S.Garffsky: As a pretty big Freespace fan myself, I'm curious: why do you like the first Freespace over Freespace 2?
You didn't ask me so of course I am going to answer. Albeit, I don't really prefer Freespace over the sequel, but still.
IIRC the first Freespace had a better and more interesting story. Frankly I don't even recall exactly what the story in the sequel was about, something something political something. The original's story seemed more pressing, the fate of the whole humanity is at stake and two enemies have to join forces to fight the new threat that is trying to consume them both...
But for gameplay, the sequel wins. First of all, I really much hated the early, and the final, missions of the first game because you didn't have any shields, hence every enemy shot would bring you closer to mission failure (which was a biiiiiig problem in the higher difficulty levels). I hated many missions in "Tie Fighter" for the same reason, the ones where you were flying some Tie Fighter or Bomber that didn't have any shields whatsoever.
And yeah the big ship fights were more flashy in the sequel, with those big ass beam guns.