Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War
Skip · Shooter · 2014
The verdict
SKIP IT.
It scores 42, under the fair line, at $19.99.
- Length
- 12.7h 35.6h to 100%
- Value
- $1.57/hr
- Reviews
- 78% of 245 positive
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Next discount: likely in the Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4, at about $15.99 (20% off). Calls like this were right 89% of the time in a backtest over 70 weeks.
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales. Last cut ended 11 days ago.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
Volition's classic is back. Descent: FreeSpace is the quintessential old school space shooter. With a deep story, great graphics and engaging battles against fighters to capital ships it keeps you moving. Breakout that flight stick and enroll with the Grand Terran Alliance today.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 256 MB of memory, 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7, 1.6 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
73 discounts in the 12 years on record, a median of 30 percent off across all of them, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price, and its last discount ended 11 days ago.
Value puts it in the top 50 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 79 percent of its genre. Among the games that feel like it, House of the Dying Sun ($19.99, scores 55) beats it on value, while it beats STAR WARS™: Squadrons ($39.99, scores 14).
More about Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War
Inside the two-hour refund window, 63 percent of the 118 reviews written there were positive, against 78 percent overall, and those are 50 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 12.7 hours. Doing everything runs 36, 2.8 times as long.
Players
- Players online
- 2 when we last checked, on Sep 30, 18:55 UTC
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
IF you were ever planning to buy this, don't. just get FreeSpace 2, Knossos, FSPort, and ur good
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
I love this game it is amazing BUT it won't run normally direct from Steam you have to do a bunch of stuff just to get it to run properly, stuff which I don't know how or what to do. This crashes my computer every time I open it. You shouldn't have to download stuff or alter stuff to play a game from the 90s with the tech we have today it should be easy enough for them to make it able to run without a problem but...
Freespace, and its successor, Freespace 2, are the best space sims of their generation. I played both extensively in my teenage years. I joined the multiplayer community where players could gain control of star systems in an overarching and ever-changing campaign. I recall being a member of DarkWing at the time, specializing in bomber craft. I would build basic missions using FRED or FRED2 and practice bombing runs...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic), achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War scores 42/100 on the BANG Score (a skip) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/273600/descent-freespace-the-great-warReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 30, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.