I'm after a 'new' game and always heard good things about Privateer 2 back when it came out but never got round to it. Is the series approachable for someone who's never played a space game outside of Elite on the Nes? Can you start at the beginning or would that be like playing Ultima 1 or Might & Magic 1... or should I start towards the end of the series..?

Thanks guys, interested to finally play a game I've heard of but never played. I think I remember seeing footage of one of the games back on Bad Influence or Games Master in the UK.

If you want the full experience start with the first, but be warned that the gameplay of the first two games is archaic.
You can also start with the third and if you read the Victory Streak you should have enough information about the backstory of the first two games, also the gameplay is less archaic but not by any means a smooth experience.
The fourth is considered by many the best of the series (storywise) including me and the last (Prophecy) has probably the best gameplay.

As for the spinoffs, if you ever only want to play a single Wing Commander game I highly recommend the first Privateer, which I still consider to be the best game of the entire franchise.
The second Privateer is certainly interesting if it was only because of a lot of wellknown British actors and actresses are in it, but the universe has little or nothing to do with Wing Commander/Privateer as that brand was slapped on it after developement to increase sales, the original title would have just been "The Darkening".

Thanks very much. Are they playable (first, fourth... any) with keyboard and mouse?

Yes, though I've always played them with a joystick myself which seem to be the most natural way to play these games.

You heard what? O.O

No way! It's notorious for being one of the most disappointing games of all times, along with the likes of Master of Orion 3 and Daikatana. Not only it's a rather poor game, it was also horribly bugged at launch and it has never been patched properly. Avoid it at all cost, seriously.

As for your other questions, I agree with what Strijkbout wrote above, except perhaps the need of a joystick. Wing Commander 1-2 are sort of playable with the keyboard (due to the relatively slow pace and the very generous hit detection system), but WC3 and above are too fast paced to be played without a joystick (unless you wish to play on easy difficulty and/or with cheats enabled).

I played them all last year and I can say that WC4 is the best also gameplay-wise, Prophecy while not as bad as the first three WC games is a bit of a step back.

Are you sure about that?
It had extremely high scores in magazines back when that had credibility

They never had credibility, if anything at the time it was worse because indipendet press and bloggers didn't exist at all, when GG started in fact I was surprised that they noticed only now. Then they started to attack exactly the indipendent critics and journalists that wanted to get away from the corporate/dev/publisher bullshit instead which sincerely only confirmed how utterly clueless they were.

Very few magazines weren't influenced by publishers and developers at the time, mostly because critics tended to be fanboy themselves (to be a games jounalist you have to an enthusiast to a degree, especially at the time, so it was easy to get swayed by previews or be forgiving even without more obvious "corruption"), I remember the few magazines (well, PCgamer mostly) who weren't usually gave much lower scores and often got in disputes with developers and publishers.

And consider that at the time the Wing Commander series was like CoD today, even the spin offs, so they tended to be a bit generous, it's quite telling that a game that sold less at the time (Tie Fighter) holds up much better today than most Wing Commander games (and I'm being generous to Wing Commander).

Consider also that sometimes at the time bugs due to weird configs were common, there weren't directX so many had PC with soundblaster "compatibles" that really were anything but (my case) or similar problema and Privateer 2 was one of those technical marvels that have tons of bugs, and most PCmagazines usually had state of the art computers with real soundblasters, good configurations, etc and often didn't experience the problems people with less conventional (but still common) setups had to endure.

However Privateer 2 has some unofficial patches, so it might be worth a try.

Privateer 2 has gotten a bad rep mostly from Spoony's video review, most of it stems that it doesn't fit at all in the Wing Commander universe storywise and gameplaywise, but like I mentioned earlier it wasn't developed as a Wing Commander game and that it became one was an executive order made by EA.
That it has bugs, sure, but I never faced the poor AI Spoony did, maybe it's because I played the Windows version and lets face it the lauded TIE Fighter is full of bugs also, control issues most noticable in the training tubes, turrets not firing, etc.

For what it's worth I quite liked Privateer 2, the Doctor Who style sci-fi alone sets it apart. I guess it's a bit like Mad Max 3, for some reason people dislike it a lot, while I think it's an enjoyable movie.

Yeah, Tie Fighter has mostly that annoying joystick bug, they solved it only in X-wing alliance, XvT still has it.

Never had problem with the tubes, it was more an issue when I had to aim at something that more more than 0.3 klicks away.

Regarding the turrets I never really noticed at the time but I was playing on a pentium II with windows dos emulation so pehaps that compensated somewhat and when an update made it stop working during my second playthrough I imported the windows version and played that.

The only real gamebreaking bug I've met is in the second to last mission at normal level, the AI goes berserk and literally doesn't let you react before they blow up the asteroid turrets you are supposed to protect.

I wouldn't call full of bugs, but I don't doubt that privateer 2's reputation might have been more due to issues with modern systems.

However my "holding up" was more relative to the gameplay, I can pass between Tie Fighter and Fresspace with ease but Wing Commander 1-2-3 when I finally could try them when they came out on GOG.com felt rather... Primitive. In all aspects really, mission design, immersion, graphic engine (the first two, not because it looks bad but because the lack of proper perspective is disruptive t the gameplay).

I like them fine and I recognize they were groundbreaking at the time but still I find they aged worse than other spacesims i've played.

I haven't played Privateer 2 yet, but I do like Mad Max 3 and some other movies and TV shows that professional critics disliked and/or that were not financially successful and/or were cancelled. E.g. Avatar, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr, Attack of the Clones, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Big Stan, Ender's Game, The Fifth Wave, Firefly, Grandma's Boy, The Green Lantern, Jinn, Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Last Witch Hunter, Mangal Pandey: The Rising, The Phantom, The Red Baron, Starship Troopers, Wisdom, Yellowbeard, Zookeeper, etc.... And I like the Wing Commander film, too. :D

Privateer 2 is mostly full of tedious things and at the same time barebones compared to the first privateer, you can't even flee combat like in Privateer so if the game decides to throw countless anemies at you you are pretty much screwed.
Also you can't carry merchandise yourself so you need to hire a transport and while it's not that bad considering that they tendo to be armed, having to wait for them is, again, tedious.