(No, really, there are lots of spoilers in this post, so don't read it if you have any intention of playing the game and are one of those people, like me, who hate spoilers.)

Gameplay: 9.0
Graphics: 7.0
Sound: 6.0
Value: 9.0
Tilt: 9.0
Overall: 8.8

It's good to see Star Fox Command go back to its roots, those being to fly fast, agile sci-fi space fighters, and to shoot down lots and lots of bad guys. Let's at least get this much straight: Star Fox Command involves a lot of flying very fast, and shooting down a lot of bad guys. The clunky tank controls from Star Fox Assault? No where to be found. Shallow third-person shooting? Not here.

First, the core gameplay is excellently executed. When I learned that I would have no choice but to use the combination of using one hand on the D-pad and one hand with the stylus, I feared I would be suffering from the same hand cramps that effectively spoiled my fun in Metroid Prime: Hunters. To my delight, the controls are very simple - any button (yes, it's left-hander friendly, even, for all you who were afraid!) will fire, and holding any button will charge the shot. Everything else is done via the touchpad, and proved very comfortable to work with: a pleasant surprise, indeed! I had a little trouble getting a feel for the boosting and braking, but that was nothing compared to getting used to, say, Dead Rising.

Second, the strategic command game is elegantly integrated. You have a limited number of turns to clear the bad guys from the map, there's a fog of war, a limited ability to reveal what was under the fog, and impassable terrain. You plot your course for each fighter you have, and both sides move at the same time, which is where the fighting comes in. Everything you intercept requires a classic Star Fox 64-style free-roam fight to resolve, with a few exceptions. If the bad guys ever reach the Great Fox, it's Game Over. It's simple, but challenging.

I found this combination to be very entertaining: The strategic element offered a mental challenge - how to clear everything from the map and protect the Great Fox within the limited number of turns - while the combat offered an active challenge. I could do this for days.

I do have some complaints about the game at this point. The graphics are pretty good for the DS to manage, but the draw distance just feels a bit too near to the player, and becomes a hinderance. This is particularly the case when you're chasing after that last baddie that needs to die... oh yeah, time is also limited in combat, take too long and you lose the fighter. Even better: The time is shared between pilots. I'm not complaining about the time limitations, but it was rather annoying to try and find that last guy.

The audio is alright... it gets the job done, but it seemed like a lot more work could have been done here. Really, the audio harkened me back to the days of the SNES, where most DS titles go out of their way to make the DS seem like a miniature GameCube. By comparison, this seemed disappointing. As you can tell by my overall score, I was more than able to look past that failing. (In fact, basic math would indicate gameplay and value are some 50 times more important, individually, than graphics and audio combined, by my own system)

This is where the spoilers come in, because the game's replay value comes from the ability to unlock new paths through the story. I have done everything possible to overlook the content of the story in my rating, and rate the game purely on its gameplay and the potential for seeing other endings to the story. That said, I have to admit, I'm disappointed. Really disappointed. I'm not really bothered by the simplistic personas and static characters, after all, the Star Fox characters have never been dynamic. What really disappoints me is the default ending, which is most likely going to become canon for the next Star Fox title. I was concerned when the introduction of the game split up Fox and Krystal, gained hope for their relationship when she rejoins the group...

Two things bother me about what happens:
1. At the end of the game, General Peppy O'Hare (General Pepper is retired) very noticeably neglects to mention Krystal as a valuable member of the Star Fox team.
2. This time, Krystal leaves Fox after Fox "continues to struggle with complex emotions", and she leaves him for Star Wolf! I took that as "for that arrogant, womanizing, conceited, chauvenistic pig of a cat, Panther." Oh, the pain.

And this is likely going to be canon, the ending that's used to base future Star Fox titles off of! Arrrgh!

So, here are my thoughts, where I use my minute power of pontification to opine with regards to the story, and guess at its future:
1. Peppy's omission is really disrespectful to Krystal's character, and if I had been the writers in Rare and Namco who introduced her in Star Fox Adventures and kept her around for Star Fox Assault, I would be livid. Krystal does her share in Team Star Fox (I actually ended up, due to no deliberate effort on my part, with Krystal doing most of the work after she rejoined the team in Command). Also, one would think that having an empath on the team would be a significant advantage, even though her empathic abilities are never really exploited in the games by either the story or the gameplay.
2. Moving Krystal into Star Wolf seems like a step towards writing her out of the story entirely, which seems like hastily deleting a character that has now appeared in 3 of the 5 games in the franchise. It would be like deleting Star Wolf itself, something which seems highly unlikely, at best. Honestly, if it had been part of the original plan to relegate Krystal to the bit part, then she shouldn't have shown up in Assault even as a bit character, to say nothing of being a member of Star Fox, and Big N should have seen to that. I don't mind Pigma's apparent fate from Assault, though supposedly one of the endings to Command deals with him.

I suppose it bothers me because there seemed to be no real warning that Fox and Krystal had issues. Or were there? I had glazed over Fox's outward shyness as just that: being shy about his relationship with the beautiful vixen. Had it been me in that briefing where Krystal observes, rather seductively, that we were finally tackling a mission together, I probably would have had exactly the same response as Fox's. The hesitance to talk about marriage just seemed like a typical "guy" response from someone who knew what he wanted and was just waiting for that right moment to do it, "so stop pushing me so I can do this thing right" kind of thing. I have to admit, had it been me in that situation in the cinematic in Assault, I probably would have just blushed rather hard and gone quiet, but it's not like I would have proposed right then and there, either.

It seems to be reading way too deeply into those two incidents to conclude that Fox and Krystal were actually having relationship issues, or that Fox at least was suffering from this deep emotional problem with Krystal being in danger. It makes their split seem to be an arbitrary reason to start off the player with just Fox on the team, and makes the ending of the game all the more confusing and... sad, really.

At a minimum, some foreshadowing and justification during some other entry's story would have been nice.

Now, there no longer seems to be a good answer here: Unless there's another humongous shift in attitudes and suddenly Fox and Krystal are an item again (or maybe the story in Command is just ignored, which is always an option), Krystal's character is going to be a source of pain if she stays in the series. She and Fox now have some bad blood between them, both having left the other, hurting as they go along. It doesn't seem plausible for them to reconcile unless the Star Fox stories take a much more dynamic approach to the various personas in next game. Though I'll bet the genre is capable of conveying deep, emotional stories with plausible, dynamic characters without requiring a great deal of non-interactive cutscenes, Big N hasn't done that.

She almost certainly isn't going to rejoin Star Fox. There is every reason to believe, at the moment, that Fox and Krystal are going to have a lot of mutual pain between each other that's going to interfere with any future relationship they may have. Overcoming their history would require significantly more dynamic characters than have been part of the story.

She probably won't become a bit character because anyone could fill that role and there doesn't seem to be any reason at this point for Krystal to help Fox in his future adventures. It also seems like it would be a disservice to Krystal's prominence to turn her into an independent pilot with a bit part in the next game, though it would pretty well solidify that she was being written out of the franchise.

She probably won't end up as a member of the Cornerian military again, for the same reason that such a role would probably turn her into a bit character.

She probably won't become a direct rival. Fox doesn't need a rival, because he already has Wolf O'Donnell. Will Krystal stay with Star Wolf? That seems like the most likely continuation of the story, since she said she was going back to them at the end of Command, and there isn't any real other place for her. It seems most likely that she'll put up with Panther's advances and otherwise bend Star Wolf away from their worst tendencies, something that already seems to be established in Command. Though it would probably hardly be a Star Fox game without at least one romp with Star Wolf, that would be a painful fight, indeed, if Krystal flew on their wing. Unless, of course, the two dislike each other strongly enough that they suddenly don't mind going after each other. This seems doubtful - if Fox loved her enough to throw her out of the team for her own safety, and then to be caught up in the same old emotional struggle after she rejoins, it would be a very large shift in his character to hate her, or at least become emotionally detached enough to shoot at her under all but the most extreme circumstances. That, or I've misunderstood Fox's character and he really is such a mercenary that he'd shoot at her regardless of their history. I'm not sure I'd appreciate being in that role, in fact it would probably jade me against whatever the next Star Fox game is.

Though it's a game, I can't help taking this seriously, because it seemed like Fox and Krystal were a good match (being of the same species certainly seemed like it would have been a help) and her addition kept the team at four total members, something which seems impossible now as Peppy is leading the Cornerian military. I had liked the idea of a simple loving relationship between these two characters and, if nothing else, it matters to me because I've grown up with this franchise. I have many fond memories of Star Fox from the SNES and Star Fox 64 for the N64.  In fact, I was willing to forgive Star Fox Adventures, and I had clung desperately to the flight missions from Star Fox Assault as the remaining embers of the classic gameplay. I even grew attached to the team and the characters, and was relieved to hear that everyone was alright at the end of Assault, even though it seemed like Namco was killing off half the franchise.

Star Fox Command is an excellent return to the gameplay that made Star Fox fun, as well as a great example of how to add additional gameplay elements to the basic formula. It's a fun game, but it has me wondering just what the heck Nintendo is thinking about the continuing story - I can forgive a shallow story, but stop messing with my attachment to the characters!