said such as "Great Fox is down, goodbye cruel world!" when you fail a mission.
- In fact even the game over screen try way too hard to be dark, and while it worked due to having a very disturbing music and how Fox looks angry, it could scare some children, even if there was worse things than this in other kid games.
- Now true, the Star Fox franchise was always dark in some ways, especially Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Assault but here they had taken this kind of tone way too far to the point of being almost as bad if not worse than the Shadow the Hedgehog game released in 2005, and even those games still had more light-hearted and funny moments.
- The Anglar Emperor and the rest of his villainous kind are excruciatingly bland and forgettable antagonists, due to them being generic hegemonic villains who only want to take over the galaxy with no other depth or motivation and the Anglar Emperor doesn't have any unique aspects to set him apart from the previous villains, and are overall a VERY poor fallow-up to both the Aparoid Queen and Aparoid race. This isn't helped that Anglar Emperor's boss battle literally copies off the Andross battles in previous games.
- Bland and uninspiring bosses that all feel the same and are a huge down-grade to those from Star Fox Assault.
- Both Andrew Oikonny's and Pigma Dengar's return does not make sense as they were both killed on-screen in Star Fox Assault and are both nowhere relevant to the entire plot, and in the case with Pigma Denger, he only makes two appearances, which has him as the final boss that gives the heroes a bad ending.
- While it is possibly that they both survive like both General Pepper, Star Wolf, Rob and Peppy, it's never explain how they survived.
- There are also plot elements that could have had characters taking another characters place instead:
- Wolf's apparent rivalry with Falco; the concept of the rival teams interacting with other team members can be a good idea, but this rivalry has its problems. 1.) There is no pre-established chemistry between them in either 64 or Assault as the Star Wolf team traditionally goes after each teammate and he always went after Fox, and the other Star Wolf member that actually goes after Falco is Leon. Wolf never interacted with Falco once. 2.) The interactions between Wolf and Falco only amounts to them arguing and insulting each other rather than testing each other's skills and the former even makes unfunny and cringy derogatory remarks about the latter behind his back. Leon could have joined Fox and Wolf on Solar and easily taken Wolf's place as the one feuding with Falco.
- The Worm Mission has Krystal recounting the story about Andross's banishment fails to make sense as it doesn't explain where she got her information from and the fact that she is telling the story simply to spite Fox for kicking her off (her placing General Pepper in the wrong when him banishing Andross was totally justified and while defending Andross, even though he destroyed her homeworld and trapped her to take her energy). On top of that, Krystal was never there before or during the Lylat Wars so she has no way of experiencing these events. Additionally, it would have been better if Dash, who has a familial connection with Andross, appeared and give his account on Andross's past instead of Krystal and it worked fine in a different Titania mission that involves him.
- Because of the game's nature and how much they introduced new characters that only appear in this game, it feel more like a fanfiction rather than an official Star Fox game, the endings themselves and even the characters flanderization and/or derailment prove it. Even worse, most of those new characters does not appear in either Star Fox Zero or Star Fox Guard.
- While downer endings can be done well if done in ways that naturally leads to these outcomes and actually invokes sympathy from the audience or meant to showcase the consequences of the actions of the characters in a realistic fashion, but in Command, these negative endings are very mean-spirited due to them either feeling rushed, simply giving characters unearned and/or undeserved consequences, or even putting them through karmic overkill because the plot demands it. In many ways, it features the characters running away from their problems and going against their motto of never giving up:
- The third ending, The Anglar Emperor, has one of the worst twist endings in the series' history ever, which has Star Fox and Star Wolf beating the big bad and the future seems bright, up until it suddenly pulls a 180 with Krystal (after reconciling with Fox) decided to join Star Wolf for no reason and apparently doesn't regret it, not even considering how her actions made Fox feel, essentially ruining what could have been a great ending. Making matters worse is that there is no build up to properly foreshadow the twist, and the fact that this is the default ending that the players are forced to unlock first does not help, and it's an awful way to begin a journey to unlock the other endings. The image of Krystal running from Fox is the most infamous for being pathetically melodramatic and there is also Fox's off-model face that looks really tacky.
- The fourth ending, Star Wolf Returns, has Wolf, Leon, and Panther being hailed as heroes for defeating the Anglar Emperor (after they turned on Star Fox), and Krystal is the only one who faced scrutiny for her part in abandoning and turning against her own teammates and is publicly shamed by the citizens everywhere to the point where she leaves Lylat to become a mercenary named Kursed, whom Fox doesn't recognize when they meet again. On the flip side, the citizens are also hypocrites who are mad at Krystal for swindling her teammates while praising Star Wolf for saving the day, and they are just as guilty for cheating Star Fox out of their victory.
- The sixth ending, Dash Makes a Choice, has the concept of Dash going down the path of darkness several years after terraforming Venom to make it habitable isn't bad by itself, but the execution, like with the third ending and its twist ending, it was done poorly; Dash is established as someone who isn't proud of the person Andross became that led to his exile and he is a fan of the Star Fox team who looks up to Fox and Falco (even though they killed his grandfather), so it doesn't make any sense for someone who is tempted to become like their relatives and ultimately chooses to do better and is the only monkey character who is friendly with the team and his turn to villainy came out of nowhere, and the twist ending was way out of left field. This contradiction of his character development aged significantly poorly and gives a bad message that people who have toxic family members are forever inherently doomed to be just like them later on, when in reality, there have been many cases of people who have broken the generational curse for good. This ending obviously doesn't do the "You don't have to be like your parents/relatives" message any favors.
- The eighth ending, Pigma's Revenge, has no relevance to the rest of the story as it ends with Falco fighting Pigma, while missing out on the battle against the Anglar Emperor, with Fox telling Falco that he doesn't need him anymore because he was late. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for a couple of factors that make the moral of the importance of being on time and consequences for lateness fall flat; 1.) the narrative forgot that the Star Fox team disbanded and Falco left the team like everyone else so he is free to do his own thing. 2.) Fox never made any attempt to contact Falco himself or go up to him to invite him back into the team, or at least give him a mission update. Additionally he never joined ROB when they decide to search for him. 3.) When Falco tells ROB that no one gives him orders, ROB only states that it is a suggestion rather than a necessity which actually waters down the importance that Falco needs to return to the team. And Falco is a former gang leader who is well-known for his dislike towards authority and people like him require a valid and more convincing reason to listen than a "because I said so." response. 4.) Fox expects Falco to come to Aquas to attend Slippy's wedding, after telling him that he isn't needed on the team anymore, and Falco was genuinely despondent over this. As this is the team that Falco considered to be his family, this understandably upsets him and becomes disillusioned until Katt contacts him and suggests that he creates his own team, with him as the leader and his team, Star Falco consisted of Katt and Dash as the full team that rivaled Star Fox. This route clearly tries to put Falco in the wrong for his stubbornness when in reality no other character tries to communicate with him beforehand, and ROB never gave a proper reason to rejoin the team. Overall, you end up feeling more sympathy for Falco than for Fox and everyone else involved.
- The ninth ending, The Curse of Pigma, has Star Wolf taking everything from the Star Fox crew while Fox and Falco were defeating Pigma, which results in Fox spiraling into a deep depression until Falco suggests that they should take up a racing career which manages to help Fox break out of his state. It's fine to move on from a bad experience, but them forgetting their pasts as Star Fox mercenaries is technically unrealistic as it was too much of a major part of their lives to be easily forgotten.
- Of course, while most of the new characters are good, they only appear in this game and doesn't appear in the next game Star Fox Zero, which is too bad and is wasted potential for having new characters to the franchise.
- In fact, speaking of that, it was a horrible way to end Krystal appearance in the franchise because the last time that she appear is in this game, where she was completely flanderized to the point of being completely insufferable.
- Whats worst is that that this game so-far killed the Star Fox 64 time-line, as they has not been another game were it takes place after Star Fox Command, and the next game that came out nine-to-ten years later, Star Fox Zero, is another reboot to the Star Fox series.
- Overall, due to how bad this game is, it is considered by many to be the worst Star Fox game ever made, and while Star Fox Zero was also not that great of a game either, at least that game still had its own level of charm of the previous games, but here there is pretty minimal and the game is barely any fun to play.
Redeeming Qualities
- Just the simple fact that the players can play as the other characters besides Fox himself, such as the other Star Fox members, the Star Wolf members, and even other supporting characters is considered to be one of the best parts about the game and they each have different stats that make it feel like they are playing as a different character rather than just another Fox clone.
- There is also the fact that all characters each have unique ships that have different names that fit certain aspects of the characters.
- Like other games, while the soundtrack isn't as good as the previous games and is the weakest soundtrack of the series with some really generic musics, it still decent enough and can be nostalgic to listen to.
- Even when they feel generic at times, Slippy is one of the few characters who remained consistent character-wise and in one of the routes, he plays a role in helping Krystal realize that Fox is being sincere in his apologies while keeping his comedic nature. Falco also remains one of the more likable characters, even when he suffers a bit of derailment and he has moments where it can be easy to feel sorry for him and he is as fun, colorful, and entertaining as ever. On top of that, he happens to be one of the most resilient characters when it it comes to the bad things that happen to him in two of the negative endings and he is seen persevering through the firestorm of misfortunes thrown at him and unlike Krystal, at least he never tries to get petty revenge against his friends when they wrong him. Him cheering up Fox in one of the endings and expressing concern for Krystal's well-being when he learns that she joined Star Wolf and acting way out of character in his own story shows that he still cares about them overall is pretty heartwarming.
- It introduced new characters such as Amanda, Slippy's pushy and determined girlfriend, Lucy Hare, Peppy Hare's tomboyish daughter, and Dash Bowman the grandson of Andross (even if he is a bit divisive at times in how the various endings handled him).
- It use some elements from Star Fox 2, which was a really great game, but unfortunately this game execute this formula poorly compared to the former.
- The characters designs are still passable despite being a downgrade from the previous games and also despite looking like plastic.
- Some of the endings, such as the Fox and Krystal, Good-bye Fox, Lucy and Krystal, and Slippy's Resolve (to a degree) are considered to be one of the better endings that do a better job at wrapping up the saga and it is also where the characters improve in the end.
- You can record your own voice for the characters through the microphone. The game will scramble your speech into “Lylat Speech”. You can make the characters constantly scream, swear, burp, spit, etc. to at least atone for much of its absurdity.
- The next game, Star Fox Zero, while not the best of the franchise, is a massive improvement over this game as that game had better gameplay, better controls, better graphics and a better soundtrack too.
Reception
While Star Fox Command received mixed to positive reviews by critics with a score of 76/100, it was immensely panned by Star Fox fans as they criticized the story, the gameplay and especially the endings, which were considered the worst part of the game. The characters flanderization also received a lot of negative reviews, especially Krystal where they founded that they made the characters much more unlikable in comparison to their previous appearances, the game was also compared to a fanfiction because of how the story is and because of other things as well.
On Gamefaqs, it had a surprising score of 3.32 (Fair)[1] but still had it's fair number of mixed and negative reviews.[2]
There was also one user named Newcomer24 in DeviantArts who did a review on the game and he panned the game for it's gameplay, it's multiple endings, the characters flanderization and the story, he even said that he would had prefer that this game didn't exist.[3]
In fact, it was so poorly received that it is considered to be the worst Star Fox game ever made along with Zero and almost killed the franchise.
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