The most underrated flight sim of this generation
For starters, the story is horribly cheesy. It's very anime and very overacted. But story is not the main focus of this game.
Combat is stellar. The anime style shown here actually adds to the game. Bright colors, interesting ship designs, and a decent techno soundtrack make some great space battles. Despite what some other reviews say, controls are tight and work perfectly for the most part. Your special moves are a weird feature that could've used some direction but everything else does it's job.
The sense of progression is great here. You earn points for completing missions and with those you unlock new weapons. Some are awesome and some are there as prerequisites for the better stuff.
Some problems with the game are the cluttered HUD and occasionally unknown sub objectives. The environments are awesome to see so it was a questionable design choice to make the HUD so obstructive. It's great at the end of missions when it all goes away and you get to take in all of its glory. And the game doesn't always tell you what your sub objectives are, an odd design choice.
If you can get past the irritating voice work (an easy feat once you experience the combat), you'll experience a great game with a lot of substance.
Some suggestions if they were ever to do a sequel (unlikely):
Multiplayer
A better story
More missions
More control over the squad and fleet
Different types of ships
More customization