I don't enjoy it as much as the first two, you avoid more fights than engage in them. The majority of problems with this game lies in its gameplay more than anything else. Descent 3 is a 360 degrees 3D flight shooter.
The music in the game is rather quiet compared to the first two games. The one you will remember most will be the one that plays every time you die. The soundtrack is forgettable compared to the first one but the sounds are really good. What else do you expect from a shooter besides *BOOM* *BAM* *BING*, satisfying hearing those bad guys explode.
The gameplay is what really boils down to. The first problem will be adjusting the controls to your liking especially if you don't have a joystick. If you are expecting this game to be a smooth ride like the other two, you are dead wrong. The game has two options for your mouse: mouselook and "flightsim".
Mouselook makes the game impossible to play. Adjusting its sensitivity does not work, either you'll get too sensitive controls(play a modern shooter or something like duke nukem 3d, turn its mouse sensitivity all the way up, in this game is more sensitive than that and way faster, just one flick of the mouse and your ship did a 180 and its upside down) or very slow as in sluggish. You adjust it by a meter in the options, you can't enter a specific decimal number for your mouse sensitivity."Flightsim" is how the older games used to play and where you might stay with. It too has a problem with mouse sensitivity. Since you can only adjust it with a meter given in options, you can't manually enter a decimal number, you are stuck with trying every number in the meter and getting used to it. Once you get used to it, it is second nature but the problem with both type of mouse controls is the rotation of your ship.
This is a 360 degrees flight shooter game after all. You will be going up, down, left, right, upside down, diagonally and outside of the "mines" which in this games are factories, prisons, etc. First you must configure your controls extensively especially if you are used to Descent 1 and Descent 2. The constant wobbling is very annoying when trying to even just fly forward. The game picks up the tiniest movement by the mouse and the ship might rotate because of a very small flick. Sometimes you'll feel you have to let go of the mouse just to try to fly straight. In dogfights it gets really annyoing, rotating your ship way too much than in the other games because of the wobbling when all you wanted was to turn the ship to the side. The gameplay will factor too heavily against you all the time.
The biggest gripe about this game is the balance in gameplay. You shoot way too slow lasers compared to the enemy's. All enemies can move faster than your lasers and they are smart too. The AI will dodge your crosshairs literally even more if you are shooting at them. How am I supposed to shoot down any enemy if they move faster than my slow moving lasers? I present this question because all enemies that can, shoot very fast lasers,very fast. The enemies have a boost system(you use it to move fast for a short time) just like you and they fire fast lasers while you fire slow moving lasers...It does not make sense. The complaint isn't that the game is difficult for me but that it is artificially hard and unbalanced.
Artificial hard means the game is in some way unbalanced or factors against you and your abilities to succeed, the game might do something that goes completly against your mechanics or the way you are supposed to play, its like putting an enemy in Super Mario Bros that shoots,can't be killed, only flies very fast directly at your player, never gives an audio or graphical indication when its going to charge at you and is always offscreen. Mario does not have the ability to dodge fast so that already makes it artificial hard. Well in Descent 3 that counts for all enemies. It is a challenge and fun trying to shoot down the melee enemies but when it comes to the shooting ones, you are best to just dodge them and boost forward or spam rockets at them which they can dodge very well too. My best advice is to keep shooting(you'll will miss 90% of your shots) until the enemy is in a corner where they can't dodge rockest and lasers, else just dodge and boost forward. When it comes to fight outside, the game shows it weakness.
The game is not designed to be fighting in wide open areas because of all the things mentioned before. Unless you are using homing missiles(they are homing missiles for the first 1 or 1.5 seconds you fire them after that they stop "homing") or there is a good geographical advantage to corner them near where you are fighting, else the enemies will dodge perfectly. In a game like this don't expect to be able to get into laser fights blasting, its about stealth(as in fighting as little as possible), avoidance, patience and a lot of loading games. Since the odds are always against you, the best strategy is to find out how to corner them by cluttering the enemy, by this I mean putting them all together nice and tight against a corner of the room then spam rockets and lasers or if you have access to the outside(these are always wide open areas) lure them there and boost
forward,leave them outside. These two strategies always work, it is disheartening that this is what Descent 3 is boiled down to. In the other 2 games the enemies had different behaviors(some could doge,some could not, others dodge great,spam lasers with no dodging, spam rockets with dodging,etc) and you had to negotiate differently every time on how to clear different rooms. Don't expect that in Descent 3.
I give this game 2 stars.