History YMMV / FreeSpace

* EvenBetterSequel: The original game received reviews that, while mostly positive, were nothing particularly outstanding; it was considered a good game, but not a ''great'' one. ''[=FreeSpace=] 2'', on the other hand, was positively heaped with praise, received numerous 'Game of The Year' awards, and is still widely played even to this day, over a decade after its release.

* FridgeHorror: The Shivans making one of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capella Capella system’s]] stars go supernova is filled with this when you realize what it’s likely to do to nearby systems and realize Capella is just under 43 light years from the Sol system.

* WhatAnIdiot: The second game has some rather glaring examples.
** A few missions into the campaign, the [[TheAlliance GTVA]] discovers an [[LostTechnology ancient artificial subspace portal]] deep in the previously strategically uninteresting Gamma Draconis system, near the site of an ambush by the [[SealedEvilInACan returning-after-thirty-years]] BigBad Shivans. The Alliance is intrigued by this discovery, because of the potential for the technology to be used to revive the collapsed subspace link to Earth, as well as the strategically-important resources that lie in the nebula beyond the portal. Unfortunately, as they explore the other side, they discover Shivans, Shivans, more Shivans, even more Shivans, and ummm... Lots of Shivans, which eventually ends up in an encounter with a massive juggernaut warship, designated Sathanas, that could rip apart an entire fleet in two minutes.\\
'''You'd expect''' The Alliance to gather as much data as they can about the ancient portal, immediately retreat from the nebula, deactivate the portal, blow up the subspace link, and live happily ever after. The Shivans, of course, are those {{Omnicidal Maniac}}s from thirty years ago who had that invulnerable SD Lucifer with the WaveMotionGun that was used to level all of the cities in the planet of Vasuda, killing four billion Vasudans and rendering the planet uninhabitable. They nearly reached Earth, if not for the heroic efforts of Alliance pilots who managed to destroy the Lucifer in subspace, which caused the collapse of the subspace link to Earth.\\
'''Instead''': The Alliance:
*** Kept trying to fight the Shivans inside an unknown system. Never mind that this is a species that almost wiped out everyone in known space thirty years ago. To hell with the fact that it was the Shivans who destroyed the Ancients, a race that had a ''huge'' empire and was ''way'' more advanced than the Terrans and the Vasudans ''combined'' ([[WordOfGod not actually true for technology as a whole]], but the Alliance doesn't ''know'' that since the only surviving pieces of Ancient technology are ones belonging to a category in which the Ancients ''were'' just that advanced). Despite the fact that the only response to a threat this species knows is ''more''...and ''[[AC:bigger]]''.
*** Logically, with the Shivans having sent their ''biggest'', they could only respond with ''more''. Obviously, at this point, the GTVA does not have the logistical and manufacturing output to keep up with the more advanced Shivans and they could do nothing but attempt to gather intel about the Shivans' whereabouts and plans. The GTVA ''still'' went back inside the nebula. And did they get ''more''. They retreat, but now it's too late. The only option left is to evacuate an entire star system and blow up the jump nodes leading to the Shivan-infested systems to seal them off.
*** Ironically, a dialogue between your ''wingmen'' in the ''first'' nebula mission heavily foreshadows the later events. Yes, even the ''[[RedshirtArmy Red Shirts]]'' think this is a bad idea. One wingman even told the other to shut up, that they're just following orders and they can't do anything about it! Seriously, whoever was put in charge as the commander-in-chief of the [=GTVA=] must ''really'' have appallingly poor strategic knowledge and leadership skills for his/her military and needs to be either relieved of command or executed for horrendous incompetence.
--->'''Wingman A''': ...I never signed on for hunting Shivans!
--->'''Wingman B''': Don't kid yourself, we're the ones being hunted, pilot.
--->'''Wingman C''': Command should shut down that portal and send the Aquitaine back to Deneb. We've got no business being out here!
--->'''Wingman D''': If Command needs your opinion they'll promote you to Admiral, now shut up and focus.
** As mentioned before, the Sathanas has extremely powerful forward mounted guns.\\
'''You'd Expect''': When attacking an enemy, it will try to keep the enemy in front.\\
'''Instead''': The ship is passing the Colossus and is unable to continue firing. As a result, the Colossus survives even without further assistance of the player with the above mentioned thirty to fifty-percent hull integrity. Otherwise it would be destroyed.

* MagnificentBastard: [[CulturedWarrior Admiral Aken Bosch]] spends the entirety of the game attempting to ally with the Destroyers — aka the Shivans — whom he believes are unstoppable and will never be defeated regardless of the efforts of the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA). When the players are tasked with a squadron to intercept and disable his ship, Bosch openly sends a communication channel to the player and taunts them, questioning the competence of their commanders as he warps out of the system, well before the players have any chance at hitting him, just before a Shivan fleet ambushes the player's squadron. He frequently outsmarts the entire GTVA command in his capital ship, and when it looks like he's finally been caught when his ship is disabled and boarded, it's found out that he had planned a ruse which included the capture of his ship and all of his crew all along, and he had actually used the confusion to escape alone on-board a Shivan transport, showing more ingenuity and unpredictability than even the inscrutable alien race.

* MagnificentBastard: Admiral Aken Bosch spends the entirety of the game attempting to ally with the Destroyers — aka the Shivans — whom he believes are unstoppable and will never be defeated regardless of the efforts of the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance (GTVA). When the players are tasked with a squadron to intercept and disable his ship, Bosch openly sends a communication channel to the player and taunts them, questioning the competence of their commanders as he warps out of the system, well before the players have any chance at hitting him, just before a Shivan fleet ambushes the player's squadron. He frequently outsmarts the entire GTVA command in his capital ship, and when it looks like he's finally been caught when his ship is disabled and boarded, it's found out that he had planned a ruse which included the capture of his ship and all of his crew all along, and he had actually used the confusion to escape alone on-board a Shivan transport, showing more ingenuity and unpredictability than even the inscrutable alien race.

* MagnificentBastard: [[BigBad Main antagonist]] Aken Bosch spends the entirety of the game attempting to ally with the Destroyers, AKA the Shivans whom he believes are unstoppable and will never be defeated regardless of the GTVA's efforts. When the players are tasked with a squadron to intercept and disable his ship, he openly sends a communication channel to the player and taunts them, questioning the competence of their commanders as he warps out of the system, well before the players have any chance at hitting him, just before a Shivan fleet ambushes the player's squadron. He frequently outsmarts the entire GTVA command in his capital ship, and when it looks like he's finally been caught when his ship is disabled and boarded, it's found out that he had planned a ruse which included the capture of his ship and all of his crew all along, and he had actually used the confusion to escape alone on-board a Shivan transport, showing more ingenuity and unpredictability than even the inscrutable alien race.

* MagnificentBastard: [[BigBad Main antagonist]] Aken Bosch spends the entirety of the game attempting to ally with the Destroyers, AKA the Shivans whom he believes are unstoppable and will never be defeated regardless of the GTVA's efforts. When the players are tasked with a squadron to intercept and disable his ship, he openly sends a communication channel to the player and taunts them, questioning the competence of their commanders as he warps out of the system, well before the players have any chance at hitting him, just before a Shivan fleet ambushes the player's squadron. He frequently outsmarts the entire GTVA command in his capital ship, and when it looks like he's finally been caught when his ship is disabled and boarded, it's found out that he had planned a ruse which included the capture of his ship and all of his crew all along, and he had actually used the confusion to escape alone on-board a Shivan transport, showing more ingenuity and unpredictability than even the inscrutable alien race.

* WhatAnIdiot: See that page for the details, it's lengthy.

* MagnificentBastard: Admiral Bosch. While his ultimate fate is [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse ambiguous]], he fools Alliance at their every single attempt to take him down.
** To be fair, it is heavily implied that the Alliance let Bosch succeed for as long as he did because they knew about and wanted him to complete the ETAK project, so they could steal it for themselves. This meant that the GTVA likely could have stopped Bosch and his killing of countless Vasudans earlier, but kept the war going so Bosch could finish the project. Had they stopped him as soon as they could have, it is unlikely they could have finished the project, given that it was a cancelled attempt at creating a communication device to contact the Shivans (which appears very hard to do) and that Bosch took extraordinary measures to destroy the project's notes.

* BlackAndGreyMorality: Throughout both games, the Shivans are treated like the villains, attacking and destroying randomly and without warning, yet from Bosch's description, and from the Ancients' monologue, it's possible that at least in the case of the Ancients, the Shivans were only preventing the Ancients from causing more destruction. And while it isn't guaranteed, it's possible that if the Shivans hadn't showed up, or if the Terrans and Vasudans had never made contact, they may have followed the same route, and vice versa.

* ThatOneLevel: "A Game of TAG" from Freespace 2. Your loadout is preset to a Ulysses fighter (which even the briefing admits is a Great War antique), a Prometheus-R Cannon (which is basically useless) and a Sublach HL-7. Your also given the TAG-A - a weapon that allows nearby the nearby corvette to direct any weapons in range to destroy even fighter class vessels. All this sounds cool until you realize that the TAG-A is a dumbfire weapon, meaning that it has no guidance systems whatsoever: if the target moves, you miss. You also have only one wingman, with the same armament. Making things harder are the matter of the Taurvii-class bombers the level likes to throw at you, which are both fast and have a thin target profile. And to top off all the frustration, the level is set inside a nebula, meaning even the most accurate pilots are going to struggle to land shots, and the Warship accompanying you cannot defend itself because ALL of its guns are linked to your TAG Missiles (so in order to make it defend itself, you need to TAG a Shivan craft). For maximum funsies, after forcing you into an obsolete and undergunned fighter with little backup, Command will guilt-trip you about needing to defend the corvette and AWACS ships while sending you no reinforcements. Expect to fail many, MANY times, even on re-runs of the game.

* ThatOneLevel: "A Game of TAG" from Freespace 2. Your loadout is preset to a Perseus Interceptor, a Prometheus Cannon and a Sublach HL-7. Your also given the TAG-A - a weapon that allows nearby Warships to direct any weapons in range to destroy even fighter class vessels. All this sounds cool until you realise that the TAG-A is a Dumbfire weapon, meaning that you will miss most of the TAG's you fire. Making things harder are the matter of the Virgo Class Bombers the level likes to throw at you. And to top off all the frustration, the level is set inside a Nebula, meaning even the most accurate pilots are going to struggle to land shots, and the Warship accompanying you cannot defend itself because ALL of it's guns are linked to your TAG Missles (so in order to make it defend itself, you need to TAG a Shivan craft). Expect to fail many, MANY times, even on re-runs of the game.

* FanonDiscontinuity: ''Silent Threat''
** The original Silent Threat has now been supplanted by a (''extremely'' well-done) fan-made revision of the entire thing called ''[[SilentThreatReborn Silent Threat: Reborn]]'', which keeps the storyline largely intact while adding enough to it to make it good, and has pretty much been unanimously declared to be superior to the original product, thus pulling the story out of FanonDiscontinuity.

* EvenBetterSequel: The original game received reviews that, while mostly positive, were nothing particularly outstanding; it was considered a good game, but not a ''great'' one. ''Freespace 2'', on the other hand, was positively heaped with praise, received numerous 'Game of The Year' awards, and is still widely played even to this day, over a decade after its release.
** Due to the fact that ''Freespace 2'' was one of the last games of its kind ever released, some fans jokingly claim that it was so good it killed the entire genre, since nothing else would ever be able to compete with it. (The real reasons the Space Sim genre died out are a lot more complex.)

* MagnificentBastard (Admiral Bosch. While his ultimate fate is [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse ambiguous]], he fools Alliance at their every single attempt to take him down.)

* MemeticBadass (Due to the friendly AI's general incompetence and the ridiculously high number of kills you score throughout the game, the player's character, only ever referred to as "Alpha 1", has become this.)

* GoddamnedBats (SF Dragons are infamously difficult to hit if they flee from you.)
** Manticores and Amuns are annoying too.

* EnsembleDarkhorse (Lieutenant-Commander Snipes. Probably due to being the only named pilot in the story, and getting the best lines in the game.)
** Another example, from the fan-made ''Derelict'', is Lieutenant Mackie, a duct-tape enthusiast and DeadpanSnarker extraordinaire.

* OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow: Towards the end of the second game when the Shivans start to take the war seriously. It ends in a Deus Ex Machina that was probably meant to be explained in the third game ([[spoiler: the Shivans blow up a [[strike:sun]] Capella as the humans retreat and then most of them warp out to an unknown destination.]]).

* LoveItOrHateIt (The more specialized fighters, most notably the Serapis which is a joy to fly, have good gun positioning, but are made of cardboards, and the Hercules Mark 2 which is just the opposite)