Better than Descent or any other space-combat game.
STORY:
Without spoiling too much, the plot is about a young pilot who is assigned to a squadron of fighter pilots to fight an alien race. It may sound like a generic plot by the way that I described it (and it does start out pretty slowly), but it gets very involved and exciting about half-way through.
The story is told through cutscenes with actual actors, with some famous ones too( Including Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars"). The acting in these scenes isn't great from the supporting cast, but the main characters are excellent.
Story Score: 9 / 10
GRAPHICS:
While the graphics do look a bit dated, they are still passable. If it wasn't for the blocky look when objects are near, it may even have looked better than most of the Playstation 2 launch games.
There are two major downfalls for the graphics though. The first is that most of the guns look bad when fired, unlike the amazing missile effects.
Another problem is that the cutscenes are very low in visual quality, and are extremely blurry, even on my high-end computer.
The graphics must have been very impressive at the time the game was made, but they don't hold up to most games made for PC anymore (which can be expected with a nine year old game).
Graphics Score: 6 / 10
GAMEPLAY:
This is the far best part of the game. For the most part, the controls work wonderfully, and feel natural. Some of the actions don't seem to fit on certain keys on the keyboard, but they are, thankfully, customizable.
Electronic Arts also did a great job on the mission design- not only does each mission feel different, with new enemies and goals in each one, but they also change depending on how you did in the previous mission. If, for example, you were tasked with protecting a friendly space ship, and you failed, the story would take a complete turn- the ship would not be in the next mission, you may be disliked by certain other pilots for your failure, and a different mission would be available.
The ability to change the story just by your actions on the battlefield makes the replay value for the game very high. Dedicated players will want to play all of the missions, and view all of the endings.
My only problem with the gameplay is that all of the missions take place in space, and the same space backdrop gets boring quickly. Depending on your location there will be different planets, moons, and stars, but they all look basically the same.
Gameplay Score: 9.5 / 10
Overall, Wing Commander: Prophecy is a great game. The only real problems are that the graphics are a bit dated, and the space background gets boring after a while. I would highly recommend picking this up if you could find it.