Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut

As a story, it's pretty good - there's a decent range of missions that cover the typical Defence/Raid/Bombing Run/Epic Fleet actions that this genre typically runs, with the campaign starting off mysterious and handing you the titular Strike Suit, with it escalating through various missions to the point where it's basically the Battle of Endor from Star Wars.

When in 'Fighter' mode, you have a good selection of unlockable guns and missiles to use for loadouts, and it's pretty decent - plasma guns, machine guns, missiles of every stripe - completing the game also nets you a mad Railgun (that looks more like a Beam cannon from the cruisers in the game, but mounted on your fighter), so you have plenty of choice.

Default plane mode has ok maneuverability, and Gundam-form has limited time where it can't boost as fast as a plane, but is highly agile (strafe in all directions) and different weapons.

Problems: Shadowless issue didn't really bother me, as the textures, nice bg, dark ships you can hardly tell apart from dark bg, nice weapons/explosions are all visually rich (runs fine on laptop).

The Director's Cut improves pacing and voice acting, adds much of the original game's DLC, as well as provides a visual upgrade.

You can choose from Easy to Hard difficulty on any mission, and Normal difficulty was decently challenging.